Very Important People Review
Very Important People
Within the structure of most anthropological systems, there exists a distinct layer of people set above the rest – the existence of such a group within the current global system should not be shocking, surprising, or scandalous to us. And yet, it is.
In the dissertation turned ethnographic saga “Very Important People,” Professor Ashley Mears discusses her own experience with the “social party elite," a specific class that behaves almost as a pseudo aristocracy, decorated with all the modernity of the 21st century. Mears, a sociologist and former fashion model, went undercover in the global party circuit in order to study how women, particularly models and attractive young women, are used as "bait" to attract wealthy men to nightclubs, exclusive events, and luxurious parties. These women often get free access to these events, but they are also subjected to a form of objectification and exploitation. As an outsider to this elite social class, Mears harnesses her unique perspective to provide an in-depth analysis of how these parties operate, who benefits from them, and the underlying social dynamics and gender roles.
Mears alleges that the wealth and power this class amasses, combined with its relatively harmless social nature, makes it almost stateless. Her more specific focus is on the hierarchy of the nightlife industry, club politics, and the role of body capital within them. Mears’ experience as a model gives her a specific insight into how women are recruited for the value their beauty generates and makes for a complex and thorough piece – one which might make you think twice about flirting with the bouncer at your favorite club next time you want to get in for free.
It is generally agreed between scholars who study power elitism that the most sustainable way to maintain elitism within a society is through the use of separate elite groups that overlap but are, on the whole, independent of each other. The early classification of these groups divides the elite into the sects of financial, social, secret, and political/governing.
Mears is focused on the overlap between the financial and social elite class; the global party circuit which represents a modern kind of bacchanalia, one which exists beyond borders and nationalities, and circulates wealth, desirability, and the exchange rate between the two, in the form of “body capital.” Body capital is a form of social capital afforded to people based on their appearance and the aesthetic or functional features of their body.
Traditionally attractive women who fit societal standards of beauty are often recruited by promoters to fill nightclubs and yachts, as their mere presence adds value to the gathering in the form of social clout. The exclusion of women from the value that they generate is of great interest to Mears, whose own experience as a fashion model lends her exclusive access into the global party circuit on which she comments in “Very Important People.” At its core, her work is a commentary on body capital and desirability as a commodity. Her main arguments center on these themes in two ways: how colonial legacies enable the commodification of women, and how the high value of women within the nightlife industry fails to translate into respect for them.
Although exhaustive, Mears’ work is not perfect – I found that her social world is not as truly global as alleged, rather Americentric. I was frustrated by her use of the word ‘global’ to describe this circuit, when by her own admission Mears’ experience is mostly of American parties with some European exceptions. I was surprised by this as Mears has mainly worked as a catalog model in Asia, even going so far as to live in Hong Kong for a year in order to pursue her career. Her appearances as a catwalk model at New York Fashion Week are few and far between. Mears fails to understand how narrow her worldview is, preferring to insert herself in the style of Loïc Waquant without examining her own culpability in the system she denounces.
Mears’ background as an American sociologist seems to steer her at times into bias. The interviews she conducts with models and promoters exist within Western frameworks: American cultural norms, American beauty standards and American social dynamics, are omnipresent, even when Mears is aiming to discuss a supposedly global phenomena. Mears struggles to be truly objective, opting instead to paint with broad strokes a picture of the world, while only really being able to see and understand one culture existing inside of it. Mears therefore fails to demonstrate how the circuit is truly global – her research was undertaken chiefly in the United States, and secondarily in Western Europe. Although the Global South and Global North are mentioned heavily, it is mainly within the context of Eastern Europe and South America, with little or no mention of Asia or Africa.
Mears places specific importance on, and one which is returned to time and again as the book develops, surrounds the physical hierarchy of the club—the space in which Mears’ ‘important people’ interact. Mears posits that beautiful women add value to these spaces simply by existing within them. As part of her research, she interviewed many individual actors on the value of the models. “One promoter, twenty-seven-year-old Ethan from New York, [who] confessed ‘Someone spending $15,000 a night in a nightclub wants the real thing, a model, not just some girl,’ he said. ‘Just the peace of mind that he is now part of that A-list, that social elite. I think that is what the actual difference is.’” Mears analyzes how the mere presence of feminine beauty translates directly into revenue for nightclubs, adding that “beautiful women justify the bill. Or rather, they are a part of what it covers. As any business manager knows, women's beauty can change the mood of a place to incentivize spending.”
Here Mears examines the perceived value of beauty and its presence inside the clubs – but the more interesting idea she brings forward is how beauty and the global market intersect.
