I tend to forget I have a sociology degree

It was always a companion major, first to biology (I was going to go into oecology, looking at how humans interact with their environment), then to history, where I studied primarily social and women's history. But stuff like this really interests the budding sociologist in me, and the title certainly attracted me....

America's Next Top Sociologist: A daylong photo shoot for Vogue pays only $150, women are like milk cartons, and other insights from the academic study of modeling

There's a long tradition among academics of embedding in an occupation to study it. In the middle of the last century, social psychologist Marie Jahoda worked in an English paper factory to learn about about the lives of factory girls. More recently, sociologist Loïc Wacquant studied boxers by becoming one, while Sudhir Venkatesh spent seven years with a gang in the Chicago projects. One academic worked as a cotton picker, another entered prison as an inmate.

Ashley Mears embedded as a model.

Her book, Pricing Beauty, shows the world of the aspiring model from the inside, where (mostly) women are utterly dispensable unless they have just the right quality, are often in a form of indentured servitude, and chasing a dream that for most never materialises. The more lucrative forms of modeling are eschewed for low-paying jobs that might mean more prestige. It sounds like a fascinating subject, from a sociological standpoint.