Mail Order Brides and Sugar babies: Female Agency in Unconventional Relationships
Nicole Constable is a sociocultural anthropologist and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2003 she wrote a book called Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Marriages. Throughout the book Constable features women and their partners who sought to find love through correspondence services. Constable describes the process where the women submitted pictures and short bios to agencies and then waited and hoped to be contacted by a potential romantic partner from the West.
Before reading Constable’s book, I had an uninformed negative opinion about mail order brides. I thought that they must be escaping a terrible situation in her home country and would ultimately end up as a trophy wife for a wealthy man. However this one-sided view has been shaped by the way Western media has depicted these women as “exotic, docile, and poor.” Constable refutes these assumptions through her interviews with the various men and women and her analysis of their experiences. Our society also tends to assume that women lack sexual agency. This feeds the misconception that no woman would choose to leave her home and marry a man half way across the world. But this is a real choice that women have the power to make.
While the trafficking and exploitation of vulnerable women is a real and serious problem, seeing mail order brides as solely victims takes away their agency. Women are active partners in their relationships. Even if those relationships appear to be outside the range of what is considered “normal” or modern. To the Western world, a mail order bride might appear to be a glorified prostitute or a woman trapped by a power imbalance between herself and her Western husband. However, as Constable finds in her interviews, the women freely choose to participate in the correspondence services “on their own initiative, without familial or economic pressure.” In fact, Constable emphasizes that “Chinese women often exert a high degree of selectivity and choice in their dealings with and negotiations of relationships with U.S. men.”
Another unconventional type of relationship that is stigmatized but largely misunderstood is the relationship between a sugar baby and a sugar daddy (or less commonly a sugar mommy). According to SeekingArrangement.com, one of the foremost agencies in the business, a sugar baby is an “an individual seeking mentorship, financial support, or general companionship under the terms of an agreed-upon arrangement.” A sugar baby is generally female seeking an older male figure (a sugar daddy). The sugar daddy is expected to provide various perks, such as cash, expensive vacations or college tuition in exchange for a relationship.
The arrangement process is very similar to that of mail order brides. Men register with a particular agency and then look through the profiles of various women to find a companion. Although the participants in sugar arrangements are looking for a different type of relationship than the people featured by Constable, the idea of women’s agency is still connected to both situations.
Stereotypically, a sugar baby is basically a prostitute. A wealthy man would purchase her time with expensive gifts and perks and expect a sexual relationship. However, typecasting a sugar baby as such denies that women are equal players in the arrangement. Potential sugar babies choose to list themselves with the agencies and then can accept or deny any potential sugar daddies. Women can also choose whether or not they will pursue a sexual relationship with their sugar daddy.
Whether women are listing themselves with services to find a life partner from the Western world, or on SeekingArrangement.com to find a sugar daddy, they are not being oppressed, they are exercising their own power.