Mears discusses how model scouts “exploit global economic inequalities as they reproduce a colonial structure of extracting raw commodities from economically marginalized parts of the world like Eastern Europe and Brazil to profit from them in more developed markets in metropoles like New York and Paris.” The majority of models recruited by promoters are economically vulnerable women from Eastern Europe and Latin America. These women are shuttled to and from various party capitals: Saint-Tropez, La Roche, and of course fashion weeks. The promoters who, for want of a better word, manage the girls, rarely pay them in currency, but in gifted clothes, paid flights, and the privilege of sitting around a table of powerful men. The entrenchment of a colonial framework within the party industry is undeniable and unavoidable; a distant mirror to the exploitation of other raw materials found in post-colonial states, such as oil, gas, or precious stones, but with the core idea of a female form being the commodity in demand. Mears finds that the subsequent movement of these beautiful women from the Global South into Western cosmopolitan spaces is deeply problematic,but it is important to note that there is no visible sexual exploitation. Mears examines how “sex between girls and clients is not the main point of having so many models in attendance; rather, it is the visibility of sexiness in excess that produces status. A high quantity of girls is … testimony to the client's importance; it enables him to show off an excess of beauty. The display of so many girls' bodies is parallel to the displays of empty champagne bottles whose contents were shaken and sprayed; these are parallel displays of waste.” There is a twisted parallel here to physical global waste being burdened onto the Global South – the party circuit of the Global North is using the image of excess and wastefulness to mean wealth and opulence, which is nothing new. What is new, however, is the idea of the ‘unused and untouched’ bodies of women harnessed to display wealth; the idea that beautiful women, often from the Global South, can be bought, and then displayed as waste within the Global North, standing silently at parties. The most beautiful women in the room, brought all the way to a new city, only to be ignored the whole night, standing silently in 6-inch heels and dripping with expensive jewelry as their sponsors exclude them from conversation and use them, essentially, as decorations and status symbols.
This can be seen as a form of neocolonialism, where the bodies of vulnerable women are commodified and exploited to fulfill the desires and expectations of Western consumers, often stripping these women of their agency and reducing them to mere objects within a global economic system. In fact, the very act of Mears, a Western academic, studying and writing about these global party circuits from her perspective can be seen as an exercise in power that reflects neocolonial dynamics. The framing and interpretation of these cultures and practices through a Western academic lens can unintentionally perpetuate a form of intellectual dominance. There are many instances of interviews with promoters within Mears’ work — so much so that the lack of meaningful interviews with models is particularly stark. Mears, through her work as a model, assumes that her voice might be enough to represent the other girls with some supplementary interviews.
Although the idea of women as waste might seem anathema to the perceived value they bring to the club and the seeming desperation of the industry to have an endless supply of models in clubs and on yachts, Mears suggests this does not translate into respect. Before discussing Mears’ point, it is prudent to remember the possible presence of her own implicit bias as a model within the circuit, and how her experiences or prejudices could have impacted her research; unfortunately, it is not something she comments on through her work, seeming to view herself as more of an impartial narrator.
The idea of woman is so revered and commodified that often men within the party circuit have an intense disdain for the models around them, while simultaneously wanting them around. Essentially, they want the image of a beautiful model and the social clout alongside her, without the recognition of her as a woman with agency or humanity – “worthless as humans though priceless as image.” When in conversation with men in the clubs, Mears interviewed Ricardo, a 23-year-old hedge fund associate. “Most girls out there, I expect to be sluts or dumb bitches... “You just recognize when you talk with them, they're just empty, no [other] word to describe [it], just empty...I won't date them.”
The approach to women in these spaces is an interesting paradox, with men both requiring the presence of desirable women and being totally apathetic toward them as people. Promoters will go to incredible lengths to source women, relocating them from their countries of origin to the metropoles of the West to work as unpaid decorations in clubs.
Even though so much effort goes into the acquisition of these women, they, as people, are overlooked. The existence of women in these social elite spaces is neo-colonial – they are women of the Global South, taken from their countries of origin to act as symbols of excessive opulence for the wealthiest men in the Global North; eerily reminiscent of the same commodification of exotic animals during colonial eras of history. Mears explains how “For girls coming from poor countries like Guatemala or Estonia where there aren’t a lot of good opportunities, even low rates are more than they could get in their villages.”
Mears’ “Very Important People”is a thorough investigation into the hidden world of modern social elitism. History is littered with aristocracies, but the entirely global and almost stateless nature of the modern party circuit is what sets this iteration of social elites above the rest, and therefore makes her work so fascinating. The global nature of the circuit is exposed, specifically how promoters take advantage of the skeletons of colonial systems and the divide between the Global North and Global South to transport women into clubs and the nightlife industry within the Cosmopolitan North. The commodification of women is not a new phenomenon but is showcased in a new light – from the perspective of Mears, a former model herself, who has firsthand experience with the nightlife industry. Despite criticisms that perhaps at times Mears fails to delve into her role within the circuit as the researcher, and the Americentric circuit perhaps not being as truly global as it might seem, it is undeniable that her work is analytical, thoughtful, and an intriguing window into modern power elitism.