The XX Factor: What women really think.

The $53,000 Question

Meghan, that study on hormones causing wild-eyed shopping sprees among British women might irk those sensitized to stories blaming estrogen for every whimper, whine, or catfight under the sun. But let's not forget that men have hormones, too! And they do even stupider things. The unseemly recessionary splurge on a purse or bangle is nothing compared with this doozy of a story from Florida, summed up as follows:

Cost of undergraduate degree from Georgia Tech: $100,000.

Night of partying at a strip club: $53,000.

Dad’s reaction to son’s $53,000 one-night bill: priceless.

Snap! Nothing like a booze-fueled, grope-heavy graduation night on the town to hammer home the lessons of the credit crunch.

Now, from a strictly scientific standpoint, a sampling of 443 British women has more clout than this random tale of a frat boy gone wrong. But doesn’t this kind of lend credence to the theory of hormones? Casino owners provoke profligacy with mere oxygen—surely the pheromones hothoused in a dive bar full of oiled-up strippers in the Florida panhandle are 10 times more potent.

No one seems to have much pity for the frat boy. Because, duh. The real question is why the dad let his son go out and buy the sexual attention at all? Though I suppose, in a roundabout way, that’s what clothes-obsessed women are doing in reverse.