Club Promotion: To Empower or to Exploit?

Everyone knows that girls have easy access to fraternities on a Friday night. The same concept occurs at high end celebrity clubs and bars.

Ashley Mears, a Boston University assistant professor of sociology went undercover as a nightclub "girl", attractive women brought into clubs by promotors to attract wealthy men. Mears finds that "the girls are brought in to attract big-spending clients from among the young global elite, willing to spend thousands of dollars on alcohol". 

Although these young women are beautiful models, they are easily interchangeable and looked at as "currency". Models and other "girls" are recruited through friends, or fashion agencies. Promotors get paid a hefty sum (>$1,000/night!) yet the "girls" are only paid in drinks and gifts. If they're lucky, they may even be offered housing.  The "girls" bring in more revenue to the nightclubs than anything the gifts and drinks could be worth.  Mears puts this system in perspective as a consensual case of trafficking women. 

So why do the girls continue to let the men exploit them? Well, some do not realize they are being used and only see the free perks. Others find "business opportunities", yet I find that hard to believe at a nightclub where people just want to have fun. The simplest reason: these young women, like most people, just want an ego boost and to feel attractive. 

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