Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model

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University of California Press, Aug 2, 2011 - Social Science - 340 pages
Sociologist Ashley Mears takes us behind the brightly lit runways and glossy advertisements of the fashion industry in this insider’s study of the world of modeling. Mears, who worked as a model in New York and London, draws on observations as well as extensive interviews with male and female models, agents, clients, photographers, stylists, and others, to explore the economics and politics—and the arbitrariness— behind the business of glamour. Exploring a largely hidden arena of cultural production, she shows how the right “look” is discovered, developed, and packaged to become a prized commodity. She examines how models sell themselves, how agents promote them, and how clients decide to hire them. An original contribution to the sociology of work in the new cultural economy, Pricing Beauty offers rich, accessible analysis of the invisible ways in which gender, race, and class shape worth in the marketplace.
 

Contents

Economics of the Catwalk
27
Becoming a Look
71
The Tastemakers
121
Size Zero HighEnd Ethnic
170
Runway to Gender
209
Exit
249
The Precarious Labor of Ethnography
263
Bibliography
283
Index
297
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About the author (2011)

Ashley Mears is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University

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