Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 398 | Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit | Guest: Ashley Mears

Episode Date: June 20, 2020

A sociologist and former fashion model takes readers inside the elite global party circuit of "models and bottles" to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men. A story of extreme gender inequality in a seductive world, Very Important Peopleunveils troubling realities behind moneyed leisure in an age of record economic disparity. Ashley Mears is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Boston University. She is the author of Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model. Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Elle, and other publications. She lives in Boston. This Week Sponsor: Get your life back with Relief Factor and its 3-Week Quick Start for only $19.95. If you are in pain, what have you got to lose? Go to https://www.relieffactor.com Subscribe on YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And now, a Blaze Media podcast. So I'm perusing new books to read this past week. And I run across a book called Very Important People, Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit. And nothing, nothing says me more than status and beauty in the global party circuit here at Chewere's. So I wanted to talk to Ashley Mears, the author, sociologist, former fashion model, Ashley Mears. Ashley, thank you for joining us on Chewing the Fat today. I appreciate it. Thank you.

It's great to be here. So what brought this on? I mean, you interviewed 44 promoters who are paid by clubs by clients that are wealthy to bring models in that are referred to as the girls to their parties. and you obviously were one of the girls that were brought in to be in the party. And I know that you were embedded with them for a while. What brought it on? Why did you want to do that?

Okay. So I met party promoters when I was researching the modeling industry. I went to graduate school in sociology at NYU. And I worked at a modeling agency in order to, study the labor dynamics of the fashion modeling market. And I would go to captains. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm with you. So I would go to castings, which are like, you know, the auditions. And I met these guys who were there with the girls, young women and models are called girls in this world. So the promoters are there with girls. And they were just very charming, you know,

know, very vivacious men who would talk to me, try to get my phone number, invite me for dinner. So I gave my number to a couple of these guys. And I started getting these text messages constantly that was like, you know, boy, baby, we're going for a sushi dinner. Like, come take it with us at the club. And so, yeah, that was kind of funny just to understand, to see that there was like all of these, all these meals and all of these experiences that models can get for free. And the promoters are kind of the gatekeepers to that, this kind of, you know,

upscale leisure and entertainment. So I was interested in it, but then I graduated from NYU, moved to Boston like seven years later. I'm still getting text messages about the sushi dinner. And I'm like right back to them. I'm like, you know, I'm a professor now. I don't even live in New York. And they're like, yeah, no worries.

If you ever come back into town, you know, we'll hook you up. So want a party? And so it was around 2010, and it was the recovery of the economic crisis. And I started to see some of the expenses and the nightclubs were making headlines, you know, like bankers that were spending their bonuses, huge sums on champagne that they don't even drink. And I was just really fascinated by ostentation at a time of global financial austerity. So basically I just moved back to New York.

and wrote back to the promoters and I was like, yeah, I'm going to come to the sushi dinner and see how it's, see what's going on. So you went, you decided to go to these parties with the thought in mind that you were going to actually, you know, kind of investigate, uh, undercover what this was all about. Yeah, not exactly undercover. I mean, I was straight up with these promoters. I would show them a copy of my first book, which, which was my dissertation, um, and tell them that, you know, I, I write about markets and consumption and I'm really curious about how this world operates and for the most part they agreed to let me in to that I could interview them during the day follow them around during the day see how they work and I was welcome to come hang out with them at night because as long as

I wore my high heels and put on a decent looking dress I would be I would be an asset to them A promoter is paid, his job and his livelihood really depends on getting women who have a certain kind of look, you know, like fashion model standards, to come with them at their tables. And they get paid for that. And so they're always hustling and trying to find girls to bring to their tables. And so here I was offering that I would be reliable, you know, to show up as often as I could. One checked off the list every night, no problem. So as you were doing this, what happened that you weren't expecting?

