In the past economics students studied widgets and macro-economic cycles. It appears that today’s students have eschewed such dry content in favor of analyzing lap dances and monthly cycles. Three economics researchers published their study on the differences in suggestive behavior exhibited by strippers during different parts of their monthly fertility cycles. As described by MindHacks:

A study shortly to be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour found that lap dancers in their most fertile phase of the menstrual cycle earned much more than dancers in the least fertile phase.

…they recorded a large amount of data over time – 296 work shifts in total, representing about 5300 lap dances.

Dancers who were not on the contraceptive pill and at their most fertile time earned an average of $70 dollars an hour, twice the $35 average of women at their least fertile phase.

Dancers who took the contraceptive pill, which ‘flattens’ the hormone cycle, didn’t show a peak in earnings when the peak in fertility would normally occur.

Hilariously the academics felt the need to explain how lap dances work even though anyone who has ever been to such an establishment know that the nerdy, professor-looking dudes sitting in the back are some of the most regular customers (right behind construction workers and salesmen).

Club patrons will often “sample” several different dancers with one lap dance each before picking one for a more expensive multisong bout of dancing. Thus, patrons can assess the relative attractiveness of different women through intimate verbal, visual, tactile, and olfactory interaction, and those attractiveness judgments can directly influence women’s tip earnings, through the number of 3-min dances that patrons request from each dancer.

While some might rely on their “olfactory” senses, I think the majority will go for the dance with the largest rack relative to body size. Perhaps that’s a good next topic for these professors to go out and study.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 9:53 pm by Insider and is filed under I knew I'd use my Econ major. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.