Camila Mendes Talks 'Redefining' Romance With Her New Sugar Baby Rom-Com

For Camila Mendes, the key to a successful relationship is simple. “I think communication is everything, and not feeling ashamed of your feelings,” she told MTV News. “The more you share with your spouse about where you’re at emotionally, the better it is for the relationship and the more the other person will feel comfortable to share their feelings.”


This position holds true for any kind of relationship, be it romantic, platonic, or perhaps transactional — like those she partakes in in her latest movie, The New Romantic.


In the indie flick, on iTunes and VOD right now, Mendes plays Morgan, a sugar baby who introduces student journalist Blake (Jessica Barden) to the plush lifestyle. For the uninitiated, a sugar relationship is one in which a younger person (sugar baby) enters a relationship with an older, rich person (sugar daddy/momma) — complete with whichever relationship advantages both parties agree upon, from platonic hangouts to sex — in exchange for gifts or money.


It's an arrangement that sounds pretty far from the romance we're used to championing onscreen. However, the way the actress sees it, sugaring isn't so different from customary relationships, and her enthusiastic reasoning in support of the pay-to-play arrangement is actually pretty feminist.


"I think if anything all we need to do is just accept the fact that these ladies have the correct to determine for themselves what they aspire to do," she mentioned. (For the record, Mendes does identify as a feminist — “Of course, absolutely I do” — particularly once it comes to “being totally comfortable with my sexuality and not feeling any shame about it.”)


It’s a stance Mendes has been developing for years. In college, long before she ever seen a script for The New Romantic, her social circle supplied her with a wealth of second-hand knowledge. “There was one girl who I was better companions with, she would share her stories,” Mendes recalled. “She had no shame about it whatsoever. For her, it was sort of empowering. She used to routinely mention it’s taking advantage of a flawed system or turning the scenario on its head.”


The cast of The New Romantic with writer-director Carly Stone (center).


To illustrate the similarities between a sugar relationship plus a customary courtship, let’s begin with what matters to Mendes: communication. Creating an open and truthful dialogue comes into the scene right at the onset of any sugar daddy/baby bond, as soon as both sides establish what they are prepared to contribute to the relationship. “If anything, the variation is that the sugar-baby date is way more definitive and clear about what the relationship is,” she mentioned.


In terms of the particular dating of it all, much like any relationship, Mendes deemed sugaring a “case-by-case situation,” noting that a sugar baby is in complete control of who sees, whenever she sees them, what she does with them, and why much she’s compensated — or, to put it another way, her worth.


“I learned that a lot with my friend who was a sugar baby,” Mendes mentioned. “She’d talk about certain situations … like she’ll immediately recognize once she’s not comfortable with a person ... And then she would cut off that connection immediately. Nevertheless then there were people that she actually was attracted to and that she wanted to go on dates with, you know?”


As the movie also points out, it’s not like sugar babies are creating entirely new dating decorum. “There already is this sort of inherent cultural dynamic where boys seem to feel like they require to issue for a woman and so they pay for all of the dinners and blah blah blah,” Mendes argued. “I’m not saying that that’s how it should be, however given that that is a pretty common dynamic that people aspire to adhere to, it’s like, well, then what difference does it make if it’s a sugar baby going on a date?”


So essentially, a sugar baby/daddy relationship complies with long-established social conventions, using mutually agreed-upon relationship suggestions so that both consenting parties feel their value is completely appreciated and are, thus, happy in their dynamic. Sure, it requires assigning a price to every action, yet all relationships need some sort of give-and-take.


As Mendes noted, “It’s redefining the romance.”