HAPPY_BLONDE
A Brief Affair with www.WhatsYourPrice.com
A Brief Affair with www.WhatsYourPrice.com
Andy is someone I met on the Internet. He likes to pay young women to have dinner with him. Tonight I was that woman.
My hands were shaking as I stepped off the bus on 82nd Street. I had spent the journey up 1st Avenue weighing the pros and cons, the dangers, the possible benefits. My location had been shared, as were pictures of his face, the name of the restaurant.
"Andy?"
"Happy_Blonde?"
"Happy_Blonde?"
We hugged. I let out a sigh of relief as he led me into the restaurant. The worst was over. And what's more, he was actually kind of cute.
I had made a profile on WhatsYourPrice.com. What's Your Price matches beautiful women to rich men who pay to be seen in public with beautiful women. Easy. I kept setting my price too high—$500 is half a trip to Atlantic City, not two hours in a restaurant asking for an explanation of venture capital. I spent a few days going back and forth. $350, I'd offer. I'd get an email notification a few minutes later that "AnonDom counter-offers $100." Andy accepted my initial offer, so I boarded the M15 to 72nd Street.
He wore a Patagonia jacket. I towered over him in my Jeffery Campbell boots. We were ushered over to a back table, one of those tiny tables in the middle that people usually ask to move from if a booth opens up. There was nothing on either side to keep me from feeling totally exposed.
My hand was slightly shaking as I grabbed my water glass. I focused on its hardness and heaviness to find my ease of being, then remembered my charm. We hit a flow of conversation. He told me he felt like Batman, like a misunderstood hero. He told me it was easier to meet beautiful girls by paying them, that way his messages wouldn’t get lost in a sea of pleading men. His last girlfriend, he said, was from the site. They had a lot of fun together, but ultimately he couldn’t be vulnerable. He was too closed off, and the relationship ended.
“Well, it seems like a good first step that you’re willing to admit that.”
The first iteration of the dating website WhatsYourPrice.com appears to be February 3, 2010. The screen is black, with nothing but a logo: WhatsYOURprice.com. Under it, "EVERYONE HAS A PRICE."
The next iteration, April 2, 2011, is interactive. A video of women holding up prices on sheets of paper, $100, $20, $150, emerging from red envelopes. A man sits in the corner, hand to chin, with strawberries and champagne. A huge green button in the middle of the screen says to "Join Now (click here)."
The following descriptions are also found:
- For the Generous
- DATE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE © GUARANTEED
You have high standards and you won't settle for less. You're willing to pay to date beautiful, gorgeous or sexy people. For the right price, WhatsYourPrice.com is the only dating website that guarantees you will date more attractive people than you can handle.
- JOIN NOW, and start dating today.
- For the Attractive
- GET PAID FOR DATING © GUARANTEED
No matter what you're seeking, finding that perfect relationship takes time. However, dating doesn't have to be a waste of time. If you're beautiful, we are the only dating site that guarantees you will get paid while you spend time meeting fun and generous people.
- WE'RE ZERO RISK & 100% FREE. JOIN NOW.
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Brandon Wade, the MIT grad and founder of InfoStream Group, the online dating company responsible for websites such as Seeking Arrangement and What’s Your Price, is known for saying in a 2014 CNN piece, “Love is a concept invented by poor people.”
After earning his MBA in 1995, Brandon had trouble in his dating life. “I…was making six figures, but it was very poor pickings for me. I would write emails [to prospective dates] and get a 1 to 2% response rate” (The Wall Street Journal, 2011).
“It was horrible…” He later says in a 2012 interview. “I joined dating websites and I even joined a dating agency, one of those old-fashioned ones with a video camera. I would watch other people’s videos and decide if I would like to date them…I was obviously still suffering from my inability to pick women up. So I decided to launch Seeking Arrangement, where men can be generous and women can be pampered” (Business Insider, 2012).
Wade describes himself as a “lonely geek” who didn’t have his first kiss until 21. He discovered that women were more likely to date him if he had something to offer them. Something tangible, for their time.