Okay, so there was something that just kind of jumped out at me very early on. I was really surprised with the way that the promoters, you know, they're bringing girls out and girls are getting all of these treats and dinners and they have all this kind of great things that are opened up for them. But I was just so surprised with the way that promoters talk about girls like a kind of capital or like an asset. They would talk about girls, even with the pronouns that they use. They would use terms like my girls, like look at my girls. And they would show their Instagram pictures of like all the beautiful girls that they hang out with. And it really like girls really did function almost like a currency that promoters were able to walk into a space surrounded by a handful of pretty.

young women and they could attract notice from managers of clubs who would give them job opportunities. They could attract notice to rich men who were there buying bottles, you know, who might give them the opportunity to organize a birthday party on their yacht in St. Bart or something. And they really kind of strategically and consciously tried to find girls, become friends with girls so that they could then profit from them, profit from their seat. Well, isn't that what the modeling agency is doing as well? well. Yeah, but the girls get paid to be models. I mean, they don't get paid well. That was something that I found in my first book. Most people think that models are, you know, all celebrities, and it's, you know, very glamorous and lucrative. And it can be, but really for just a handful of people,

the kind of the majority of people who enter the modeling market don't make very much money at all, or they might be in debt to their agencies for a few years. So modeling is generally, you know, it's poorly paid and kind of the terms of work are not great for fashion models, but at least ostensibly it recognizes work that should be paid. It's valuable leave or that should be paid. The girls going out with promoters, like they're enriching the promoters. They're enriching the nightclubs and they don't get paid. They get comps in the form of free drinks, free dinners, and the complement of being included in this very glamorous. So what does, well, with the, what what do they expect out of it then? Are they hoping for, you know, one of the, you know, one of the

rich guys to sweep them off their feet and take them away? Are they hoping for, you know, the new gig? What, I mean, what are they hoping for overall in general? Right. Yeah, yeah. So that's what a lot of people think. They think that this is the place where young women have the chance to meet a rich man and that they can, you know, get that kind of Cinderella story. It was actually really surprising of all of the young women that I spoke to and spent time, with, there were very few of them that would actually say that that was what their intention was. And they actually found the opposite. They would say that this is not the place to meet a man.

This is the place just to have a fun experience. And they talked about women who were strategically looking for like a sugar daddy. They talked about those women really with a lot of disdain. Like they didn't want to be that type of strategic woman. So, yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of women tend to be young that are going out with promoters. They do tend to be from the fashion modeling industry, especially newcomers, so they don't have that much money. They don't have their own friend networks in a place like New York, which is very expensive. They wouldn't know where to go. Some of them actually need the free meal.

They're going to these glamorous upscale restaurants, and they're kind of the epitome of glamour, but they're actually there because they want the food. So what's the deal? Now, the promoters provide a place to live. They provide a meal. And then, you're, You're expected to do what for that? Right. So that's a kind of ambiguous question that a lot of the young women that I spoke to also found it kind of curious when they first learned in the arrangement. Like what's, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch or a free gift. There's always some expectation of repayment.

So what is the? Those bastards, I know it. I can't tell. I hate them. Right. So they're expected to go out and. stay out and look good. And that's pretty much it. If a model is out with a promoter and she takes a liking to one of the clients, the people that are buying bottles at these clubs, you know,

it's fine, but the promoters are not looking to gain from that. So promoters make it very clear that they're not pimps in any form. And this is not prostitution. And indeed, like, it's not a very efficient means of procuring sex, right? Because like the lights are, the lights are low, the music is loud. There's so many models that are out of promoters table, but it would make it just very inefficient, you know, and very difficult to try to like find someone for like, for a night. Rather, what the clients are buying and what the club is producing is a certain kind of sexiness or like the appearance of high status because the fashion model connotes high status just with her very presence with that kind of body and that that kind of physique.

