YouSaid · the spoken record

Ashley Mears

lines on the record: 74
first: 2020-06-03
most recent: 2020-06-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Right. So clubs are kind of, they're also in this business of trying to manufacture and experience like the that Enil Durkheim would call this collective effervescence, like losing yourself in the moment. And that's really possible when you're able to kind of tune out the other things like, I don't know if somebody is feeling insecure about the way they dance or if somebody is not sure of what to say, having really loud music that has a beat where everybody just does the same thing, which is like nod to the beat, that helps to kind of tune people into one another and it helps build up a vibe and a kind of energy. And so that's the point is to sort of lose yourself in the music in these spaces.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To these clubs with the promoters, it doesn't work for them because they're staying with the promoter. The promoter's job is to keep them at the table. Their primary purpose being there is signaling their beauty. It becomes difficult to try to forge any kind of meaningful connection when the lights are low and the music is loud. people are talking but really like shouting into each other's ears and so the the setup of that kind of a situation works against any woman who's trying to show that she is like a real intellectual or she is you know it has some kind of occupational or educational prestige”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Keep them apart. So it definitely can work that way. I mean, I think that there's lots of success stories where it does work that way. Melania Trump, for example, met Donald Trump at one of these party, not one of these parties in these nightclubs, but she was introduced at a party that was run by her then fashion modeling agent who was actually a regular in this whole VIP circuit. So she was kind of connected to this world and that's where she met the very rich and successful businessman. By the way, she also had to work pretty hard when she was introduced to the national stage to clear the reputation that she's not a party girl. There was like all this effort to say like Melania Trump was a good girl. She didn't go out too much, right? She happened to be at this one party, but she was not a party girl. So it can work. And I think that there's probably lots of stories where that does work. But for the majority of the cases of the young women who are brought”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so even though women who look like fashion models are so valuable in this scene for lending status, they're devalued for the assumption that they're just beautiful. And specifically the kind of women that are like club girls going out night after night, they're seen as being unserious. Like this is not the pool of future wives. This is not the pool of future business partners. This is the pool of hookups. And people have a very specific term that they use to describe girls that are very valuable to the club and to the promoters, but completely devalued outside of the club. And that's the party girl. So people dismiss party girls as being like unserious, you know, like women that you want to have at the party, but you don't want to see them the next day. Yeah, so that it's kind of a, I don't know, like being tainted by going into the club and taking advantage of all of the things that the club can offer to a beautiful young woman.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And experiences, which might be convertible for something valuable in the future. I think that they gain friendship ties to people that they otherwise wouldn't be exposed to, especially other women. I think it is a really important scene where women can connect to each other. I don't think it's that valuable of a scene where women can connect to rich men. So this is a question that people always want to know. Like, well, don't these young women, these club girls, don't they fetch a rich man for a husband and this is a kind of great dating and mating market? And I think the answer to that is no.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right, right. Okay, so I think that myself, I might be a little bit of an outlier as a club girl because I was much older by about 10 years, even though I was still referred to ubiquitously as a girl. But yeah, I mean, I had a professional job and a career and I was in here doing for one thing, but looking at the other women that are in the scene, I mean, it's really quite a range of outcomes. I think that it might increase the most their social capital in the sense that they get more ties to people in different kinds of realms than they would if they weren't a part of this world. So, you know, if they stayed in Nebraska and didn't try out modeling, or if they tried out modeling that stayed in their models apartment and didn't go to the Hamptons and to Santa Pay with the promoter, I think that, you know, on the margins, they gained those kinds of policy.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I suppose, yes. I mean So let's just say the more needy a woman is or the more desperate she is and that she can't afford things on her own, then I think the more likely she will be a regular participant in this world, at least for a short while until she establishes her own network or gets a career or her modeling career takes off or she goes back to school. But it is a kind of It's a world on offer for people who both want and need it.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Restaurant. It's never sashimi that the beautiful women are treated to. It's like the cucumber rolls. So, you know, there's some downsides to it in that the women don't get their choice of how the night is going to unfold and where they're going to sit and what exactly they get to do. But they do get a piece of this affluent city that they would otherwise be excluded from.