What is the motivation for participating in “the global party circuit” “yachting” or “cruising”— euphemisms for elaborate and fancy gatherings of the wealthy, the beautiful, and those who want to exploit either or both groups?
The global party circuit of the super-rich shows off spending on a scale you've never seen before – it’s a modern day animalistic pissing contest.
Ashley Mears, author of 'Very Important People' explains what motivates a millionaire to spend over $100,000, or even $1 million at a single night club in a single night. She would know, as Mears partied as a "girl" (we’ll get into this in a minute) from Cannes to Los Angeles for research purposes.
But first let’s describe the players and the positions in the system:
The billionaire/wealthy spender-
Whale- (club) lingo for big spenders
In spending on VIP tables and champagne, "the host loses a lot of wealth but gains recognition among his peers." Spending is a spectator sport. Unless everybody can see you spend stupid sums of money on your night out, what's the point? Or at least that's the rationale of the rich. It is the reason VIP areas in clubs are raised above others. The same reason champagne houses produce oversized bottles with glow-in-the-dark labels arriving at VIP tables with fireworks in them and held aloft by attractive girls. People bolster their self worth by pursuing status and showing off their position.
They use the presence of women to inflate their own status and signal their own significance to other elite men.
"The men I interviewed were conflicted about such extravagance," says Mears. One told her they regretted it afterwards. They are conflicted because they know what such excess looks like in a world of widening inequality. In sociological terms, such spending is becoming taboo. So this egregious expenditure is hidden strictly behind closed doors.
The whales don't want the world to know about their secret spending, exploitation, and abuse.
We’ll talk about the secrecy in more detail, and the women in cellular detail in a second. But first, let’s talk about the other entities involved in this world of money and sex.
Gender, economic, and racial inequalities are embedded in institutions.
The businesses-
Why do businesses participate in the party circuit? I think the answer to this category is obvious- $$$. There is a whole industry set up to capitalize on this ritual of the rich. From champagne houses to VIP clubs, exploiting this insecurity for their own advantage is lucrative! The parties may be worth it to the wealthy spenders, but the party circuit is worth even more to the clubs who make money from the business, the promoter because it means he gets paid a good wage, and the men cycling in and out of the clubs, hoping to network their way into their own fortune.
Although girls and promoters shared spaces with elites, they were not able to capitalize on their relations and these relations were highly hierarchical and unequal.
Promoters- A business or brand that brings people into a club.
The promoters Mears observed were laser-focused on networking: They had a plan and were very strategic in cultivating ties with rich men. For the promoters that ventured into other projects in hospitality or nightlife, they were able to use and leverage their ties to open their own clubs, restaurants, or bars.
Feeders- An independent contractor, many times doing gig work, to bring people into the club.
It stems from the football (soccer if you’re American) ‘feeder club‘ which is used to mainly describe one club that helps another more powerful club by providing players for that bigger club So, a feeder club will ‘feed’ or supply players to another more powerful club by selling on some of their more talented players which can then earn the smaller club some money and sometimes this can work almost like an exclusive agreement between them.
In the same hierarchy, the club/party circuit feeder is comprised of VIP hosts that supply establishments with clients ready to splurge heavily. The hosts get a fee per person or contract price and the club gets quality whales, models, DJs, bartenders, and/or guests with the right vibe.
Most of them models or Instagram influencers, who are recruited by promoters, and ostensibly not for sex or friendship 👀
Why would a club/business pay girls to be around, looking beautiful?
The logic of the club having the presence of models in proximity to whales is that it helps accomplish making the rich clientele look good. And having models next to the wealthy is aspirational to everyone else in the business hierarchy from the promoters to the feeders to the patrons at the club. They think, “If I spend money, I too, can have a model!”
[I hate it here]
Once Instagram became dominant, it was kind of seamlessly built into the peacocking practice. Now, everyone walks into the club with their phones out. Moments that were meant to catch the attention of the people in the room became insta-moments to catch the attention of followers on social media. The audience is now bigger and broader.
And that picture is extremely valuable. Everyone in the club can broadcast to their roommates, classmates, co-workers, and family, “look, I’ve made it,” – even if they can’t afford to be in the space. . . Nobody looks behind the glamorous image to see they are frontin’ or are paying to be there with their bodily capital. The value of these experiences just becomes much bigger because they can be broadcast so much farther.
Agencies
Agencies specializing in these activities often exercise significant control over their employees' lives dictating not only how they dress and behave in public but also managing personal details like living arrangements and availability. Places like Milan and New York have a lot of transient young women who are coming through and staying in less-than-ideal housing situations with other people who are their same age and are newcomers in the industry. Nobody has money; their kitchens are not fully stocked.
High earnings are typically accompanied by equally high expectations and the women are often left in a precarious financial situation that ties them to their clients or agencies. For many the lifestyle their income supports becomes a golden cage where leaving the job means a significant downgrade in their standard of living. making them more likely to tolerate unfavorable conditions. The psychological toll on women can be significant. Constantly maintaining a facade managing secretive lives and dealing with objectification can lead to issues like depression anxiety and low self-esteem.
Certain agencies and power players within the fashion or entertainment industries might be complicit in these activities. However one agency insider admitted that they detested sending models to those gigs because then the women were reluctant to return to the agency after they were able to network with the wealthy. This insider would leave the cruises with one fewer passenger/employee each day, and claimed that by the time of her final night of the gig half of the women she had recruited as eye candy had left. The majority of them were now sailing on luxury yachts or went to a mansion with one rich man or another.
The VIP hosts and whales disguised as modeling agencies drive a system that can pressure models into compromising situations often protected by the silence bought by NDAs
Front - A business that appears to do one operation while concealing a
simultaneous, more nefarious business.
- A company that looks like a legitimate business but actually
conducts a different, illegal, operation.
When I typed the address from the press release into Google, this came up:
Some people have suggested that the 138 water company is a front and that what they really do is provide girls as escorts to wealthy and affluent people.
The majority of their content is made up of images of models wearing bikinis or other accessories with the 138 logo imprinted on them, creating plausible deniability.
They do have a ™ for beverage-related products:
But their Instagram might bely that they are selling girls in addition to the water… You be the judge:
Next time we’ll talk about privacy and also the women involved in the industry.
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