And so, yeah, that's what's expected of them is to embody that ideal of this kind of unattainable beauty. So what sets the promoters apart then? You know, obviously the girls are, you know, studying themselves apart as being, you know, the fashion models. But what sets the promoters apart? You say, you know, you interviewed 44 separate promoters. I mean, there's got to be an upper tier to the promoters.

as well, right? That's right. Yeah. So there's definitely a hierarchy of promoters. It can be somewhat on longevity. So promoters that are just starting out won't be in such a secure position as promoters who have been in the game for a long time. But the promoters that are understood to be the very best promoters, it's not just seniority. It's about the so-called quality of their girls. And people would use this term often. Promoters get paid the most, and they get the most respect and they're in the most demand if they have a quantity of high quality girls, which means that they're surrounded by girls who are recognizably fashion models. So they are the kind of caliber of a young woman who doesn't just look like a model but might actually be

recognizable from... They've already been on the runway. We've seen it. Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. And they work with good agencies. And so, yeah, this is like the epitome. But everything comes down to girls in this world or the beauty of girls, like the students of the club, how much money people are spending in it, and, of course, the career trajectory of the promoter. So, I mean, it's a never-ending cycle, right? I mean, it continues on and on and on for years and years and it's been going on.

but what's the most common ending for these individuals and I mean is it just over we're done we've had enough or do we decide you know that's it that moving on what's the most common ending for these girls for the girls yeah well I was going to say like which people it really depends if we're talking about men or women here because the okay all right well let's break it up then yeah right now let's go with what's the most common ending for the girls yeah yeah so for the girls they grow up And they become women and women are not as valuable in the space. I mean, it's really remarkable. I was 31, 32 when I was spending a lot of time in this world.

Oh, my God. Like people also talk to me. You're right. I would even say that like I was a professor at a university. And they're like, oh, Ashley's a smart girl. So, yeah, girls grow up. You know, they get jobs that require them to wake up early in the morning. They don't have as much freedom of their time.

They get partnered, so they're no longer interested to be going out like this. And that's a story for girls. And if girls become older or if she were to put on weight, let's say, promoters would just stop inviting her and she would be denied entry at the entrance of the club. Yeah. So what's the ending for the guys? Yeah, for the promoters. Yeah.

So it's really interesting for the promoters because some of them have been doing this for like upwards of 20 years, which is a really long time. And some of them were like in their 40s and were very aware of how unseemly it was that they were making money off of 18 year old girls and that they were spending their days and nights kind of entertaining these young girls to profit from them. And so their goals are largely to pivot into becoming owners and operators of their own clubs or restaurants or bars. And they've been pretty successful at that. Like there's a number of really, really strong clubs and actually conglomerates that own multiple clubs and restaurants in New York and in Vegas that are owned and operated and former promoters. And they see how it works.

So, I mean, they have the inside knowledge of how to make it successful, right? That's right. Yeah. A few of the promoters that I interviewed really were dreaming bigger that because they were surrounded by so many super rich men, like moguls of titans of industry, that they, It hoped that they would be able to use those social connections to launch themselves into business with these business elites. And that was a much less successful path.

Those people, yeah, those promoters who thought that they would be, you know, brokering deals among oil-rich families, that has yet to happen. I mean, that's almost like the girl that's waiting to get swept out for feet, right? With the Prince Charming, it doesn't really happen. It doesn't really happen. Yeah, I mean, in the case of girls, it's. You know, they also, lots of hookups happen, so there'll be short-term romances. But the men that are buying tables, the rich men that I interviewed, they were pretty clear that this is the pool of hook-ups.

This was not the pool of long-term romances that they expected to find a wife here. Right. So what is, now that we've been dealing with, you know, the lockdown and we're supposed to have social distancing and there hasn't been any clubs open, How is the underground business got? It's the dark side. You know, you know, you know. Tell me, you're just talking to me now. So I would just say that, yeah, the pandemic has exposed something really interesting about the job of the promoter,

which was such a glamorous job and had such a, you know, seductive lifestyle as well as a lot of earnings. a lot of the promoters that I had spoke to that were in the game for a long time. They were making almost $200,000 a year, and a lot of that is cash, too. But that's dried out pretty much overnight. No kidding. Yeah, and it doesn't seem likely anytime soon that they'll be back into those roles. So, yeah, I mean, it really shows that these kinds of jobs at their core because they're freelance. I mean, these are contract workers for clubs, just how vulnerable and precarious they are,

much like fashion models themselves. The promoters are really suffering with a dry up of work. I mean, we're seeing that, we're seeing that, you know, all over the world, alone, all over America with, you know, the free market was out there working on their own, but not anymore. Very hard. Yeah. Yeah.

