How Lia Sophia, Tastefully Simple and Pampered Chef are Taking Over Women’s Social Lives

I FELT PRETTY CONFIDENT that not a single person would come. Moments after hitting “Send,” I received four replies, all no’s, including one from a neighbor who’d hosted the purse party­ I’d gone to. Didn’t she owe me? Wasn’t that how this worked—I go to your party, you come to mine and don’t fabricate an improbable excuse like “My hubby and I have a date that night”?

Other neighbors declined:

“I’ll be on vacation.” (Code for: “Vicki, I had no idea you were a ‘jewelry party person.’”)

“I have to work that night.” (Code for: “There’s no way you’re going to guilt me into buying a stupid pair of earrings.”)

“I’ll be in a friend’s wedding that night.” (Code for: “You’re a loser.”)

Obviously, I had issues of my own. The main one was this: We’d been living in our South Jersey neighborhood for seven years, and we had yet to make many friends. Prospects improved when our oldest started kindergarten and I began chitchatting with parents at drop-off. But suburban social networking had proven harder than I ever imagined. I couldn’t risk social suicide, which in my mind translated to “jewelry party.”

Except, if I didn’t invite the neighborhood moms, whom would I invite? I decided to employ a bait-and-switch strategy: In the Evite, I sold it as “a cocktail party.” I promised gossip and a fancy libation, with a “buy two, get a third at 50 percent off” jewelry deal as an afterthought, as if, maybe, they wouldn’t notice.

And then … ding … a yes! My plan was working! I’d successfully manipulated one woman into coming to a party where she’d be manipulated into buying a necklace in order to be a good friend to me! Women doing favors for other women! Yes!

Not that she had to buy anything.

“No one puts a gun to your head,” insists Amy Robinson, spokesperson for the Direct Selling Association, the trade group that advocates for 200 direct sales companies, including Lia Sophia. Robinson sounds defensive, as if she actually believes there’s a line between “doing favors” and peer pressure. But in one sense she’s right: There were no guns.

“It might not be a literal gun, but come on,” counters Linda Abrams, a psychologist with Philly’s Council for Relationships who’s attended her fair share of home parties. “You don’t go into these things with a totally clean slate. Either you feel someone expects you’re going to buy, or you feel you should buy.”

I was proof that this was true. As I’d anticipated, agreeing to host Jenn’s party was the beginning of my end: I’d been added to, and would forever be on, the Party-Person List. Within a day, one of the women I’d invited to my party invited me to a party she was hosting.