Tuesday, June 12, 2007 | 6:57 a.m.
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Meet Sarah: a bona fide blonde, 22 years old, lip glossed and giggling over a vanilla-flavored vodka drink. A woman of curves and cunning who was certain of two things three months ago: She was beautiful, and she was broke.
No longer. Today Sarah is a "Sugar Baby ," one of hundreds of Las Vegas women who advertise their casual companionship on SeekingArrangement.com, a Web site created by a Northern Nevada businessman and based on a very simple principle: Rich men will pay for pretty women.
Billed as the "premier Sugar Daddy dating site," SeekingArrangement is online match making for "wealthy benefactors" and willing women - women who understand there will be no long-term romance, who understand their Sugar Daddy may be married, who understand that sex, and secrecy, is expected.
Women willing to understand all this (while often forgiving age difference, appearance and even personality) for money.
In Nevada, there are 143 Sugar Daddies and 626 Sugar Babies. There are approximately 100,000 registered SeekingArrangement members throughout the U.S., a number that reportedly grows by roughly 2,000 every week.
Sarah, who asked that her last name not be used, has been listed on the Web site since April. In that time, she estimates , she has received approximately $10,000 from four men, not including $1,000 shopping tabs and trips to Seattle ; San Francisco ; Washington, D.C. ; and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
She is an aspiring Playboy model , and the pictures posted on her profile show it; soft and slick, with strategic coverings rather than clothes. She's a former pageant queen who graduated from her Northern Nevada high school with a 3.9 grade-point average and a Millennium Scholarship that did little to cover her college expenses.
She was engaged to be married six months ago, until she found out her doctor fiance was cheating. Shortly thereafter, when a roommate revealed she was using the site to make extra money, Sarah joined. "Let's face it," she said. "I'm not going to be beautiful forever."
And now, with only one difficult math class to complete before graduating, Sarah's goal is to find a Sugar Daddy who will get her a tutor and pay her an allowance of $10,000 a month.
She doesn't take checks.
"Welcome to 2007," she says. "This is how life is. You can accept it, or you can be left behind."
The bartender does not make Sarah pay for her drink. She brushes back her bangs and smiles.
Since it s debut in 2005, SeekingArrangement has been criticized by some for teetering toward prostitution, while others have lauded the site's frankness.
SeekingArrangement's founder, Brandon Wade, 36, an MIT graduate living near Lake Tahoe, says the site's success lies in its candor: Sugar Daddies are asked to disclose their income, profession and how much they can spend on a Sugar Baby every month. In return, Sugar Babies vie for their attention, and nobody is offended when the evening ends with an envelope.
"The guy has to be generous. Not filthy rich, but have a disposable income," Wade said. "Sugar Babies are not looking for love. They are looking to be pampered. They understand money is important."
Sarah carries a red Louis Vuitton purse, an item she selected during a shopping trip with a Sugar Daddy. Some men, she says, sit and wait for you to pick your purchase. Others want a show in the dressing room.
"You give them a smile," Sarah says, doing just that, "and you say, 'This is what I want.' " Wade says he makes $70,000 a month on the Web site, revenue generated by the $30 membership fees men pay monthly. (Sugar Babies can search for free.)
Wade has a wife 13 years his junior.
"In a way," he said, "I am a Sugar Daddy."
It's not something everybody wants to admit. None of the Nevada Sugar Daddies contacted was willing to comment, though their profiles are plainly viewable to anybody with an account.
Las Vegas' Sugar Daddies range in age from the mid-20s to late 60s and beyond. They claim assets ranging from less than $100,000 to upward of $50 million. They are real estate developers, contractors, chief executives, attorneys, doctors, business owners and any variety of self-made millionaires, or so they say.
Sarah dated a dentist specializing in gum disease. None of the men she met live s in Nevada. To get acquainted, she made them fly to Las Vegas and dine, or get drinks. Then she decided which ones she liked - two of the four.
"You always want to upgrade to the bigger and better thing," she said.
Different though each Sugar Daddy may be, they are almost all alike in their desire for discretion and relationships without strings . Whether this is because paid companionship is taboo, or simply because they're already attached - 30 percent of the site's male users admit they are married - is unclear.
(Perhaps this excerpt from the Web site clarifies: "Because of how our society works, it is awkward for someone to walk up to another to ask them if they would like to get involved in a Mutually Beneficial Relationship.")
It's questionable whether SeekingArrangement is anything more than a glorified Internet version of the everyday practice of picking partners primarily for wealth or looks.
And whether purchasing intimacy - in the form of a date, a therapist, a massage or a Sugar Baby - is all that uncommon.
"We tend to think there are these really hostile worlds between intimacy and the market, when in reality, these things intersect all the time," UNLV sociologist Barbara Brents said. "What is really different between this and other dating sites, where you explicitly draw out what you want? To say that exchanging sex for money is somehow qualitatively different than that is kind of drawing an arbitrary line."
The difference between SeekingArrangement and other dating sites - the reason why the site is controversial - is the brazen discussion of money with an implicit promise of sex. But Sarah isn't bothered.
"You just have to let that go," she says. "This is business."
Sugar Daddies post photos of themselves on the SeekingArrangement site; posing with a private plane, or a child, or in a suit with fedora and cane, as one man did. (His profile indicates that who m ever he dates is required to laugh at his jokes. He is willing to pay $1,000 to $3,000 a month.)
So is it prostitution?
"It is and it isn't," Brents said.
Without proof that money is directly exchanged for sex, the site is more like an escort service, and equally protected, said Lynne Henderson, a professor of constitutional and criminal law at Boyd Law School.
Wade recently launched a $1, 000 monthly premium membership for men who want to be featured more prominently on the site. He's also planning on offering Sugar Daddies the option of having their net worth verified by SeekingArrangement staff, who will check asset records and give men who pass a seal of approval, encouraging more Sugar Babies to flock.
Though the men Sarah met may have been dating, none seemed to have a serious relationship , she says, legs crossed, jacket folded at her side, silk shirt slipping open.
Sarah's dead certain she's not a prostitute.
"It's not like you're in a hotel room waiting to see who walks in the door. Or on the street waiting to see who pulls up in a car," she said. "I'm not going to come crawling to you for money.
"I'm a beautiful girl, and men love to be with me. I walk into a room, and heads turn."
Two years ago Sarah was making $10 an hour in a dead - end job. She grew up in government housing and qualified for free lunches at school. Dating these men, making this money, having nice things, is almost an instinctive need, she said.
"You need money to make money. They're helping me along in that sense. I'm almost a charity," she says, stopping to laugh. "They're adopting me."
Sarah's rent is paid three months in advance and her savings account is as cozy as her off-Strip condo. When she's done with school, she'll focus on modeling, hopefully with an allowance from her benefactor - whichever one she chooses.
Meanwhile, the market is increasingly glutted with almost identical dating Web sites - there are upward of 20 variations of the SeekingArrangement theme, promising Sugar Daddies, Mommies, Babies, Sugar anything.
The competition has forced Wade to diversify. Last month he launched a site for women trying to marry rich men: SeekingMillionare.com.
So far, the site has more than 5,000 members.
Sarah isn't one of them.
"So many women are looking for a man to marry and take care of them," she said. "I'd rather do it without the marriage and still find the man to take care of me.
"I just don't see how I can go wrong."
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