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Andy and I sat near the back. He stood until I had taken off my jacket, placed it on the back of the chair. He was perfectly composed, muscles bulging out of his button-up as he leafed through the menu.
“How do you feel about escargot?” He asked.
“I love it.”
“Adventurous, are you?”
“You could say that.”
“I love it.”
“Adventurous, are you?”
“You could say that.”
We had matched a few weeks prior. Andy had accepted my $200 first date offer through the What’s Your Price system. This system is composed of either accepting, amending, or rejecting your match’s offer. Bids of up to $500 can be made, but most know to hover around the $250 mark. Around the $250 mark is what’s most likely to be accepted by the one paying. Which, as a general rule, is the man.
The waiter came over for drink orders. We were both fine with water. Andy ordered the escargot.
My senses were heightened to his every glance. I noticed how he was taking me in, satisfied with himself. Normally, this would bother me. But not tonight—tonight I was glad, satisfied with myself too. I was providing a service, and I wanted my customer happy.
“Andy, I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“Would you judge me if I got a salad?”
“Yes?”
“Would you judge me if I got a salad?”
$
“Sugar” relationships, as they’re called, typically between a wealthy older man and a beautiful younger woman, aren’t new. The term “sugar daddy” originated in the early 1900s when socialite Alma de Bretteville married Adolph Spreckels, son of a sugar tycoon and 20 years her senior.
For most of recorded history, women have had to depend on men for financial resources. Lest we forget, women could not open a line of credit in their own name until 1974. For the everyday woman looking to make a little extra cash, monetized dating can seem like a quick fix.
“I’d never go on a date for $200,” says my friend, a sex worker, as I tell her about some of my reservations pre-Andy. “I could make $200 for like 15 minutes of dancing.”
$200 for two hours wasn't a bad deal, though friends told me I should've asked for more.
Mostly the issue was that I could not sink myself into the moment. It struck me only afterwards—did it?—that I was a real person existing in that room amid the candles and the families of four. I used the money to pay for a haircut. She traveled down from the Bronx to my apartment. She was the woman who blew out Savannah Guthrie’s hair each morning. I was her second stop. She cut uneven layers into my hair and left the excess like a blonde altar around my feet for me to sweep myself. I told her I didn’t mind, I told her I loved my haircut. Then I transferred her the $200 that Andy had transferred me.
It started as something of a joke and it ended as a joke. There in the middle it became something else, briefly. I was at a pizza place after dark. Last year all the parties were at this pizza place with high wooden booths. A girl there invited me to Atlantic City. She needed someone else to go with her, said we could make up to $1,000 each. Or maybe I'm forgetting the number. She said that we didn't have to sleep with them, not exactly, but that they would try. I felt flattered to have been deemed hot enough to be considered for the job. Of course they'd try to sleep with us. What would the thousand be for otherwise?
I didn't go through with it. In fact I barely considered it. The thought was just a funny one. Though one thousand dollars for a free weekend in Atlantic City was enticing. I've slept with people for much less. I've slept with people for nothing at all.
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Andy looked into my eyes as though he was ignoring his own embarrassment, as though his eye-contact was an overcompensation. Or perhaps I was projecting. Perhaps I was embarrassed, though I spent the weeks beforehand defending myself to friends. It seemed that no one believed I’d go through with it. I had almost canceled, in the end.
As I finished my salad, Andy pulled up his PayPal. I had set up a fake account under a different name—Liz—and sent it to him the day before. He had been calling me my real name at dinner, which I had given him without thinking once we’d connected on the site.
“Ah, Liz. So now I know your real name, just as you know mine.. We’re on the same playing field, now, Liz.”
Andy made no effort to conceal his 200 dollar payment to me from across the table, which he made alongside the bill. I had gone on far longer, far less stimulating dates before, and for free. Sometimes I had even paid the check.
But his PayPal performance had agonized me, I wanted no part in it. I wished for it to happen in a dark room without me in it. But I was the product. I didn’t get to choose, I was just happy to be chosen.