Semi-humor: "So women think about shopping once a minute?..."

Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2008-06-12 18:44

Article here. The article is funny, anyway. Excerpt:

'According to the study, three out of four women - blessed as they are with education, opportunity, independence and income of which poor Miss Davison could scarcely have dreamed - use their minds, once in every minute, to think about… shopping. That's 960 times a day, 6,720 times a week, and damnably close to the once every 52 seconds that men are believed to think about sex.

At least they can claim to have been programmed that way; the caveman had the propagation of a species to worry about. The modern woman with a fixation on shopping has nobody save herself to blame - and no, don't drag up the old excuse that she's under pressure from the fashion magazines.
...
They see the desperation, smell the fear, sense the insecurity and seize another opportunity to tar all women with the same brush: obsessive airheads, one and all. Surveys like this week's example, of course, do a splendid job of reinforcing the image and attitude towards us that inevitably follows. So, to all the compulsive shopping sisters out there, I ask this: next time a researcher innocently asks you how often you think about shopping - please, for all our sakes, just lie.'

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Comments

Through out history men have been enslaved due to their propensity to look for a woman. Let's see, where in history did the ruling class realize that if they could capture the women, that they in fact could entrapt the men? Yes, it has been done. The women are in fact weaker than men, not all but most, it is biological. What men have to understand is that if they want to be free, they need to do without for a while. Together we will rule, divided we will fail. Study anthropology, study psychology, hell!, study history!! Don't let them lie, as the truth shall set us all free!

David A. DeLong

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Submitted by David A. DeLong on Fri, 2008-06-13 01:47

"Once every minute". How long is "once" - what is the typical duration, in time, of the moment they are thinking about shopping? Let us assume it is five seconds (probably an overestimate). Now, the reality is that maybe they think about it for, say, a twenty-minute stretch like while "planning" a trip to the mall; so then they have thought of it for 240 5-second intervals. That tides them over for the next (240 - 20) = 220 minutes, or 3 hrs and 40 minutes - during which time they are unencumbered by these haunting thougts and are thus freed to concentrate on cleaning the house, picking up the kids, posting on feminazi blog sites, etc.

This reminds me of the old truism, "men think of sex once every two minutes". Same type of nonsense. One day some psychologist moron will categorize all our thoughts and tell us exactly what we are thinking at any given moment.

This story also reminds me of the kind of rubbish masquerading as "statistics" one finds in almost every article of every issue of "USA Today". Read that paper at your peril, with both eyes askance..expecially the stupid little box in the lower left corner of the first page of each issue. (yes, I myself was suckered into buying it sometimes, but only when 7-11 was out of the local rag. Now I go to a different convenience store where they don't run out of it.)

-ax

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Submitted by axolotl on Fri, 2008-06-13 05:35

The authoress of the article wrote - "It's no accident that nearly half of the women surveyed admitted to hiding their shopping and their spending from their male partners." (Funny that women surveyed about what they seek in a male partner consistently say that "honesty" is No. 1.)

Hiding a compulsive behavior is a characteristic of addicts. There is a reason why the term "she's a shopaholic" is so common.

There may be physiological reasons why women like to shop (and talk) way more than men. Brain research shows that women experience a serotonin "buzz" from these activities, not unlike a heroin high. (Ever look at the eyes of women shopping at a sale at the mall? It's like being in a George Romero zombie flick.)

Some 70% of all retail space in stores is targeted at women. And women control some 80% of family discretionary spending. All this catering to women in a society that supposedly "oppresses" them?

America used to be a culture based on sustainable lifestyles and self-sufficiency. Today it is a culture based on overconsumption and the insatiable need for more ... whatever the current version of "more" is...

I'm not sure I agree with the author that women are making a "choice" when they get sucked into the shopaholic syndrome.

You can only make a choice if you know that an alternative exists.

Our seamless advertising saturated media and being conditioned from birth that "the American Dream" is about consuming means that most people will never hear about alternative ways of thinking or living.

The most un-American thing you can do is to refuse to overconsume.

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Submitted by Roy on Fri, 2008-06-13 15:56