Elites, bodies, and gender: Women’s appearance as class distinction

Abstract

Despite the importance of both gender and elites in contemporary social life, few empirical works examine gender among the elite. With a focus on embodiment, we develop a gendered theory of elite display, grounded in ethnographic observations of two elite spaces in which women are prominent: VIP clubs and philanthropy galas in the U.S. and Europe. Using a Goffmanian perspective, we examine the micro-dynamics through which elite bodies express status, in particular for women. We argue that, in elite social spaces, women’s bodies signify wealth, and their bodily rituals and displays concretize status distinctions. To do so, we analyze the management of bodies backstage, frontstage, and off-stage, showing that a hallmark of elite display is the careful obfuscation of differences and gaps between backstage and frontstage spaces, which serves to naturalize the status superiority of elites.