“I do love him but at the same time I can't eat love”: Sugar daddy relationships for conspicuous consumption amongst urban university students in South Africa

abstract

To explore the love-money-power-gender labyrinth, we conducted 10 in-depth interviews with students involved in sugar daddy relationships for conspicuous consumption on an urban university campus in South Africa. We had anticipated that these relationships were not devoid of love and that girls would carve out moments of agency within power dynamics that favoured sugar daddies. However, the students exerted degrees of agency in all phases of the sugar daddy relationship and despite the instrumental relationship imperative; love existed in a variety of manifestations in these relationships. Although students had instigated sugar daddy relationships for conspicuous consumption, during the course of the relationship sugar daddies were transformed from abstract providers to friends, confidants and lovers. Further, if the sugar daddy could no longer provide resources, students would most likely end the romantic relationship, but the friendship would not be terminated. Our analysis demonstrates that an ‘either or’ analysis that situates ‘agency as opposed to power’ or ‘love as opposed to money’ is superficial. It flattens the complexities raised in the vignettes of the girls involved in sugar daddy relationships and is blind to the messy contradictions that girls creatively navigate within structures in their quest for both money and love “at the same time”.

Keywords:

• Love
• money
• sugar daddy relationships
• power
• agency

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Professor Leah Gilbert, Beverley LeMoine and Candice Ulrich for their useful comments.