And all the things that promoters really loved about their job, right? Like the lifestyle, the travel, the freedom and the flexibility. one day is never the same. Like all those great things that are to find so many jobs in like culture industries or entertainment industries are also like the flip side is that if you have that much freedom, then you're also going to suffer all of the market rates on your own. So you dodged my question though about the underground parties. I want to know where they are.

I want to know where they were at and what's happening. Are they still going on? Yeah. So I expect that there will still be. quite a lot of partying that happened in a much smaller and more private scale. We're talking with Ashley Mears, author of a very important people, status and beauty in the global party circuit. Okay, Ashley, and I appreciate you coming on chewing in the fact today.

It's just fascinating to me how, you know, that lifestyle and that gathering. What was the most fun thing that you learned as you went through all this and you thought, wow, you know, I could really see why this works and what's good about it? If any. Okay, so I'm going to describe it and you're going to think that it's gross or your listeners will probably think that it's gross. So I was out at a club in Miami during the Ultra Music Festival and there was a guy who spent about $200,000 in a span of about two hours just on bottles of champagne that he didn't even drink and none of us could drink. the champagne. So we were kind of ended up, he ended up gifting all

of these bottles of Don Perignon champagne. And at one point people were just holding bottles like by the neck, not even, like I don't even know the glasses disappeared. People were just drinking from like their own bottle. And I just remember thinking, yeah, it was just really a fascinating kind of display

of excess. And at the time I also was kind of, I was disgusted by it, you know, but at the same time, it was also something like very exuberant and everybody really had this kind of pleasure and delight in it that it was difficult not to feel the excitement while also feeling to discuss. I guess that was a surprising thing, this conflicted dual feeling. Yeah. So what's next, Ashley? Where are you embedded now that

you can tell us? So I'd like to continue on these questions of what's the value of beauty for women and how can they convert it in different markets. And I'm turning my attention now to the marriage market. I'm very curious about romantic exchanges we could loosely describe as the trophy wife and other forms of strategic romance, like sugar babies, groupies, and so on. Interesting. That would be fascinating to hear because I have a feeling that, you know, for a lot of people, you know, their husband or wife is, you know, they see them as this trophy person, right?

I mean, if you're really in love with someone, that's who you see. It's not, you know, you, yeah, you like to see the movie star on the, on the television or on the movie screen, but that's not, I mean, your husband is, or wife is who you really see, right? I mean, you hope that's the truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but there's a really strong kind of moral prohibition against marrying for money. And so whenever there's economic inequality in a relationship, it probably raises these suspicions or this possible stigma that then, couples have to negotiate around, I think. Right. It's still in a...

Ashley Mears. I appreciate it very much. There's no question about that. I look forward to finding out what happened. This book, however, very important people, status and beauty and the global party circuit. Now, is it also a picture book? I mean, do I get some pictures in this thing?

This is very funny. My mom, actually, when she got her copy, there was the first thing she said, where are the pictures? Thank you. Still the answer is no. Data table. Thank you, Ashley. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Ashley Mears joining us on Chewing the Fat, very important people, status and beauty of the global party circuit. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Remember to subscribe to this podcast, chewing the fat with yours truly. And if you type in yours, truly, it's not going to be this podcast, is going to be someone else. So chewing the fat with Jeff Fisher. Subscribe to this podcast and you'll be alerted whenever a show uploads each and every day. You know what?

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