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While browsing through a Google search for an unrelated writing project, I stumbled upon a link that reminded me of a whimsical little notion I used to entertain when I was a single girl: getting a sugar daddy. Especially a few years ago, as a recent graduate with zero prospects on either the job or relationship front, my friends and I would joke that we should just get sugar daddies and not worry about silly things like following our passions or becoming successful.  During that time I also had an incident where an older gentleman helped me find my way when I was lost just off Times Square. He then proceeded to shower me with complements and offered to buy me coffee. Once the job interview I was going to turned out to be just another rejection, I seriously for a moment considered if I had what it took to be a woman with a benefactor. And wondered if I should have met the man for coffee, even just of out curiosity.

Ultimately, I didn’t go through with any of it. But every time the subject comes up, its a little inside joke with myself. So when I passed this article reporting that the US city most populated with sugar daddies is San Francisco, California, I laughed to myself and wondered exactly how long a bus ride to California is. Lord knows that I could not afford a plane ticket. Even though I have made progress in both the job and relationship fronts, the job front at least, has not progressed as much as I’d hoped. I had to mentally spank myself for thinking that if my hunny and I didn’t work out, that I might more readily consider getting a sugar daddy. I very well know that he would not be comfortable being a financial cuckold. He does his very best to treat me to things on his budget, so I really can’t complain.

But a girl can dream right? I most certainly do reserve the right, as a woman to have silly little day dreams that I know will never come into fruition. With the average sugar daddy being 39 years old, making $250,000 a year and being willing to spend $4,300 a month on his sugar baby or sugar angel, whichever you prefer. In one month, I could have the last of my college debts paid off and still have a little extra to buy myself something pretty.

To delve deeper into the topic, and a little bit away from myself, I began to wonder about the old chestnut; black women and their chronic singledom. More so, whether or not they could benefit from a sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship. There is constant discussion about how many black women already engage in similar type relationships, becoming involved with men that are drug dealers or some other highly lucrative and equally illegal profession. These women benefit from being provided with whatever they need and being the lady on his arm, not much different from being a sugar baby. These women may feel they are living the good life, but this can easily turn sour when the man gets arrested and convicted of a myriad of charges he has undoubtedly accumulated over the years.

But most black women would likely not consider the standard sugar daddy relationship. Despite the average sugar daddy being a legal entrepreneur; owning his own business, and especially those in San Francisco, being worth an upwards of $5 million, he is also most likely a white man, or at the least, not black. So the average black woman, after running through the usual excuses of not being attracted to white men, and knowing that white men are not attracted to her, would most likely be offended at the idea of having a relationship surrounded around sex and money. Claiming proof that white men are only interested in black women to use them for sex. How that is much different from other relationships previously described, I’m not sure. But everyone has a right to their own opinion, misguided or not.

There’s a black woman I follow on YouTube who is married to a South East Asian engineer and likes to debate DBRs on the state of blacks in America and the rift between black women and men (a losing battle if you ask me, but again, to each their own). She has mentioned on her channel that before she was married, her relationships tended to be of the sugar daddy/sugar baby variety. Whether she and her husband had that type of relationship before marriage, I’m not sure. She reasons that she preferred these relationships, 1. because she is attracted to older men and sugar daddies are on average, older than their sugar babies, 2. because she is attracted to non-black men and sugar daddies are on average, not black, 3. because she wanted to be with financially stable men who could not only take care of her but also spoil her and that is the whole point of a sugar daddy. She also says that if her marriage were ever to end, for whatever reason, that she would return to having sugar daddy/sugar baby type relationships, despite now being a little older herself.

Admittedly, for the marriage minded woman, sugar daddy/sugar baby relationships are probably not the way to go. Approximately 41 percent of sugar daddies are married; I’m sure it’s safe to assume it’s not to their sugar babies. On the other hand, single sugar daddies are most likely not on a marriage track and simply like to engage with younger women and get the feel of being a provider without the commitment.

Whenever I have entertained the thought of being a sugar baby, jokingly or not, I always kept in the back of my mind that it most likely would not be a situation where I would eventually be put up behind a white picket fence with 2.3 kids and a dog. My notion of being a sugar baby is one that has absolutely been orchestrated by my id, wondering how I would fare in a world of complete pampering and decadence.

But I honestly wonder, in the grand scheme context — what if in an parallel universe equal to my own, whatever percent of black women were never married, but they were being taken care of in a sugar daddy/sugar baby situation. Could that negative be spun into a positive? Or would the media spin in it back around to then make sugar daddies an absolute negative? I suppose only people in that parallel universe will definitively know. I feel it’s also safe to say, even in general terms, that if black women were to move from the sugar daddy relationships they are used to, to sugar daddy relationships proper, there’s a good chance they would be a lot better off.