February is here. Rent is overdue. School fees is loud. Pockets are thin. And I am the girl in the Valentine’s Day song ‘where is your boyfriend!’ I am not pretending to be okay anymore. I secretly want someone to adopt me as a sugar babe!
This one will piss off pastors, moral high priestesses and fake-progressives. Which, basically, is the point! Let’s stop pretending. Kampala did not invent transactional relationships, we just perfected the art of acting surprised by them.
We gasp at ‘sugar babies’ like they broke some sacred moral code, while quietly participating in the same exchange with better PR and fewer receipts.
January gave us two moments that exposed the lie we keep telling ourselves about love, money, and morality. In one corner of the internet, a Ugandan socialite was dragged through the mud for allegedly spending Shs21m in a single night at a bar. The reactions were swift and vicious. Not her money. Goods for sale. Fear women.
The moral outrage was loud, performative, and deeply gendered. Suddenly, everyone became a forensic accountant and a cultural custodian. The crime was not excess; it was a woman enjoying it openly.
In the same month, another socialite introduced her man to her family and was gifted a brand new Range Rover. The response? Ooooh. Aaaah. God, when? No lectures. No think pieces. No concern about where the money came from or what was exchanged. Just applause. Celebration. Aspiration.
Same city. Same economy. Same capitalism. Completely different judgment.
Romantic relationships have always involved exchange. Time. Money. Emotional labour. Access. Security. Stability. Power.
Transport money is not generosity, it is expectation. ‘Facilitation’ is not kindness, it is negotiation. Rent help, lifestyle upgrades, soft life, all of it operates on an understood exchange. The idea that love exists outside economics is a luxury most women cannot afford.
Sugar babies are simply more honest about the invoice. They removed the poetry and ambiguity. And somehow, that is what offends people. Sugar relationships are not the corruption of love. They are the exposure of it.
Or rather, the exposure of how dishonest we have been about what we expect from each other. The moment a woman says, plainly, ‘This is what I offer, and this is what I require,’ suddenly she is immoral.
But the woman who says, ‘I just want love,’ while strategically dating men who upgrade her life quietly? She is respectable. She is lucky. She is blessed.
Let’s be even more uncomfortable.
Women calculate emotional labour, safety, consistency, and future security. Men calculate access, admiration, domestic comfort, and social status. The lie is pretending that only one side is benefiting.
We celebrate women who ‘married well’ but shame women who negotiated openly. We applaud men for being providers but demonise women who choose them for that reason. We clap for Range Rovers but clutch pearls over bar tabs.
Sugar babies said, ‘Let’s not waste each other’s time.’ And in a city where time is money and money is survival, that clarity is threatening. Because if women are allowed to negotiate openly, then what happens to all the men who relied on ambiguity to get more than they were willing to give?
People say sugar relationships are shallow. But shallow compared to what?
Relationships where women tolerate disrespect because ‘at least he helps sometimes’?
Situations where men promise marriage for 10 years and deliver nothing but heart muscle development? At least sugar arrangements do not pretend to be forever. The terms are clear. No one is gaslighting anyone into thinking struggle is romance.
And no, this is not an endorsement of exploitation, coercion, or power imbalance. Those exist everywhere, including in marriage, the most socially sanctified transaction of them all. We just bless it in church and call it love. Yet, it is one of the most unequal contracts women ever signed.
What I am arguing for is intellectual honesty. If we are going to live under capitalism, let’s stop acting like intimacy somehow escaped it. Peace of mind costs money. Soft life is not free. Desire does not exist in a vacuum, untouched by economics. So why do we shame women who name the cost?