Mears - Pricing beauty: the making of a fashion model

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Pricing Beauty

The Making of a Fashion Model

Ashley Mears

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley . Los Angeles . London

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

2011 by The Regents of the University of California

Photographs courtesy of Beowulf Sheehan, except as noted.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mears, Ashley, 1980

Pricing beauty : the making of a fashion model / Ashley Mears.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-26033-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-520-27076-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Models (Persons) 2. Modeling agencies.

3. Fashion shows. I. Title.

HD8039.M77M43 2011
338.4774692dc22

2011006003

Manufactured in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.

To Jennifer

FIGURES

TABLES

A great deal of thanks are in order to many people without whom this project would never have left the runway. I thank my respondents for their time and generosity in interrupting their hectic schedules to share their stories and thoughtful reflections about their work. To my former bookers and managers, I am especially grateful. These pages are at times critical of the fashion world, but I hope they also show my respect for the work of modeling agents.

While at New York University, I was lucky to find a creative team of mentorsindeed, I think they are fine examples of edgy. Thanks to Harvey Molotch, my intellectual muse, and to Craig Calhoun, who has such an inspiring mind. I am in continual awe of Judith Stacey for her generosity, guidance, and remarkable style as a sociologist; I could not have asked for more from an advisor.

Many other scholars have read and helped improve my work, among them Ann Morning, Dalton Conley, Caitlin Zaloom, David Garland, Howard Becker, Lynne Haney, Sudhir Venkatesh, and Richard Sennett. Viviana Zelizer warmly welcomed me into her field, and Joanne Entwistle gave me generous support during my time in London. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, I was fortunate to study with William Finlay, who gave me a push just when I needed it, and who continues to be a mentor.

In New York I had tremendously supportive friends who read (and then reread) many chapters: thanks to Noah McClain, Amy LeClair, Jane Jones, Sarah Kaufman, Tey Meadow, Rebecca Glauber, Melissa Velez Owen Whooley, Harel Shapiro, Grace Yukich, Beowulf Sheehan, Melissa Aronczyk, Claudio Benzecry, Alexander Frenette, and Frederic Godart. Two writing groups were important forums to try out new ideas: the NYLON Research Network (formed at New York University and the London School of Economics), led by Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett, and the Gender and Inequality Workshop at NYU, organized by the brilliant duo Sarah Damaske and Allison McKim. Magali Armillas-Tiseyra and Beth Kramer kept up the valuable tradition of Grad Hall. Thanks also to Olya for her kindness and curiosity and to Dasha for her hilarious company.

Finishing the book was a challenge eased with the support of colleagues at Boston University, especially Sigrun Olafsdottir, Julian Go, and Emily Barman. I was helped just in time with the work of my undergraduate research assistant Laura Wing. My editor Naomi Schneider I thank for being an early believer in the project, and then for displaying such patience with me to the end.

Earlier versions of some of these chapters have appeared elsewhere. Parts of appear in Size Zero High-End Ethnic: Cultural Production and the Reproduction of Culture in Fashion Modeling, Poetics 38(1): 2146, used with permission from Elsevier. I am grateful for permissions to use these materials.

This book was made possible with support from the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Deans Dissertation Fellowship, the Mainzer Fellowship to the Center for Gender Studies at Cambridge, UK, and funds from the Morris Endowment at the Department of Sociology at Boston University.

Special thanks to Beowulf Sheehan, who kindly provided all photographs for this book except where noted.

Thanks lastly to my family for all the years of love and encouragementand to my dad and Kathy, for countless bowls of saimin, to my mom, for late-night cups of tea, and also to Alexander Gilvarry for writing with me. And to my sister Jennifer, for a lifetime of friendship, this book is yours.

Youve got a great look.

That was what he told me as I sat in a Starbucks in downtown Manhattan. I had come in search of a quiet table at which to crack open a social theory book, one of a number of texts I was assigned as a new graduate student in sociology at New York University. Instead I found myself seated across from a model scout who was handing me his card and telling me that I could be making a fortune as a fashion model.

While waiting in line for my coffee I overheard a man, flanked by two pretty young women at a nearby table, talking loudly about what its like to work in the fashion modeling industry. He was in his forties, tan and balding; his two companions, who were listening to him intently, looked about twenty years younger. I took him to be a modeling agent out with two of his models, and I listened with feigned disinterest, having packed away my own modeling portfolio into my moms attic just six months ago, content to start a new career in academia after what had been five years in the business, at first part time in college, mostly small stuff for local department stores in my hometown of Atlanta. Later, school vacations would be spent modeling in Milan, New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. It seemed a lifetime ago; I had just celebrated my twenty-third birthday, well past retirement age for a model, and the books weighing down my shoulders were a reminder of a new career ahead.

On my way out I passed their table, and the loud-talking agent stopped me: Hey, which agency are you with? The young women smiled at me.

Meeting Todd was simultaneously off-putting and intriguing. I arrived at grad school wanting to study the gender politics of beauty and the body, an interest that took root when, as a teenager modeling in New York, an agent told me to try to look as lean as possible. The going joke around his agency, he explained, was Anorexia is