Sugar Daddy update

Six weeks after "Melissa Beech" wrote her Sugar Daddy tell-all at the Daily Beast, and three weeks after my own essay examining the outraged reaction, the folks at Slate's "XX Factor" blog continue to debate the social, economic and moral implications of Sugar Daddydom.

Why do they continue to obsess over this idea? Frankly, most of them are artsy "creative" types who once sneered at the crude allure of Mammon. Liza Mundy writes:

My own favorite, albeit fictional, example is the playwright-actor played by the playwright-actor Wallace Shawn in My Dinner with Andre. Back when he was a rich kid living on the upper East Side, the Wally character marvels, "all I thought about was art and music," and in this he was strikingly like Ellin and her cohort, or really any writer who grew up in upper-middle class comfort. But now that he's a middle-aged writer, and knows how hard it is to keep the lifestyle to which he'd become accustomed, "all I think about is money."

Here is Ellen Tarlin:

And, believe me, some days I kick myself because frankly, it never ever in a million years occurred to me to marry for money or even to look for a guy with money or even to think about money. . . . I was always attracted to artists: actors, musicians, filmmakers, writers.
More than being poor, I was terrified of being ordinary, normal, middle-class, like everyone else. . . . I remember saying to my punk high school boyfriend . . . that I was worried that someday I'd end up living in the suburbs married to a fat doctor. Would that I was married to a fat doctor now! Preferably one in private practice!

Which is to say, there is a generous helping of sour grapes on that envy salad.