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A national woman paid for himself through the university that ran an online sugar baby company. A new documentary tells her story.

Match with as many people as possible on dating apps. Make sure you say bio that you are ‘prospective’ to have a kind of job. Exchange a few messages with men before they ask for money. Make a “menu” with your premium content offers, from signed photos to a “non -blocking fee”.

These are some of the tips that Autumn Johnson, a now 22-year-old maker of social media who is the central topic in the new documentary Sugar Babies, The shares with people who hope to follow in her footsteps. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2025.

When the film starts to follow her, she is 18 and struggles to pay for her tuition fees. She lives in Rustin, La., Where the minimum wage has been $ 7.25 since 2009. Everyone has a side, from waitress to renting trailers – De Hare happens to offer digital company to men who pay her for it.

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Sugar Babies Director Rachel Fleit, who also directed HBOs Bama Rush Documentary about the intense process to become a member of a women’s club at the University of Alabama who became a Tiktok phenomenon, Yahoo told Entertainment that she wanted to make a film about what it’s like to be a young person in the social media era In a small city.

“I discovered this phenomenon of … women who talk very openly about what they did as sugar babies. From there we found the video of autumn, “Fleit said. “Within 10 seconds after a zoom call, I knew that autumn was extremely mandatory. I felt that there was a whole world behind that screen to discover. ‘

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Instead of filling together the stories of different sugar babies, close friends and family fell on the autumn-hair and their daily lives hurry to earn money while still having fun. It makes clear how difficult it is to make ends meet in a rural area, where jobs are limited and the available jobs pay very little for heavy physical work.

“We started to look at this online Sugar Baby operation that the fall had built, but we found a really deep emotional core, the central theme of the film,” Fleit said. “What do you do if you want to make something of yourself and find your identity, but you are in a place that lacks resources and you have no access to things that people could have in richer states?”

Archive images of news broadcasts that explain that the minimum wage would not be increased than $ 7.25 in Louisiana interspersed by the documentary. Legislation by local legislators was rejected year after year.

The pressure to earn enough to make enough money to survive in this rural community is constant. Teenagers often only set off at 16 or 17 hours because their parents do not make enough to support them, even when they juggle multiple jobs.

“They have to take care of themselves, because that is just the way they live, but they are also children,” said Fleit. “They want to have fun. They want to reserve around, play volleyball and splash in the lake. “

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Autumn in Sugar Babies. (Thanks to LD Entertainment)

In a scene in which the teenagers hang out, the friend Bonnie goes from autumn live on Tiktok so that she can earn money through gifts from her followers. The women discovered that secret men more often send ‘diamonds’, digital tokens that can be exchanged for money than to send money via more traceable apps such as Venmo or Cash app. Even when they have fun, Bonnie do not fully separate from the need to earn.

Because of the work of autumn as an online sugar baby – or a ‘sugar baby without the sugar’, as she explains – she could remain registered at the university. She offers tips to other women in the hope of going that work, and is sufficiently charged to get started running their own company. Autumn tells women who do not have the money to invest in her class in advance to simply pay her back after they have earned money with the help of her advice. She also recommends using different apps where women can sell used underwear, bath water and lollipops for cash.

One of the moments that Fleit knew that she wanted to include in the documentary came from a conversation between autumn and her younger sister, Hailey. Hailey admitted that men sometimes send her money for content she never gives them. Then she blocks them or tells them that she has forgotten to respond.

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“I’m going to take your money if you don’t want to hire me,” says Hailey. “I really just scorches them.”

The sisters discussed how the world ‘is set up for men to take advantage of women’, so it is actually capable of taking money back from men. Fleit and her editor referred to this part of the film as the ‘feminist argument’.

When they started filming the documentary, autumn said she wanted to graduate and leave her little birth city. Fleit thought that could work as the end of the film. Autumn leaves – she becomes the first person in her family who graduates and comes away for a few hours to be closer to her friend Bonnie, who had two children since she first started filming. Only weeks later, autumn returned to Rustin. She missed her loved ones too much.

While fighting depression, autumn lost the interest in being a sugar baby. The last scene shows her and her friends in a Huddle House, where a combo meal costs $ 5.99 – which is more than waiters who earn less than minimum wage because they get tips, make an hour. The camera zooms out and reveals that it is surrounded by a highway with various other restaurants, just like it.

‘There is so much behind why [Autumn] Came home that I hope it will resonate with people, “said Fleit. “What they miss in access, they have an abundance of wealth in love, family and community.”

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