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's clear. And I think that the promoters and this VIP clubland does subsidize a lot of the low wages of the modeling industry. The other question is like, what else would a woman, let's say, of like 20 of limited financial means be doing in the city? Well, there's lots of other things. In some ways, it kind of appeals to a woman's taste if she wants to be a part of this glamorous high-end world and participate in it even for a short while. There's a trade-off. I mean, people talked about it as being a win-win. And there are downsides, clearly, that they recognize that when the beautiful women go to these restaurants, the food comes out, but you don't get to choose what you want off of the menu. It comes out like family style. And usually it's like the leftover stuff from the kitchen that they just have that's kind of cheaper. So if it's like a sushi.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An interesting question. I think that for the women that end up going out with promoters in the VIP, they're motivated by a range of things. So for many of them, because they're recruited from the bottom of the fashion modeling industry, and that was one thing that I found in my first book that most models don't make very much money. So they actually need to eat. They need to have very much money. And so the promoters are opening up for them a glamorous network of friends that also comes with these clear perks like expenses paid, whining and dining and these experiences that models otherwise can't afford, which is ironic because for you, Tyler, you're like looking for a good restaurant and you see this trendy place full of beautiful people. The reality is, you know, most of them probably can't afford to eat in those places on their own or maybe they're actually motivated to go to those places to get the free meal. So in that sense, there's a trade-off.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Usually upstairs or attached in some way, or the managers are connected. And so they're kind of both profiting on having beautiful women in there and selling the experience of being around beautiful women. But indeed, the food's not that great.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I know this rule because I was reading that when you published that book, it was when I was doing the fieldwork, like 2012, 2012. I know I remember reading it and laughing because you were saying like avoid trendy restaurants for the beautiful women and I was like yeah I'm one of those people that's actually ruining the food but creating value in these other forms because being a part of this this scene and producing status so yeah I think that that's absolutely correct the thing that you know maybe is interesting for you about about my book that helps explain your book is that the beautiful women that are inside these restaurants, you know, giving off status, that there's this whole organized system to bring them there, that the restaurants and the clubs hire on a contract basis this group of people called promoters, party promoters, and their job is to go out and find a bunch of beautiful women and then bring them to the restaurant. And then the women get dinner for free, so the food comes out family style and they eat for free. And then that sets up the obligation that then she'll go with him to the nightclub, which is”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so about the economist getting in. Yeah, you know, if they have to be rich economists and also willing to spend. So yeah, like a trickle-down economist maybe, if they're willing to spend a lot of money on these tables. I mean, there are kind of two things that the club values most are money and beauty. And it's women's beauty and men's money that make up the kind of two things that the club wants inside. So if somebody, if a man shows up and he has money, he's in. I mean, the Nobel Prize, it's a certain kind of celebrity Yeah, so celebrities are also welcome. And celebrities sometimes don't pay because they add value to this space just by virtue of being there because everybody can say I partied with Kanye West. You know, I partied with Milton Friedman. I don't know. Yeah, maybe.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A general person from New Jersey. Okay, well, New Jersey is, of course, a big and varied state, and there's a lot of people in New Jersey that would be welcome to come into the club. But the shorthand of Jersey, as Bridget Tunnel, is like queue up somebody from the Jersey shore, basically, somebody who might have money but doesn't have any kind of what we might call cultural capital. They don't know how to dress. They don't look sophisticated. They're showing their money in a too obvious way, like with, I don't know, like a flashy chains or something. And so they would be denied entrance.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, ouch. Well, so Manhattan being an island, it's a term that denotes somebody who's seen as not having enough money or cultural competency to make it to live in Manhattan. So they have to travel by bridge or tunnel from Brooklyn or from Staten Island to come in and they try to get into the door. And the door person quickly recognizes that this is an outsider and they don't belong.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so this is what some of the promoters have said, that promoters recognize that this is not in the long run. It's not something that's going to be sustained, that like any fashion trend in consumption, there'll be something else that becomes a high marker of status like, I don't know, peloton bike riding or something. So yeah, I mean, in some ways, this is a kind of cyclical nature of consumption that there's always some other thing that can denote status that the elite will grab onto and then it'll trickle down and become more popular. I mean, I think that this moment.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yes, but I guess it depends on who's the everyone in that audience. And so one thing that kind of comes up in research on status is that people don't really mind if like the Donald Trump's out there are, you know, living in a gold-plated penthouse. What they care about are like the people that are around them in their milieu. And so, I mean, if you're thinking about like a 30-year-old Wall Street banker who's blowing off money and is part of this lifestyle and everybody else in that world that he's connected to is also a part of it, I mean, it can, you know, they can run that as fun for quite a while and it doesn't really matter if like, let's say your friends, the CEOs in the Midwest who are more demure and think that's tacky. It doesn't really matter what they think because they're separate worlds anyway.