Iconic Films

2 for 1 tickets to Singin' In The Rain, this coming Monday. Book now

Navigation - link to other main sections from here

From The Times

December 22, 2007

How boobonomics explains the world

Exactly how ‘empowered' were those girls that lined up enthusiastically for the Manchester United party?

Janice Turner

A friend who spends his life negotiating with the agents of glamour models explained to me the principles of “boobonomics”. Let's assume a pretty girl, who has been snapped in her bikini for a local newspaper, seeks a big-time career. Her agent phones a men's magazine and proposes for a given sum, say £3,000, that she pose in lingerie.

If she's a hit with the readers, her agent will then suggest that for a greater sum, say £5,000, she will pose topless, but with her nipples concealed by her cupped fingers (“hand bra”). Subsequently her fee will rise for each coy permutation: “hair bra” or “girl-on-girl bra” (two models face to face shielding each other's breasts). Eventually, once this dance of the seven thongs has been exhausted and readers are believed to be slavering with anticipation, the agent will propose that for a huge sum — say £50,000 — the girl will finally reveal all.

But the harshest principle of boobonomics is that after this shoot, the value of the girl's assets — which is what they are in a technical, business sense — collapses. From this point she will only receive £20K for full topless, a sum she only recently received for showing far less. Her product life cycle is reaching an end. Now, however, agents have a new strategy for reviving the brand, rather as when Kit Kat launched peanut or orange-flavoured variants. He proposes that his client have a breast enlargement: would the magazine be interested in the first pictures, you know, when the scars have healed? The going rate for new knockers will never match her initial “reveal”, but raises her value momentarily to, say, £35,000. Jordan, the Milton Friedman of boobonomics, has amassed a great fortune increasing her breast size by increments in three operations.

On the Today programme this week I heard the writer Natasha Walter and presenter Sarah Montague despair of the thousands of young women who send their topless photos to a lads' mag Assess My Breasts website to be rated out of ten by anonymous blokes. They were particularly incensed that the girls claimed to do this because they find it “liberating” and “empowering”. But these concepts have been leeched of noble feminist meaning. They are now mere buzzwords employed by young women to give a hand bra of respectability to their real intent, which is to ascertain their boobonomic worth.

By this I don't mean that all these girls wish to become glamour models, although many clearly do, since for some it is arguably no more soul-destroying — and certainly more lucrative — than toiling in a call centre. Yet even those among the feisty high-achieving gals who form a majority in our universities, and may well have loving, equitable relationships with decent boyfriends, still can't resist checking their boobonomic bank balances.

Of course the correlation between sexual allure and money is timeless. The principles of boobonomics — build up interest, don't put out too much too soon — are not dissimilar from The Rules, the American dating strategies designed to bag a husband, which in turn echo the fan-rustling courtships of earlier eras. It is just that the link between sex and money is more pronounced than ever before.

The trend towards obsessive female grooming, surgical enhancement and tarty clobber is to maximise your worth in the sexual stock exchange: whether the market you are trading in is porn stardom or marriage. When a man who slept with a beautiful friend of mine remarked with satisfaction “I would have paid for that”, he expected her to take it as a compliment.

What happens when the imbalance in boobonomic transactions is too great is essentially the story of the Manchester United Christmas party. Here we have young men earning sums they literally cannot spend: their desire to consume to the fullest extent of their wealth is only frustrated by their mortality. Even an England international can't drive more than a single £150,000 sports car at once, has only one body to dress in fine clothes, to tank up with cocaine or Cristal.

But with sex the possibilities are limitless. “Dogging”, “roasting”, cruising the streets propositioning random women for sex (often successfully) are not actual monetary exchanges, although the women who agree clearly feel a car-park knee-trembler with a terrace god is confirmation of their high boobonomic value. But Premier League footballers also frequent high-class prostitutes because they can buy not only bodies but discretion: the sum they regularly pay them exceeds what the women would receive for a kiss-and-tell. And, crucially, all this sexual excess is no longer policed by public shame.

Rio Ferdinand announced two weeks before the great debauch that the team would invite the 100 most beautiful girls in Manchester. One hundred women: what an epic droit de seigneur. Not including the wives and girlfriends who, when they learnt they were banned from the party, must have grimly surveyed their Barratt mansions, their Hermès handbag hangars, contemplated their five-carat Christmas spangles, and tried not to wonder what lay ahead in the Great John Street Hotel's 30 reserved suites and penthouse hot-tub.

