Sugar
Baby Lite
Carrot Dating allows users to exchange gifts for dates.
Incentivized dating means a guy (usually) pays a woman (usually) to go out on a
first date and/or have sex. Suggested gifts range from coffee, lunch or dinner
to a tattoo, spa day, or shopping spree. App users are told to "Bribe your
way to a date."
Carrot Dating was founded by the same MIT genius who
created Seeking Arrangement, the most popular of the sugar baby websites. The
company's introductory press release included the following statement:
"There's only one method of manipulation that has stood the test of time:
bribery. It's a concept so simple that even animals understand—give a dog a
bone, and it will obey. Give a woman a present, and she'll…"
Wow. Is that how it works?
Downloading the free mobile app requires an iPhone,
iPad, iPod Touch, or Android. Interested carrot danglers sign up to be a member
and create a profile. Then they can offer other members a specific gift
("bribe") in exchange for the promise of a first date. If someone accepts
your bribe, then you will have to make a payment to Carrot Dating as well as
your date.
Suggested gifts include a tank of gas, bouquet of
flowers, jewelry, and plastic surgery. If you don't have a sense of humor, this
whole thing can seem sexist and sick.
The site's founder claims he is trying to help guys
(mostly) who can't get dates with attractive women (mostly). Such men may be
forced to turn to economically driven dating, that is, they have to pay someone
to go out with them. It's an awful lot like being a sugar daddy. Only it costs
less and doesn't last as long.
I guess there's nothing wrong with two consenting
adults agreeing to an exchange of goods for services. Commodifying dating is
something we chat about with our friends (Where
did he take you for dinner? Did you go back to his place after? Will she put
out if you get hold of those Lady Gaga tickets?). But we usually don't
speak about it with our dates. (Buy me a
dozen roses and I'll give you a blow job.) And we usually do not equate
transactional relationships with prostitution. Guys buy gifts, women…cook
dinner. Or something.
Carrot dating, however, brings us one step closer to
selling our bodies for trinkets. A giant step, not a baby step.
What bothers me most about this subject is the
assumption that women need to be paid to have sex. Why would that be? I thought
women were sexually liberated at this point and we wanted to have sex. A lot of
sex. It's also disturbing to think the culture is teaching young women to
believe they are entitled to a payoff after sex. Isn't sex with someone you are
attracted to the payoff? And sex with someone you are not attracted to, what's
that?
Sugar
Babies is my new novel about the secret world of
professional girlfriends. A romantic suspense story, it's a bit of cautionary
tale. Living the glitter life on a rich older man's arm can be fun, sure. But
it can also be difficult and demeaning. Even dangerous. The sugar life is not
always what it pretends to be.
***
November 4, 2013:
from Champagne Books
a novel of sexy intrigue,
a blue martini with a nasty
twist,
Sugar Babies
A sugar daddy can make your money woes disappear overnight. But
for sugar babies, life is like a chocolate covered time bomb: sweet on the
outside, deadly on the inside.
Young, beautiful, and hungry, Maire, Esme and Niki want what every
woman wants: love, work, safe shelter, the bills paid off, a diamond-studded
Rolex, and a two-bedroom condo with an ocean view. Working as sugar babies
seems to be the only way to make this happen. But the sugar life is more
dangerous than they thought.
Maire O’Rourke is too hot to handle herself properly. She tends to
wear too tight clothes and too much make-up, but she’s got more than sex on her
mind. She’s already landed one of the richest sugar daddies in Coconut City, a
tropical paradise boasting more lonely men per multimillion dollar estate than
just about anywhere else.
Sweet Esme Grant is a buxom blonde with a rough and tumble lover
she’s left behind somewhere in hill country. She’s come to Coconut City in
order to find herself a sugar daddy, a rich older man willing to fund her,
along with her hometown boyfriend and their Mayberry-gone-bad dreams.
Niki Stephanopoulos, a dark, iconoclastic artist enrolled in a
teaching certification program at Coconut College, struggles with depression
fueled by guilt. She is embarrassed by her dependence on her family for the
money she needs to survive. But she feels even worse after sleeping with her
sexy, much older landlord when she’s short the rent.
Welcome to the secret lives of sugar babies. On the first day of
the month, Maire, Esme and Niki struggle with bills and beaus. Readers can join
them as they figure out ways to pay the rent, make decent love to indecent men,
and stay upright on the rough road to happiness. Sugar Babies is
a modern-day romance, a blue martini with a nasty twist. An intoxicating
mystery steeped in social satire, the story of Esme, Niki and Maire is an
all-American morality tale.
Three beautiful young women: place your order now.
***
Author Mickey J. Corrigan lies and
works and gets into trouble in the lurid tropics of South Florida, where sugar
babies are as common as gators, skeeters and snowbirds. Other titles include
the novellas Geekus Interruptus, Dream
Job, Professional Grievers, and Me Go
Mango. Sugar Babies is her first
novel. Visit at www.mickeyjcorrigan.com or on Goodreads at www.goodreads.com/author/show/5828647.Mickey_J_Corrigan.
Title: Sugar Babies
Author:
Mickey J. Corrigan
Publisher:
Champagne Books
Release
Date: November 4, 2013
ISBN:
978-1-77155-026-0
Wow- carrot dating...hadn't heard of it before. This sounds like a terrific book!
ReplyDeleteHi Nas .. sounds very strange to me - but I guess this is the way the world is going at times ... I think I endorse Shelly's comment ... not a book I'd buy though .. cheers Hilary
ReplyDeleteHi Nas and MJ,
ReplyDeleteFascinating. Can't wait to read this.
I'm writing a historical right now where a woman forces her faithful husband to have sex with another woman so that woman can have a child for them. She's got a young woman for the purpose. The husband can't reconcile the idea of just having sex and walking away and the wife gets more than she bargained for in the end.
Every age has it's peculiarities.
Mx
This was great to read thanks
ReplyDelete