So I've been off of here for quite a while.
Here is an interesting nugget:
Lap dancers earn more when they are most fertile
“BECAUSE academics may be unfamiliar with the gentlemen's club sub-culture, some background may be helpful to understand why this is an ideal setting for understanding real-world attractiveness effects of human female oestrus.”
No doubt readers of The Economist are equally unfamiliar with this sub-culture, but for Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, who penned the words above in a paper just published in Evolution and Human Behaviour, such clubs are a field site as revealing of human biology as the Serengeti is of the biology of lions and antelopes.
...
This theory is based on the idea that in evolutionary terms it benefits women to disguise when they are fertile so that their menfolk will stick around all the time. ...
However, this should result in an evolutionary arms race between the sexes, as men evolve ever-heightened sensitivity to signs of female fertility. Dr Miller thought lap-dancing clubs a good place to study this arms race, because male detection of female fertility cues would probably translate into an easily quantifiable signal, namely dollars earned.
...
The results support the idea that if evolution has favoured concealed ovulation in women, it has also favoured ovulation-detection in men. The average earnings per shift of women who were ovulating was $335. During menstruation (when they were infertile) that dropped to $185—about what women on the Pill made throughout the month. The lessons are clear. A woman is sexier when she is most fertile. And if she wishes to earn a good living as a dancer, she should stay off the Pill.
Anything in the name of science. Of course, one needs a standardized client, right? Complete with subsidies from fed.gov!
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