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

An entertaining and well-researched examination of the “club economy” – a world where “club promoters” worked “models and bottles.”

There exists a job where you get models to nightclubs to just…exist. It turns out that rich men spend stupid amounts of money in the presence of attractive women, so there’s an entire business model behind this.

You know all the nights at the club the rappers are singing about? That’s all choreographed. Tables are organized strategically, to maximize “filler” who pay lots of money in the hopes that they can ever live the life that club promoters carefully visually orchestrate.

The club and its promoters are creating fantasy theater that people buy into and spend money trying to achieve. None of it is real. The models are their for the connections, a good time, and occasionally living arrangements. The promoters get paid by the clubs. And the filler just keep spending and spending in some scenarios that the author compares to tribal warfare, in an attempt to prove their economic power in the face of unattainable physical beauty.

The book is written by Ashley Mears. She used to be a runway model and spent time in this economy – she had “the look,” so she was invited to come along. She’s now a PHd and sociology professor. This book is the result of about a decade of field work, following club promoters, talking to models, and interviewing the “whales” for whom this entire fantasy is created with the goal of separating them from their money.