PROMISING YOUNG WOMEN: FEMALE UNDERGRADUATES’ PURSUIT OF FINANCIAL AND SEXUAL INDEPENDENCE THROUGH “SUGAR DATING” IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

“Sugar dating” refers to an arrangement where a younger person – a “sugar baby” – provides intimacy, companionship, and sometimes sex in exchange for financial compensation and other benefits such as gifts, paid experiences, and mentorship from an older and wealthier “sugar daddy” or “mommy”. Scholarly literature on the relatively new phenomenon of sugar dating remains in its infancy and mass media representations of sugar babies are largely derived from sensationalised anecdotes, simultaneously portraying them as exploited, naïve youths who should be protected and a deplorable threat to the social order, motivated by materialism and fast cash. This thesis therefore seeks to contribute to the field by studying female undergraduates in Singapore who are in heterosexual arrangements with male sugar daddies through a feminist methodology that privileges their experiential knowledge. Why are young women in Singapore increasingly drawn to sugar dating despite it being widely stigmatised? This thesis argues that since women, particularly young women, are simultaneously policed and rewarded for performing a sexualised vision of femininity, sugar dating presents itself as an effective means of pursuing financial and sexual independence, specifically career advancement and sexual experimentation, given that sugar babies employ relevant strategies to keep their work lives a secret and to negotiate power and agency in their relationships with sugar daddies. By examining the rise of sugar dating from the ‘micro level’ of its purveyors, this thesis will also highlight broader patterns between intimacy and the economy, which are not distinct and incompatible, but intertwined and mutually constitutive.