“I started being a sugar daddy right out of college,” Seth told Fabulous. “I was working really long days in a super stressful job. Seth signed up to a sugar dating website in 7 years ago out of curiosity and spent hundreds taking beautiful girls out for dates every week.

Unsurprisingly, many have to find additional incomes to support their lifestyles, with some choosing to work several jobs whilst studying too.

I felt a certain sense of being out of place, as my clothes were still the same frock from high school, not the designer apparel seen everywhere around campus. My student allowance was tight and I had no intention of getting a part-time job although this would have been more skilfully valuable in the long run, as opposed to rubbing shoulders with affluent men over fine dining and cocktails in fancy hotel restaurants.

Sugarbook bills itself as a site “where romance meets finance” and aims to link up older men with younger women, with the men expected to provide financial support for their companions.

Couples walking their dogs, college students taking pictures for Instagram, large groups of runners. I wasn’t going to stop because I’d seen the sunset dozens of times (and my paper bag of mostly Pirouline cookies was getting heavy), but the sight of something unexpected made me slow my march. When I was walking back from Trader Joe’s on a late Sunday afternoon, I saw the usual suspects splayed over the Anderson Memorial Bridge admiring the sunset.

In return, sugar daddies or mommas find “beautiful members to accompany them at all times.” Millionbb.com is a dating website that connects sugar baby with sugar daddy across the globe. The company says it creates opportunities for sugar babies, who are often young, to “enjoy a life of luxury by being pampered with fine dinners, exotic trips and allowances.”

The California-based 22-year-old, who goes by Callikoa, has racked up more than a million TikTok followers sharing her tips on how to be a sugar baby, and revealed how she makes money, without ever even speaking to men on the phone and never discussing ‘anything gross’. 

Sen. Leila de Lima filed this month Senate Resolution No. 609 seeking a legislative inquiry into the increase in use of sugar dating sites among Filipino women as an income source amid the economic crunch brought by the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.