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was really interesting. So, I also did interviews with the people that are buying bottles, only 20, and not a random sample, but just to get a sense of like, how do people talk about and process and put into words what they're experiencing at these clubs? And those people themselves who even spend a lot of money on bottles would talk about it as like, yeah, it's tacky or it's ridiculous. I know that it looks bad. So everybody knows that status is a sensitive good. You can't just like go out and buy it without losing status, right? And so everybody kind of knows that. And yet the club is really good at setting it up so that it feels completely appropriate and it's celebrated and it feels good to be in these spaces. It's really thrilling and exciting to be in them.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, yeah, I think that most men really could slide into that world. I mean, it's for sure, like those across the spectrum, there are some people for whom this really ticks the box that this satisfies a need to be seen and to feel high status and that it's very validating and very important. I don't think that that's necessarily a stable attribute of that person over their life course. It might just fit the kind of banker culture that they're immersed in, you know, when they're 30 and working on Wall Street. On the other hand, I think that a lot of, for instance, academics who look at this and hold their nose and say these are like pathological status seeking people would probably also enjoy a night or two out in these arenas. I mean, part of it's because a nightclub, they're really good at orchestrating this experience so that it feels good. And this was something.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's definitely some of those people and you can find them through some of the lawsuits where they'll come into a club and they actually don't even have any money, but they come in and they pretend to be like a big spender called a whale. And then they run up a high bill and then their credit card declines it the next day and then they end up going to court when the club. So that happens sometimes. Or, I mean, so to go to one of these clubs with the bottle service formula, you rent the table for the night and then the bottles of alcohol get brought to your table and then there's this huge price inflation on the bottles. So for a single person to do that, you know, it could be a tab of $2,000, $3,000 on up. But if you have a group of, say, five men or six men and they're willing to spend, it can actually be, you know, it's not that much money if it's a group of men who go in and then they get this VIP treatment. So it can be kind of economical in that sense.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So it would be people who have a lot of disposable money where their money is kind of coming in quickly, money comes in quickly, it goes out quickly. So it's people who get the bonus in Wall Street where a lot of the people that I met in these spaces, if people are in their 30s and their 40s, recent divorces, so recently single people who are kind of are going through a wild moment in their life. There would be occasional business people who are interested in doing business and that this is one of the forms in which they can bond with one another, especially the case in some forms of finance. And so they might be in these arenas as well. It's a bit of a mix. Some people are really into this VIP club experience for a couple of years. But for men, I mean, it wouldn't be uncommon to see men that were in their 50s and 60s, certainly uncommon to see women.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really like rich people on really great behavior. I don't know, the Bill Gateses of the world who are, you know, kind of seem very grounded and hardworking and, you know, family men, they occasionally also go into these high-profile places and get crazy in the VIP section of a nightclub. They're not the main fare for these clubs, but they're definitely welcome and they come and go.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So very important people is not about all economic elites. It's about this subsection of economic elites who are predominantly young. They're affluent tourists or business people who are coming through places like New York or on this global jet set calendar in, for instance, Central Pay or St. Bard or the Hamptons. And so it's a certain type of young economically powerful, predominantly young economically powerful man that goes to these spaces and can purchase over the course of the night that feeling of being high status, this feeling, this kind of temporary feeling of being like the big man in anthropological terms, that's not to say, however, that the Midwest CEO doesn't occasionally take a trip to New York and dip into these spaces. They're welcome too. I mean, any man with money can come into these places. And if you think about some of the”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, well, I feel like you don't really need a sociologist to answer that question. I mean, beautiful women are a sign of status, of high status. And so wealthy men like to surround themselves in the same way that you would see a kind of curated entourage in lots of different historical forms. But yeah, so beautiful women in the VIP clubland are a sign of status. And it's a certain kind of beauty. I mean, that's the interesting thing about beauty, right? It's always in the eye of the beholder. But in the VIP world, which caters to these rich men, the kind of beauty is the kind that's defined as very rare according to the fashion modeling industry, so very tall, very thin, predominantly, although not exclusively white. And with the kind of look that you would see in a high-end fashion magazine.”
2020-06-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Ashley Mears on Status and Beauty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source