Words by Paloma Green. Eighteen-year-old Mei was nervous about her first sugar date. She had just moved out from her parents house and was learning to navigate the world on her own. Arriving at her sugar daddy's house, she told herself she would be okay despite the safety risks.
She had been thinking about doing this for months. She reminded herself that people always worry about safety when meeting a stranger from the internet. She was only concerned with meeting a stranger. Once Mei talked to the guy for a while, she stopped being nervous. He seemed harmless so she started to relax. Now 19, the second-year art student looks back on her first arrangement with no regrets. Mei continued to see him for a few months.
She worked through Seeking Arrangements, a sugar baby site, commonly referred to as Seeking. A sugar baby is someone, typically a young person, who goes on dates in exchange for money, gifts, mentorship or travel.
Wealthy sugar daddies hire sugar babies for these dates. These arrangements are typically referred to as sugar dating or sugaring. When first getting into sugaring she was more worried about her parents finding out.
But now it seems normal to her. Mei is far from the only UBC student to give it a try. This places the school 17th out of all Canadian schools for users. You could argue that to some extent but even [sex work] should be normalized. When he told Mei that no self-respecting woman should be a sugar baby, she just nodded along with him. She thought there was no point in arguing with him. She said if she viewed the relationship as long-term she would have been more bothered by his comments.
