Social Econ Blog

The LATimes runs a feature on Joe Francis -- creator of the "Girls Gone Wild" empire. While the article is pretty disturbing (and ultimately unflattering toward Mr. Francis), I was particularly perplexed by one prospective girl's motivation for participation:

I ask her why she wants to appear on "Girls Gone Wild" and she looks me in the eye and says, "I want everybody to see me because I'm hot. ... If you do this, you might get noticed by somebody to be an actress or a model." I ask her why she wants to get noticed. "You want people to say, 'Hey, I saw you.' Everybody wants to be famous in some way. Getting famous will get me anything I want. If I walk into somebody's house and said, 'Give me this,' I could have it."

Now, I am all for people investing in their social capital, but I just don't get this stuff. Are there really net increases in these girls social capital (in both the short and long run)? Do they actually enhance their social status? Are they ever "discovered"? I gotta think that the expected benefits are pretty low. So either these girls totally misperceive the benefits or they just don't think that the costs are that high. Now, I am total prude, so I think the costs are high; however, maybe they don't think it is that big a deal. I am curious, though, how much alcohol and the crowd change the perceived costs. That is, in the absence of alcohol and/or a raucous crowd how many of these girls would pose for these videos? Related to this, how much ex post regret and shame is there? Do people fail to consider these costs, do they just discount them substantially, or do these costs just not exist among this population?

Anyhow, this is a very strange labor market where the "compensation" for "services rendered" is almost entirely social (the t-shirt they receive can't really be an important part of the compensation). That a company can obtain the vital piece of capital for their products at essentially no cost to them simply by offering people a chance at "fame" is, for lack of a better term, fascinating.