sug·ar
/’ SHŏogər/ (noun)
1. sweeten, sprinkle, or coat with sugar. "she absentmindedly sugared her tea"
An Arrangement:
Exploring the nuances of sugaring By Sara Cullen
W
ith tuition prices on the rise in North America, the question of how to finance a university education without sinking into debt is a source of stress for many. As of late, mainstream media outlets have highlighted the prevalence of sugaring–a situation in which one person is compensated for spending time with another on a regular basis–on university campuses. Commonly discussed using the terms “sugar baby” and “sugar daddy,” media coverage has sensationalized the practice of forming a sugar relationship online. Jasmine* considered sugaring after graduating from McGill in order to pay for a Masters program at an Ivy League university in the U.S. Although she eventually decided not to pursue a sugar relationship, she recalls how most of her friends would ask her how much she would get paid upon finding out that she was thinking of sugaring. “I think it’s glamorized a little bit,” Jasmine said. “[....Most] articles on [sugaring] don’t dig into the emotional side of the relationship, most answer questions about how money is exchanged or how you find an arrangement. I think that [media] caters to what people want to know and not to the emotional side.” Emily* attends McGill and has sugared in the past. She said that many articles on sugaring come across as marketing a new taboo, using scenarios and language that cater to the public by providing them with something with a higher shock value. “It feels like they ignore the queer people of colour who don’t identify as women because the idea
of Becky from next door engaging in this type of relationship is shocking,” Emily wrote in a message to The McGill Tribune. “The fact that they focus so much on what the people sugaring are doing with their money is also telling. That babies could be using the money to put themselves through college is supposed to highlight a seemingly unstable class positioning. Only talking about hetero young woman [with] older man relationships, plays into people’s weird class boundary fantasies with the added ‘twist’ of a helpless girl [and] pervy old man dynamic.” The sugaring narrative Emily mentions has been especially stressed by the media in recent years and is often connected to rising tuition costs. In September 2016, CBC reported that on average, undergraduate university tuition in Canada has gone up by around 40 per cent in the last decade. Certain companies hosting sugar websites specifically try to target students struggling to afford tuition or pay off their student debt. SeekingArrangement is a sugar website based in Las Vegas that is used by over five million active members in 139 different countries. According to the website, Canadian university tuition rose by three per cent in the past year and “Finding the right sugar daddy can help a sugar baby manage student loan debt.” After unexpectedly being accepted to the Ivy League school, Jasmine was faced with the difficult decision of choosing between a widely-recognized university and a lesser known school with more affordable tuition. “I wanted to go to medical school after, so, that's already a lot of [student] loans,” Jasmine said. “I was