Perhaps some of the girls believed they could cash in that night. The beauty queens, the Hollyoaks stars, the models hired by the dozen through agencies, maybe they really thought this was their opportunity to bag a millionaire player. Others, the goosepimpled girls, not just from Manchester but far beyond, still queuing in the street at 3am hoping to be admitted, knew they were merely buying a lottery ticket.

But to the footballers themselves, any woman who came to this party had already been purchased. Why else would they be there? They were a facility paid for with the £4,000-a- head players' whip-round, laid on like the free pink champagne bar. The women guests had their mobile phones confiscated, just as Rebecca Loos, arriving at a Spanish hotel for her coupling with David Beckham, was told by security guards — following some established protocol — to hand over her bag and shoes.

Guests at the party complained that Wayne Rooney hinted at wanting threesomes, that Irish defender John O'Shea lifted passing skirts, that one girl was dragged unwillingly by a drunken player from the dancefloor to the toilets, that they felt like “pieces of meat in a cattle market”. But in a world powered by crude boobonomics, where there is a grotesque elision between sex worker and “empowered” girl, rape — or something not unlike it — was waiting to happen that night.

This is all the direct responsibility of certain sections of the media who build up the likes of Jordan and the WAGs and who then have the temerity to put the behaviour of the footballers on their front page with a lurid but disapproving headline. The behaviour of these footballers was despicable but not unprecedented. Men with money and power have always done this from ancient Rome to modern politicians and rock stars. It's a sad indictment of modern attitudes that so many 21st century women are so desperate to be degraded and treated this way that they will queue.

The world has always been confused about the nature of female empowerment, women who wear burqas in this country claim to feel empowered after all, but the media tries to have it both ways. If they present us with WAGs and glamour models as role models then what we get is what we saw last week, women parading themselves and allowing themselves to be treated in this way. Naive and stupid and really rather depressing.

Paul Owen, Birmingham, UK

Fascinating, enlightening and rather frightening. How sad that young women should feel the need to behave this way, just for a bit of "fun". Or maybe their shot at becoming a glamour model. Or why not a porn star whilst they're about it? Their lives must be pitiful.

However, modern man doesn't disappoint either. His capacity to conduct himself like a total chump has become commonplace. The comment made to your "beautiful friend" made me cringe with embarrassment. What a delightful "compliment" to pay a woman.

Peter Koeb, Geneva, Switzerland

Matt Busby. Wasn't he manager and mentor to George Best,?

I doubt if George paid for the discretion of high class tarts when he he had a brace of Miss World winners gratis.

O tempora O mores!

Tom Sykes, Huddersfield, UK

Maybe its machismo team public relations. Keep the male fans drooling and imagining. but it's still just as creepy and distorted as hazing no matter how you cut it. Masturbating with an unknown stranger in a public setting - yuk!

Emma H., Ottawa,

Nothing much has changed in the last 10,000 years then. And, Manchester0 seems strangely ignorant of this. After all, didn't George Best function under Matt Busby's managership? Blokes, boobs, booze and bad behaviour will always seek each other's company, sadly.

John, Birmingham, UK

Once you accept that your body is yours, to do what you like with, the next obvious step is to trade favours on the market. Hence boobonomics.

Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK

The Beatles ditty, Money cant buy me Love, may have made a good pop song but it wasn t something anyone believed at the time. It is just that most of us didn t have the means to contradict it. Attitudes haven t changed. It is just that more people now have options they didn t have 50 years ago, and some are inevitably more subtle than others.

Henry Percy, London, UK

Splendid. It's been ages since I've read anything this clear, this real on gender politics, or gender economics I guess. Just wonderful. Thank you.

Fred, London,

Is Janice envious she wasn't invited? If not, what's the problem?

Don't tell me that thegirls didn't know exactly what they were getting into. They could no doubt hope to pick up a multimillionaire footballer, or sell a kiss 'n' tell story to the Sunday papers.

The question is whether anyone would be happy to see their daughter attending such a function. It's hardly a story about feminism, but about morals.

