*This is an affiliate product.
🍷The author, Ashley Mears, is a professor/researcher at the University of Amsterdam, a university I studied sociology at. I remember reading this in class. I was not familiar with the world of nightclubs (I still am not) and I remember feeling shocked at how the young girls are used by the nightclub owners to lure men into the nightclubs and make a lot of money, but yet paying the girls very little or only giving them “free” food and drinks that are actually not “free”. The same structure is seen in Japan, too. The fee that women have to pay at clubs and bars is cheaper than that of men in many clubs and bars in Japan. Many people think women “have it easy” because of that, but they have not realized we are constantly being used to lure more men into nightclubs. We women are often seen as sexual objects. We women are used by men, women, and society. We women are used by others so they can benefit from us. What is sad is that some women are even proud of that because they think they really “have it easy” and they are “lucky”.
📚A sociologist and former fashion model takes listeners inside the elite global party circuit of “models and bottles” to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men.
Million-dollar birthday parties, megayachts on the French Riviera, and $40,000 bottles of champagne. In today’s New Gilded Age, the world’s moneyed classes have taken conspicuous consumption to new extremes. In Very Important People, sociologist, author, and former fashion model Ashley Mears takes listeners inside the exclusive global nightclub and party circuit – from New York City and the Hamptons to Miami and Saint-Tropez – to reveal the intricate economy of beauty, status, and money that lies behind these spectacular displays of wealth and leisure.
Mears spent 18 months in this world of “models and bottles” to write this captivating, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking narrative. She describes how clubs and restaurants pay promoters to recruit beautiful young women to their venues in order to attract men and get them to spend huge sums in the ritual of bottle service. These “girls” enhance the status of the men and enrich club owners, exchanging their bodily capital for as little as free drinks and a chance to party with men who are rich or aspire to be. Though they are priceless assets in the party circuit, these women are regarded as worthless as long-term relationship prospects, and their bodies are constantly assessed against men’s money.
A story of extreme gender inequality in a seductive world, Very Important People unveils troubling realities behind moneyed leisure in an age of record economic disparity.
