A fascinating, and somewhat disturbing feature on HuffPo about college students signing up as “Sugar Babies” hoping to meet “Sugar Daddies” to help pay off student debt.

Enter the sugar daddy, sugar baby phenomenon. This particular dynamic preceded the economic meltdown, of course. Rich guys well past their prime have been plunking down money for thousands of years in search of a tryst or something more with women half their age — and women, willingly or not, have made themselves available. With the whole process going digital, women passing through a system of higher education that fosters indebtedness are using the anonymity of the web to sell their wares and pay down their college loans.

But is it Prostitution?

Allen Lichtenstein, a private attorney in Las Vegas who specializes in first amendment issues, affirms that in order for an exchange to be classified as prostitution there has to be a clear “meeting of the minds” that the arrangement is a quid pro quo, or exchange of sex for money. Absent an immediate sex-for-pay exchange, the legal waters grow far murkier.

“One could even consider certain marriages where there are unequal financial resources to not be overly dissimilar,” says Lichtenstein. “But any relationship that is an ongoing one that’s not purely about sex but may have a sexual aspect to it, you can’t really classify as prostitution. It would simply cover too much ground.”

But Weitzer views more extended, involved relationships — say, a monthly stipend or dinner and occasionally having sex — as ways for both “college girls and sex workers to camouflage what’s very likely prostitution.”

Related is this headline: Housewife Charged In Sex-For-Security Scam