The Strip Club as Scientific Laboratory

<p>While this is kind of old I was surprized not to see it in the archive.</p> <p>Have you ever felt in a club that this was all just some big scientific experiment that you were engaged in?&nbsp; Or that the women and you were being manipulated by hidden forces beyond either of your knowledge?</p> <p>Ok, that may just be paranoia, but that doesn't mean it isn't the truth.</p> <p>Human behavior, particularly sexual behavior and attraction is very hard to study.&nbsp; People either exaggerate or forget, and sample sizes are small.&nbsp; Many studies have people comparing pictures, which hardly compare to the full range of human interaction. In addition people change their behavior when they know that they are being measured.</p> <p>What you really need is a large sample size of women and a large sample size of men.&nbsp; Then have all the women interact in person with all the men in the same environment.&nbsp; The women should all be trying as much as possible to be sexually desirable and the men should not be socially constrained from judging the women.&nbsp; But hold it, you say, that is exactly what a strip club is!</p> <p>And that was also the conclusion of some psychologists from the University of New Mexico.&nbsp; In addition they realized that there was also a built-in way to measure how sexy the men found the women with out asking awkward questions or having to sit there with a clipboard taking notes.&nbsp; You just measure their tip income.</p> <p>So what were these scientists trying to learn?&nbsp; If you have ever dealt with dogs or cats or livestock you know that for most mammals the females signal that they are fertile.&nbsp; This is called estrus.&nbsp; Humans dont.&nbsp; You can't walk down the street and notice the roughly one in ten adult women who are about to or just have released an egg. This was thought to be an advantage to humans to encourage men to care for and stay with women all the time.&nbsp; Also that it might result in more harmonious societies.&nbsp; If you have ever seen tomcats fight over a female in heat you might agree.</p> <p>But what if women hadn't really lost the ability to signal their fertility to men but only that humans had lost the ability to consciously realize that we were doing it?&nbsp; So flyers and e-mails went off to Albuquerque area topless clubs recruiting women (paid $30 for completing the 60 day study).&nbsp; The women completed a basic health questionaire including method of birth control if any.&nbsp; They were also given a anonymous code for logging into a web site after every shift.&nbsp; The site would ask the number of hours worked, the tips recieved, and whether they had just started or ended their period that day.</p> <p>The first interesting thing they learned was that the dancers who were on some form of hormonal birth cotrol, such as the pill, had lower tip incomes pretty much across the entire month.&nbsp; Now it is safe to say that every dancer comes to every shift trying everything at their disposal (moves, scent, grooming, cosmetics, clothes, vocal tone, banter) to be as sexy as possible.&nbsp; But the women who were also going through a normal monthly hormonal cycle and releasing an egg somehow were doing it better.&nbsp; One might have thought that maybe during their period the pill users might have had an advantage since their periods are generally shorter and milder in symptoms.&nbsp; But raging PMS be damned the non-pill users still earned more.&nbsp; However all of the women tended to earn less during those days.</p> <p>It got even more interesting when they plotted the earnings of the non-pill using women across their cycle.&nbsp; On the days around when they would be fertile there was a big jump in tip income!</p> <p>Now, this has to be completely subconscious.&nbsp; If you looked at a dancer and in any way realized 'you know, if I had unprotected sex with her she would be really likely to get pregnant' it wouldn't make you want to take her to the VIP room.&nbsp; Also if the dancers were thinking 'ooh I so have an egg ready for these guys' it would't put an extra something in their routine as a result.&nbsp; Yet somehow, underneath the surface that is exactly what is happening.&nbsp; In other studies that had interviewed strippers about their work none of them mentioned a middle of the month boost in their tips.&nbsp; So the women weren't noticing it even though they were likely taking in more money on those days month after months, year after year.</p> <p>What is tantalizinly left unanswered however is exactly how women are broadcasting their daily fertility level.&nbsp; It most likely isn't clothes or the dance moves themselves.&nbsp; Laboratory studies have shows several subtle changes in scent, facial attractiveness, soft-tissue body symmetry, waist-to-hip ratio, and verbal creativity and fluency.&nbsp; Yet all are so subtle or subconscious that nobody ever looks at a woman and says 'yup, definitly ready to get knocked up today'.&nbsp; <br /> <br /> So if a familiar dancer at a club has an extra hotness today it might actually be coming from her ovaries!&nbsp; <br /> <br /> Link to full publication:<a href="http://www.unm.edu/~gfmiller/cycle_effects_on_tips.pdf"><br /> <br /> http://www.unm.edu/~gfmiller/cycle_effects_on_tips.pdf</a></p>