Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model

Ashley Mears

University of California Press Ltd., England

Year 2011

Pages 325

This book offers rich, accessible analysis of the invisible ways in which gender, race, and class shape worth in the marketplace. The author, 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.