Academic Review: Pricing Beauty, by Ashley Mears
Ashley Mears
Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model
University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2011
(ISBN-978-0-520-27076-3), 261 pp.
Reviewed by: Paige Ross, Hamline University, USA
In Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model, Ashley Mears investigates and critiques the inequalities present in the modern-day fashion industry, focusing on the experiences of models in the industry, and the challenges they face in navigating the fashion world, managing their own physical and emotional appearances as social capital, and encountering certain roadblocks or special treatment depending on their race, appearance, and gender. Mears begins her novel by relating her second entry at twenty-three into the modeling industry, and her intent to conduct a firsthand study of the internal workings of the industry, infiltrating the structure from within–as a model. As a whole, Pricing Beauty concentrates on unveiling certain “backstage” ambiguities and inequalities within the fashion industry regarding race, gender roles and performance, sexuality, class, and bodily autonomy in order to address the issues of systemic racism, sexism, and classism inherent in both the fashion industry and in society in general. Mears uses a lot of direct quotations from personal interviews, and her insider perspective to vivisect the underpinnings the industry. Her position as a model grants her additional access to the various players in the industry, and gives her more authority than if this study was conducted by an outside perspective. The book is divided into seven chapters, including the “Entry” and “Exit” chapters. Chapter 1 goes over the “economics of the catwalk,” examining the differences between “symbolic” and “economic” capital, how “prestige” functions in the industry, and the division of these dimensions within the “editorial” and “commercial” sectors, as well as how the industry has changed economically over the years. Chapter 2 delves into the
Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model
University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2011
(ISBN-978-0-520-27076-3), 261 pp.
Reviewed by: Paige Ross, Hamline University, USA
In Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model, Ashley Mears investigates and critiques the inequalities present in the modern-day fashion industry, focusing on the experiences of models in the industry, and the challenges they face in navigating the fashion world, managing their own physical and emotional appearances as social capital, and encountering certain roadblocks or special treatment depending on their race, appearance, and gender. Mears begins her novel by relating her second entry at twenty-three into the modeling industry, and her intent to conduct a firsthand study of the internal workings of the industry, infiltrating the structure from within–as a model. As a whole, Pricing Beauty concentrates on unveiling certain “backstage” ambiguities and inequalities within the fashion industry regarding race, gender roles and performance, sexuality, class, and bodily autonomy in order to address the issues of systemic racism, sexism, and classism inherent in both the fashion industry and in society in general. Mears uses a lot of direct quotations from personal interviews, and her insider perspective to vivisect the underpinnings the industry. Her position as a model grants her additional access to the various players in the industry, and gives her more authority than if this study was conducted by an outside perspective. The book is divided into seven chapters, including the “Entry” and “Exit” chapters. Chapter 1 goes over the “economics of the catwalk,” examining the differences between “symbolic” and “economic” capital, how “prestige” functions in the industry, and the division of these dimensions within the “editorial” and “commercial” sectors, as well as how the industry has changed economically over the years. Chapter 2 delves into the