WEST LOS ANGELES—A new billboard that went up last week at Santa Monica Boulevard and Overland Avenue, near the UCLA campus, asks the burning question, "Hey students, need a summer job?" and also provides the answer: "Date a sugar daddy."
The billboard is part of a new nationwide campaign by the website ArrangementFinders.com, which is owned by the same company, Avid Life Media, as adultery-promoting site AshleyMadison.com. All the billboards feature a headshot of award-winning actress (and former Adam & Eve contract star) Bree Olsen, and the home page of the site itself has a small photo of the star and the legend, "Bree Olsen certified."
The billboards have appeared in such places as Atlantic City, Chicago and the company's home base, Toronto. Among the other 20-foot-high slogans for ArrangementFinders are, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Because the best job is a b♦♦w job," each adorned with Bree's smiling face.
The billboard, which is scheduled to be displayed at the intersection for two more months, has appeared just as university seniors are about to graduate, and according to an article on Huffington Post, it "specifically targets college students who may have student loans or difficulty kick-starting their career during a struggling economy."
Of course, the company has gotten a certain amount of negative feedback from the ads.
"We constantly get negative emails," A.J. Perkins, ArrangementFinders' marketing officer, told right-wing website GOPUSA.com. "Our philosophy is for every negative reply you get, you get more men and women signing up for the site. It strikes a nerve. You're either for it or against it. I don't think there's a middle ground."
A video report on the billboard by KTLA News in Los Angeles interviewed several UCLA students, none of whom was willing to "approve the billboard's message."
"It sounds to me like some sort of prostitution, stripper, sex for money business," said one student.
"I'm just surprised because it's acting as if women can't get a job without going to a sugar daddy, so it's kind of degrading," opined another.
"I just think it's a bad idea. They could die, they could get AIDS, they could get killed," warned still another.
Responding to the prostitution charges, Perkins countered, "It's intimacy with a twist."
We dunno; last we heard, the "twist" costs extra.
