Today, we break down the allure of Nara Smith (@Nara Smith) and the fantasy she’s created through her content. She is one of the most interesting sociological case studies of conspicuous waste in action. This was such an interesting video to make and I do plan on making more of these! Let me know who else you think would be a good case study to look at.

Have you seen this face before? For those of you who haven't, this is Nora Smith, a lifestyle creator who is known for standing in front of a marble counter in these flowing dresses and making something from scratch that no reasonable person needs to make from scratch. She'll make marshmallows or pop tarts, even cereal. Her videos rack up millions, tens of millions of views, and while she's not the only person making videos like this, she's definitely the most prominent. But this got me wondering, what's the fascination with her? Why is it that we can acknowledge the absurdity and the fantasy of what she's doing, but can't help but watch? Well, to answer this, we need to look to American sociologist Thorstein Veble and his 1899 text, The Theory of the Leisure Class. His foundational argument is that in stratified societies, status is communicated not through what you produce, but through what you visibly declined to produce. An example he used was the aristocratic wife who didn't cook, whose refinement was a signal of her family's standing. Labor for productive reasons in Veble and's framework is tainted and signals necessity, and necessity is the enemy of prestige. But what makes Norma Smith so interesting is that it's an inversion of this framework, but it arrives at the same destination. She's in the kitchen, she's doing the labor, but the labor is so exquisitely unnecessary that it transcends utility and becomes its own form of waste. Veble and also had a term for this called conspicuous waste, which I have a video breaking down the three ways distance from economic necessity gets demonstrated by the elite. The cereal is not made from scratch because it's cheaper or healthier, but because the time it requires is itself the signal. She's spending two hours on a task that could be accomplished in two minutes, and the entire point is that she can afford to. Her time is so abundant that it can be poured into gestures that produce nothing tradable and nothing scalable. And as an aside, the ultimate irony is that she'll make from scratch foods that are entirely defined by their convenience. She takes food engineering for speed and submits them to the maximum possible domestic labor. It is conspicuous waste in its purest form, but here's where it gets even weirder. The labor that signals conspicuous waste is also generating income. Her kitchen is a set, she has a specific wardrobe. The conspicuous waste is being monetized, which means it is in fact tradable, producing brand deals and sponsorships. The performance of Veble and Ian Leisure is itself productive labor, and she is working quite seriously at the appearance of not needing to work. And by not positioning herself as an entrepreneur and instead a wife and mother, she's able to create an aesthetic coherence in her world, so her acts feel timeless rather than a performance. There's no wink, there's no ironic distance, and she can't acknowledge the absurdity for she would collapse the entire illusion. The power of conspicuous waste is its absolute sincerity. Now I'm telling you I could spend days talking about distance from economic necessity, and I very well am I on this page. So if you want to continue this conversation, please like and follow, and let me know your thoughts or comments.