(Not) Very Important People: Millennial Fantasies of Mobility in the Age of Excess

Susan Hopkins
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Susan Hopkins: USQ College, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

Media and Communication, 2022, vol. 10, issue 1, 297-300

Abstract: In her fascinating but frustrating new book, Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit , American sociologist, Ashley Mears (2020) offers both academic and mainstream readers a titillating, cross-over tour around the “cool” nightclub and party scene of the “global elite.” It is perhaps not so much global, however, as American, in the sense of the heteropatriarchal, middle-aged, male, working rich of America (or more precisely of its financial capital New York), jetting into their traditional party hotspots of Miami, Saint-Tropez, or the French Riviera, to party with young women who are (indirectly) paid (in-kind) to pose with them. Whether intentional or unintentional, along the way Mears also offers a dark mirror to the fears and fantasies of a rather lost millennial generation, raised in a new media, image age, which has coupled fast and furious performative excess to old fashioned sexual objectification, in the guise of fun and empowerment for the beautiful people.

Keywords: beauty capital; ethnography; fashion models; global elites; hustle culture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:1:p:297-300

DOI: 10.17645/mac.v10i1.4778

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