I keep seeing challenges that result in my Admired ability rising.
What use is there for this ability?
It's not hugely helpful, but if you have 15 Admired you can laugh off Scandal instead of needing a friend to redirect it onto.
Edit from 2013: Admired has been renamed to Making Waves, and is now critical to making promoted professions available.
As with all qualities in Echo Bazaar, a high admired score could in the future unlock storylets and/or opportunity cards, but Merus is right, the only use for Admired at the moment appears to be laughing off scandal.