John Austin, London, England

I suppose boys will be boys is about right and any girls who attended the party who didn't know what might happen must be extraordinarily naive. Boys don't pay Â£4000 for a night playing monopoly!

However the people who come out of it worst are the wives and girlfirends who were prepared to accept their being excluded from the party so their "partners" could "party" without them.

What it confirms, although I suppose its hardly a surprise, is that these women have no real relationship with their partners, certainly no pride, and are prepared to put up with anything for the financial lifestyle being with them brings. They're bought and paid for! Now what does that make them?!

Nick, Stoke,

we really have nothing to say about what people do in the privacy of closed premises (whether we approve or not). does it really matter what people do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses?
i agree with aidan (new york) it is a well written and witty piece of journalism.

bruce, apt, france

Melaragni- Cristal is a brand of champagne favoured by those with money to burn. The article isn't referring to crystal meth as I think you believe.

However your point about cocaine still stands.

RL, Gloucester, UK

If those people are the "best" the world has to offer, the world is in trouble.

Justin, London,

Janice Turner oversteps gender egalitarianism into recasting an entire sex in her own image, and with her own values.

Feminism must not be about priviledged white middle class women determining how other people should or should not behave - it must be limited to ensuring there are no artificial barriers to women wanting to pursue their own interests in the world.

Welcome to a diverse society Janet :)

lofi, london,

All this, the party, the fact women actually want to attend the party, the fact that the men want to hold the party in the first place, and the virtual public "support" for such functions, is a reflection of the tawdry nature of the UK's sense of public social interaction and responsibility. A once proud and civilised (and civilising) culture in steep decline.

A.Newman, London, UK

My gran's mortified that Wayne Rooney didn't invite her to the Man U Christmas party.

Rodney, Manchester,

Sometimes I realy wish I didn't love football so much - I am one of those that perhaps contibutes to the ego and pockets of these players being so bolstered. Unfortunately however, football is in my blood. If I could have a rugby transfusion I would. The people involved with football are quite frankly, despite their wealth, the common dregs of society.

Great article.

Paul, Southampton, UK

What a superbly informative article.

The reference to the use of 'coke' and 'crystal', if true, explains a lot of the foulmouthed, childish behaviour - and underachievment at international level - on the football pitch by these so called 'stars' in their day jobs.

While coke and crystal are probably not performance enhancing substances, their use is illegal. Why isn't football treated to the same rigorous testing regime as athletics?

Melaragni, London,

Football is clearly more anti-social than fox hunting and should be made illegal forthwith.

Stephen Green, Correns, France

So people pay Â£30-Â£50 a ticket and several hundred a year for a season ticket to sit, for seveal months, in the cold, being fed a diet of dodgy pies and even dodgier football in order to fund this state of affairs.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Eddie Reader, birmingham, england

I'd say the girls who went to that party knew what they were getting themselves into.

Redcliffe, London,

Boys will be boys and girls will be girls.
These girls knew the score.
Rape, I doubt it.

Robert Parker, Royal Leamington Spa., England.

Nice article but what to do? The women went there knowing, in the bottom of their hearts it they're honest, what it was likely to be like. So how morally can they complain when they prostituted themselves by going?

The men also should know better and, again if they're honest, knew what it was likely to be like and how it might end up. So they also can't complain if they're shamed in public.

Hmm, where does that go? Two groups of immoral people enjoying themselves. I feel sorry for their values but that's me. Good luck to them.

Chris, London,

I wonder what Sir Matt Busby would have made of this? Fergie may be be a better manager of football teams, but as a manager of men and boys he is a disgrace.

ManchesterO, Manchester,

Wow!

Janice come to the US and write this kind of stuff for those of us who are sick to death of circumlocution and lawyerly ""...in the area of.." kind of reporting/journalism.

Very good piece. Thank you.

Aidan, New York, USA

It's a very transient world being a sexy model , pop star or a Premiership footballer. They only have a few years at the top, then they have to content themselves with lower status and income. Only a very few - Kate Moss, U2, Beckam, seem to have retained their brand image and status as their best years recede into history.

Steve, London, UK

Times Recommends

OUR COLUMNISTS

Janice Turner

Janice Turner joined The Times in 2003 from The Guardian, and writes mainly, but not exclusively, on family matters and women's issues. Her column appears on Saturdays