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

Hypergamy, or “marrying up,” might look like a way in which women can use their erotic capital, but most of the research on assortative mating shows that homogamy is actually more common, and, since the 1980s, men are increasingly marrying women with similar education and income.

Girls perform emotional and physical labors that mirror what sociologists have termed “aesthetic labor,” common in the service industries. Flight attendants, retail workers, waiters—pretty much anyone in service has to “look good and sound right” according to their company’s brand identity.

VIP clubs have to enable the potlatch to unfold in a way that suspends the deliberateness of status-seeking, primarily by making it seem spontaneous and playful.

Beauty may look like a route to get ahead for women, but, in fact, beauty is worth more in men’s hands than in women’s own.

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 visual 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

A promoter seeks girls for whom all three motivations align: if she needs subsidized meals, if she is loyal to his friendship, and if she genuinely enjoys whatever fun can be shared in during the night, she will likely become a regular presence at his table.

Girls may have abundant riches in the form of bodily capital, but their capacity to spend it is limited by gendered rules of sexual conduct.

Most people, including Veblen, imagined ostentation was an inherent trait of the rich. I found, however, that it takes considerable coordinated effort to mobilize people into what looks likes the spontaneous waste of money, and the VIP nightclub has mastered it.

Like girls, champagne bottles are put to work in the service of showing off clients’ expenditures. Champagne has been associated with exclusive celebrations for at least a century and associated with elites since court society monopolized its consumption in prerevolutionary Europe.