A growing number of students are turning to sex work to fund their studies as they struggle to cope with increasing debt and living costs, a new student finance survey has revealed. BuzzFeed News spoke to student sex workers who said that they had developed sugar daddy relationships or taken to selling intimate pictures and videos online because their maintenance loans fail to cover their day-to-day expenses.
The research found that almost 1 in 10 students use their body to raise money in an emergency β be that through drug trials or sex work. For some students, sugar daddies are less of a necessity and more a means to enjoying a better lifestyle at university, allowing them to travel, go out partying more often, and live in better accommodation than many of their peers.
However, others sell sex as a way to survive. Like the other students interviewed for this article, she asked us not to use her real name. After accepting a place at a business school in London, she placed an ad on Craigslist and received around replies, of which she considered accepting offers from between a quarter and a third. I have a following of about 17K on Instagram and I depend on social media interaction quite a bit to make money. Not only did I become a sugar baby, I then also went one step further and became a financial dominatrix.
According to Jemma, in the States it is fairly common for students to use sugar daddies β and it appears to be growing in popularity on this side of the Atlantic too. I had friends at my university selling their used underwear online or meeting with older men just to be able to buy impressive things. Older, wealthy men are attracted to student sugar babies, Jemma said, because they are looking not just for sex, but also for someone who they can have a conversation with. Jemma told BuzzFeed News that she has few reservations about using sugar daddies to finance her lifestyle.
The university with the most new SeekingArrangement signups was Portsmouth, with more students bringing the total up to registrations on the site. Among the universities with the fastest-growing sugar baby contingents, Kent had the most registered students with , followed by Cambridge with , and the University of Westminster with For some, turning to some form of sex work at university is less about paying for luxuries and more a survival tactic.
