Sugar dating may be having a “moment” right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s a new thing. In fact, the term “sugar daddy” is more than 100 years old. In 1908, a woman named Alma married into the Spreckel family, which had made a fortune in the sugar industry. Her husband was 24 years older than her, and she took to calling him her “sugar daddy”—and then the term caught on.
The term really started to speed up in usage around the mid 1920s, and soon took on a life of its own. Around that time, it started to slip into media as well. In 1927, the comedy duo “Laurel and Hardy” created a short film called “Sugar Daddies.” In 1925, the James Welch Co created a candy they later renamed, in 1932, to “Sugar Daddy”. A few years later, they created “Sugar Babies”, to match. Those candies are still sold all over the world today.
Time didn’t slow down the use of those terms, either. Musicians throughout the years, including Fleetwood Mac, The Jackson 5, the Bellamy Brothers, and Qveen Herby have all created songs called “Sugar Daddy”. In addition, a song in the popular musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” is called “Sugar Daddy”. Bob Dylan, for his part, wrote a song called “Sugar Baby”. In movies, too, sugar dating has found its spot in the sun. Films like “The Girlfriend Experience”, “Pretty Woman”, and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” all depict various sugar dating relationships in mainstream media.
And that’s all just since the term was invented—but it’s certain that sugar dating relationships have been around for much longer than a hundred years. People have always been people, and we always tend to chase what we want.
