The Sugar Babies of Stanford University. By Nicola Burskirk. Times are changing.
We never think of girls at elite universities with high-paying career prospects “sugar-babying” for a taxi driver or night-shift factory worker from a flyover state. Yet at Stanford, this was exactly the case. It also reflects a broader change in the sexual dynamics of American culture.
Sites like OnlyFans, popular among the “pay to see me naked” subset of gig workers, have entered the mainstream in recent years as millions of young women and men turn to it for supplemental income, or to chase full careers. Over 170 million others subscribe as “customers.” …
The reality for the vast majority [of OnlyFans creators is that] getting nude for strangers nets an average of only about $151 a month and 21 subscribers.
Though neither [Stanford students] Cassie nor Lainey set out to be sugar babies (their word for what they did), they had the foresight to set strict boundaries. Their sugar-babying consisted of sexting, sexual voice recordings, and some suggestive but clothed Snapchats. They say there were no nudes, no phone calls, no meetups. They didn’t publicize where they attended school, but people found out anyway and sent the above-mentioned gifts.
When I asked them why they set these boundaries, Lainey replied, “It’s not worth it to me to send someone nudes for a small amount of money when we literally go to Stanford and are going to be making money off our intelligence. I would rather not send anything that could jeopardize my entire life in order to get like $20 or whatever it is.” …
For them, sugar-babying is a bit of entertainment and easy money that for now has virtually no consequences. Neither of the girls would like their families or employers to find out, but any social stigma that once existed around this kind of thing is long gone. Their friends just laugh about it, and often participate. …
When I spoke to other students at Stanford about the sugar baby phenomenon, a few raised eyebrows at potential “safety concerns.” This is, of course, the only objection to sex work you are allowed to have as a good progressive feminist on a college campus. …
In truth, Cassie and Lainey don’t know much about their clients. Some are older with grandkids. Some are in their 20s. One is an attorney. But most of the men they told me about were working class, a taxi driver from Kentucky or a factory worker.
Pat, the taxi driver from Kentucky, sent Cassie money for sexts, and bought her drinks when she was out with friends. Then he started sending gifts. He never asked for pictures, sexual or otherwise. Their conversations started out normal before getting more intimate. A few times he asked to fly out to Stanford and visit her, so she cut off her relationship. Even though he worked multiple jobs at his older age (Cassie guessed he was 60 or 70), Pat at least seemed to have the means to make the trip. He paid her nearly $600 before their first conversation and more throughout their interactions after.
But David worked the night shift at a car manufacturing plant, and he was always broke. He could only pay the girls on Fridays when he got his paycheck. Despite this, he consistently spent quite a bit of money for Lainey to send feet pics (only the bottom of the feet!), and — crucially — to tell him he was a loser, his dick was small, and “send me money.” The mismatch between his income and his spending worried the girls enough that they considered intervening, but ultimately decided there was not much they could do to help. …
The men were searching for a personal, intimate relationship with a woman. The best they could do, however, was this strange online transaction. …
It’s the personalization that makes Cassie and Lainey worth the money. In this way, the men in this story seem to use them as a self-medication for the dire situation many working class American men find themselves in today.
Many men are not ok:
While college-educated and upper-class Americans still enjoy relatively stable marriages, poor and, increasingly, working class Americans “face rising rates of family instability, single parenthood, and life-long singleness.” Since the 1970s, as off-shoring moved countless American jobs overseas with little to replace them, less-educated American men have suffered greater rates of unemployment while college-educated men do not. The link between education and stable employment means less-educated men are now less marriageable. Women marry up, not down, so bachelorhood and divorce is prevalent for these men. Such circumstances lead men to a life of unemployment, dysfunction, and loneliness. More and more, this leads to other mental health and substance abuse issues. But they’re still men. This makes them invisible.
Women, meanwhile, have had a century of success, if doing a lot more work outside the home, marrying later and less frequently, and having fewer children is counted as success. … As of 2021, women made up about 60% of all U.S. college students. …
When you have increasingly more women than men taking spots in elite circles, institutions, and companies, you have a significant mismatch of viable partners for both women and men — men similar to the ones paying Cassie and Lainey.
As a young woman myself, part of me had the same reaction as a lot of my friends when I first heard this story through the Stanford grapevine. I questioned the girls’ safety, and I was disgusted with the gross, old, lecherous men getting what they wanted from young pretty girls. But the more I talked to Cassie and Lainey, the more I learned about the men who were paying them. This was not the simplistic story I had been fed time and time again of privilege and power. In fact, it was much closer to the opposite. Our men are not okay.
Only this complete upheaval of traditional gender dynamics could allow high-achieving women to “sugar baby” for working class men, and without any tangible consequence to the women.
Cassie and Lainey’s experience is a microcosm of the broader cultural changes in America over the past few decades. American men, especially working class men, have been left behind with little hope for the “American dream” of a good family and stable job, income, and community. Rather, they self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, porn, and the pseudo-personal relationships offered by girls like Cassie and Lainey.
Now that the left has loosened society’s morals, the market takes over.
