What It Means to Be “Worth It”: Aesthetic Capital and Boundary Work Among Sugar Babies

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12. Dating, Friendship, and Intimate Boundaries

Abstract

Sugar relationships are financially structured relationships which occupy a liminal space between dating and sex work. While scholarship on commercial intimate labor demonstrates that aesthetic capital shapes women’s economic opportunities, little research examines how aesthetic capital operates within sugar relationships specifically or how it interacts with stigma against sex work. This study uses sugar babies as a case to extend theories of aesthetic capital and sexual stratification by showing how physical and embodied desirability function simultaneously within sugar dating culture. Drawing on non-participant digital ethnography of three Reddit sugar dating forums, I analyze how participants construct norms of success and legitimacy. I find that aesthetic capital in sugar dating includes both physical traits—youth, thinness, whiteness, cisgender femininity—and embodied performances such as drive and controlled sexual availability. Success in this market depends not only on appearance but on performing a specific form of heteronormative, respectable femininity. Sugar babies mobilize aesthetic capital to distinguish themselves from sex workers, engaging in boundary work that I conceptualize as constructing a social stigma safety net. By emphasizing select forms of femininity, participants attempt to shield themselves from the stigma associated with sex work. Yet in adopting this strategy, sugar babies reproduce the hierarchies and exclusions that sustain sexual stigma.

Author

• Anna Wainwright, University of California-Irvine