Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit

I enjoyed her first book so much I took a chance buying this book although the subject didn't really interest me. The author does a good job with the material she has to work with. She's a good writer with a lively style and occasional flashes of humor. Keep in mind she's writing a academic book here so she keeps the tone serious.I've read many sociology books and I always enjoying look over the Notes section to see the author comments and observations. I found the Notes pertinent and a great resource for further reading.Everybody in the Party Scene is out for something, if only free food and drink. When reading the Model Camp chapter I thought about the similarities between the Party Scene and life as a girlfriend at the Playboy Mansion as described in Izabella St. James's book Bunny Tales. In both the men use women to enhance themselves and the women hope to trade their appearance for entry to a job or a good marriage.

I learned of this book when author Ashley Mears was profiled in a recent issue of Psychology Today. Since I like stories of high decadence among the upper classes, Very Important People sounded like a book I would enjoy. Before she became an academic, Mears had been a model and as she looked ten years younger than she really was, she was able to fit into the circuit of promoters who bring beautiful women (preferably models) to high end clubs. Mears focuses less on the global elite themselves at play and more on the people who, thanks to great looks and hustle, help the rich enjoy themselves (not to mention hoping to become part of that world). She writes of the relationships between promoters and the girls. "It would be too easy to say that promoters and clubs exploit girls for monetary gain; we would miss a crucial insight into how relations of exploitation operate. In short, promoters show us that exploitation works best when it feels good." The young women do get free meals and drinks, exotic travel and the chance to party with the one percent. However, a Cinderella scenario is unlikely; the girls are not seen as marriage material by the elite and the promoters take pains to explain they are not really pimps. Indeed, many of the promoters Mears meets have dreams that their connections to the wealthy will lead to future business deals, but it usually never seems to work out. Very Important People is well-written. Mears depicts both the highs and lows of party and club life. Perhaps most importantly, she shows an affection for her subjects, letting them tell their stories, respecting their dreams (even if she doubts they'll come true) and not bogging down the narrative in either academic or politically correct jargon.

You can tell the author is holding back a vast amount of information and details. Next time go with a better publisher, this book would have been gold. I say this after reading the whole book including the notes. I gave it one star because the book has a lot of fluff, which is a massive waste of my time, but I kept reluctantly kept reading this because it's for a book club. The last 2 chapters are all you need to read + the research notes done + the reference section (but the whole book should have been all of this, in its full detail and more). Instead, the book reads like: Models & bottles, models, & more bottles, promotors, more bottles, more about models, clients, promotors, clients, models, and promotors, oh yeah here's a bunch of interesting information and data right at the very end. I feel bad for the author because, in the book's original form, I bet it was really good and telling, but for the publisher, it was too short to "sell". So the publisher probably told her to go back and write another 150 pages and then we'll talk = fluff. Instead, the publisher should have told the author, "I know you're holding back, don't". The reference section in this book alone is full of notes and details that should have been included in the book. To the author, if you read this, please get a new publisher.

This is a relatively interesting concept that was quite poorly executed. I don't know if the book was edited at all, but it's very repetitive. The author will often say the same thing in three different ways in a single paragraph. And whole arguments, or points about how tall and skinny the models have to be, for example, are repeated almost verbatim multiple times throughout the book. I have a PhD in political science, and I know academic writing can be laborious. This feels like the author was really trying to make what should have been at best a journal article (or a piece in The Times, which she has also done) into a book. She stretched a thin subject area with loose references to theories, extensive and often uninteresting quotes from her interviewees, and, as mentioned above, repetition. Did I mention she repeats things a lot? She often says the same thing many times. She makes the same point over and over again. I'm obviously being facetious repeating myself here. But you feel like you're going insane reading what I just wrote, right? That's because repetition in writing shows that the author doesn't trust the reader to understand her the first time, or to remember things that have already been laid out. Readers hate it when authors make them feel like this. Her editor, if she had one, should have explained this.

As this amazing book has plenty of five stars, let me correct a common complaint: that’s it’s repetitive. It’s true that some standard night club scenes are repeated, but they are put in different contexts—and this is important—very subtle contexts that only an insider can see. The author both was a model, and when writing ten years later as a “fly on the wall, “a sociology professor. This combination is hard to find. This study shows a sea change in the West’s understanding of the intersections of race, gender, sex, and status. As the bacchic ideal rose in the last century, so did those populations and creating a new entertainment elite. Into this maelstrom the author shows the shifting contexts in which the models and wealthy men experience this new entertainment elite. A book I could have only dreamed about 20 years ago. And let me add that it’s findings nicely support the study “Human Sin or social sin.”

This was a really great book, that gave a behind the scenes look at the night life in New York

A joy to read. I enjoyed it; my grand daughter loved it! Full of insights.

Purchased on Tyler Cowen's recommendation.Great ethnographic study. Very quick read.Not sure if I left with any real new thoughts.... Mears could have summarized whole chapters with a simple diagram showing how business transactions work between people rather than fleshing it out in words.

In-depth look at the (now, traditional since COVID 19) clubbing scene and how the VIP worked behind the scene. Ashley Mears combines her personal experience and academic studies together in this book, it's fascinating look at human psychology and how that the first impression may not be what it seems.

muy aburrido. repeticiones constantes y poca profundidad