What good has the pandemic brought to Pakistan? I wonder if social scientists have taken upon themselves to find out how Pakistan’s society has changed, evolved or gone backwards during the complete and partial lockdowns. The lens we see Pakistan with only captures the rise and the fall of politics in which every institution has been drawn to spoil its worth. The extractive economic and political system of governance supports a handful of elites while the majority musses, fights, and gets frustrated over the state of affairs that hardly gives them relief in high employment and low cost of living. Bets are high on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). A game-changer. How will it turn around Pakistan’s elite economy to the one that benefits the so-called ordinary person remains to be seen. Until then, let us sneak into the fashion and the literati world to see how two diverse industries have come together, across the globe, to benefit from each other’s prowess and talent. Virtual book-reading clubs are being hosted and run by actresses, while fashion labels and icons promote and finance writers and intellectuals.
The American model and actress, Kaia Gerber, started her book club in spring last year during the lockdown and joined the “bookstgrammers”, “BookTokkers”, and promotional podcasts unheard of a decade ago. “Over the past 10 years, we have remembered how important it is not only to consume great books but to talk about that consumption,” said Lisa Lucas, the publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books. “It is so much more obvious in a digital world that we are all reading the same thing.”
Amerie, an American singer and songwriter, has been hosting a monthly book club, Between Two Books, on YouTube and Instagram with 600,000 followers combined. Actress Emma Roberts and her close friend Karah Preiss, a producer and writer, run Belletrist, an Instagram book club, since March 2017. For Roberts, talking about books is one of her favourite ways to engage with her followers and fans. “Talking about books just adds so much more substance to your online interactions.”
According to Eva Chen, Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships, #bookstragram found “a significant spike” in popularity during the pandemic. The spike gets even higher every first week of the new month when new titles are announced on feeds like Reese’s Book Club and Well-Read Black Girl.
Book reading is a serious business in countries across the Atlantic. It is not easy to find readers for a new book launch without an ambassador campaigning for it. The fashion industry has been generous in throwing its support behind the publishers and writers to keep the book-reading tradition alive. In a quid pro quo, the scholarly community has given back to the fashion industry by agreeing to confer a literary flair to the leading brands. On March 7, 2021, Valentino used text-only ads to promote its new collection. One of them featured a poem by Ocean Vuong, a Vietnamese-American poet.
Yet another is a meditation by Lisa Taddeo, an American author, journalist and two-time recipient of the Pushcart Prize, on her Italian mother.
The romance between the fashion industry and the intellectuals was taken a step ahead in February, when Valentino decided to nurture future culture leaders by providing 50 scholarships to the novelist Tomi Adeyemi’s educational project called #WritersRoadmapxValentino. Similarly, poet Rupi Kaur performed live on the brand’s Instagram. Valentino also published a chapbook carrying the poems of other poets.
A celebrity-promoted book without being a bestseller like, Being Lolita, by Alisson Wood, recorded colossal sales, with the likes of Gerber mentioning the book in their book clubs.
This author-as-model and model-as-author influencer dynamic is a phenomenon of society’s eagerness to see beauty and intellectuality as two sides of the same woman. She can be a book writer, a poet or a lyricist and also a model. Like Amanda, Gorman is a poet but has also modelled for leading labels. Kaia Gerber is gorgeous and a book lover with a penchant to talk about books to her followers. The fashion industry has moved from the typical women with the “sexual appeal” phenomenon, just like the literary world has moved away from sobriety being a necessary trait in an intellectual.
According to the market research company, NPD, book sales in America increased by 8.2% during the pandemic. It was the most significant increase since 2010.
So, what exactly are all these women doing with a book on social media? One part of their involvement with books is related to gaining monetary benefits; however, hosting or running a book club for a sustained period of time is not possible unless there is an interest in reading, consuming books, and talking about that consumption to their followers.
In the real world, it does not matter how many degrees we have if we are uninformed about our profession and the more significant issues confronting life. Scholars believe that not everything in life can be seen in black and white. One has to traverse the grey area. It is here that the more significant issues confronting us lie. There is a limit to textbooks to push us through the success ladder. For a trajectory to grow from being moderate to exceptional, one has to rely on self-education, of which book reading is an essential and indispensable part.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 25th, 2021.
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