I will confess!
Many years ago when men were giants and women were angels "The Guys" all lived in this house in St. Paul.
The house was a holy and sacred temple to bachelortude.
Owned by one particularly savvy member of "The Guys," he would rent it out to 4 other friends. However, even if you didn't live there, if you were one of "The Guys" you could walk in at any hour (doors always unlocked), crash there any night, and to appease the Great Gods of Bachelortude, occasionally bring a sacrifical 12 pack of beer.
Thusly, my friends and I would pay nightly homage to "The House of Bachelortude" by drinking, playing 16 person X-Box linked Halo Fests till 3 AM, WarCraft, Texas Hold 'Em, throwing the occasional party, and I explicity remember one night requiring banning all communications with girlfriends (UNLESS the girlfriends came over bearing gifts of beer and food which would earn them a 5 minute audience with their boyfriend, whose dumbasses should have been covering my approach to the blue team's base with the sniper rifle while playing Sidewinder in Halo, but oh no, somebody has got to go talk to his girlfriend, meanwhile I'm run over with a tank and the Blue Team has the bazooka and shotgun and is heading over to our base...I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU KILGS!!!!!!)
And life was good.
But as this was The House of Bachelortude the magazine subscriptions were not exactly The Economist or the Journal of American Political Economy...actually it was FHM and Playboy.
Not that we had a choice in the matter you understand. The Great Gods of Bachelortude DEMANDED IT! So what were we to do? You don't want to incur the wrath of The Great Gods of Bachelortude!
Anyway, as I said before I will confess, that while waiting for the pizza to show up, or being recently defeated in a game of Texas Hold 'Em I would peruse the most recent issue of Playboy that would be strewn on the table (to appease The House of Bacherlortude of course).
While not as attractive as some of the charts I've seen in The Economist, I will admit some of the girls were OK looking. Of course as any good economist would do, I read the footnotes to make sure the source is reputable, the methodology sound, etc. But instead of reading "Source: Retroactively Applying Standardized Unemployment Rates in Sweden, OECD Sept 12, 2006" the footnotes to these Playboy models was;
"Bambi Jones, Age 23, Height 5'2" weight 105 pounds. Degree - Bachelors of Arts in Sociology from the University of Arizona."
And then my economic spidey senses started tingling. For fresh in my memory was when I was stood up, not once, not twice, but thrice by a drop dead, Playboy-esque girl who had went to school for cosmotology. This observation, combined with my utter disdain for fluffy majors got me thinking;
Was there a correlation???
Do Playboy Playmates pursue easy degrees?
And if so, do they pursue these degrees because they're dumb?
Or are they just bidding their time in college majoring in philosophy whilst scoping out for a husband effectively earning themselves an MRS. degree?
Furthermore, should they not find a husband are these degrees so worthless that they resort to baring it all to make ends meet?
And finally, can what daddy's little girl major in be a predictor of whether millions of young horn-dog guys will see daddy's little girl spread eagle on a centerfold?
So I set forth to conduct this serious study. Selflessly dedicating my time for the sake of advancing our understanding of economics. And took it upon myself to study all the Playboy Playmate's profiles and see what they majored in.
No no, you don't have to thank me. It's my patriotic and American duty to foist this heavy burden upon myself. And it is the least I can do to repay the great freedoms our forefathers fought so valiantly for.
The results?
Here is a breakdown of what Playboy Playmates studied in college;
*Note, the vast majority of Playmates either didn't attend or list whether they attended college. This includes all the data found on Wikipedia for all playmates going back to 1980. An interesting side note, the further back you go, less and less playmates went to college reflecting the increasing trend in labor force participation by women. Total number of playmates that listed a major was 54, understand this does not mean they finished college or earned a degree. It just mentioned college.
What is amazing is how there is not one, NOT ONE COMPUTER PROGRAMMER OR PRE-MED OR PHYSICS OR OR ACCOUNTING OR ENGINEERING MAJOR (bar Cindy Crawford who spent 1 quarter in chemical engineering, but never graduated). The majority of playmates pursue degrees in utter fluff, the biggest pulls being "psychology," "acting/theater," "journalism," "communications," "education," "junior college," and that weak pathetic worthless degree that tries to score some credibility as passing itself off as a "business major;" marketing.
I further simplified this chart between what I like to call "Fluffy El Crapo Degrees" and "Real Degrees That Will Get You A Freaking Job."
A full 82% of the playmates that went to college, effectively wasted their time and pursued worthless degrees, whilst a paltry 18% actually went and did something useful with their time (sadly even this can't be said as most of them didn't graduate with those degrees, when you adjust for this it literally is only about 3%).
So what lesson can we take away from this fellow aspiring and junior deputy economists?
How can we end this post so that in a Stan and Kyle like way we say,
"you know, I think we learned something here today."
Well, for one, maybe Larry Summers shouldn't have been punished for his truthful statement that women just aren't cutting it in the real sciences. Maybe good ol' Larry was just trying to prevent some of these young girls from having to resort to posing nude to make ends meet or make a living. Maybe Larry was trying to actually do something tangible that would help close the wage gap between men and women by getting more women into the sciences and engineering.
Secondly, maybe we ought to cut back on fluffy subjects in not just the high schools but the colleges as well. Enough of the "pscyhology" or "sociology" or "communications" crap. And certainly do away with "peace studies" programs. Maybe instead of enticing women with the false illusion that they're going to make it big or even make it period with touchy feely degrees that we show them just what caliber go and pursue such worthless degrees and encourage them to pursue careers that would actually increase their incomes and make them TRULY independent women.
Third, upper middle income fathers who think "daddy's little girl can do no wrong," think daddy's little girl is superior to all other humans, and think nothing of preparing his little girl for the real world beyond giving her his credit card for a trip to the mall better pull his head out of his ass and start fathering instead of thinking his arrogance and bank account is going to carry through his little suburbanite princesses. That you might want to instill a little work ethic in her and teach her the merits of work and self-reliance before you go and buy her a little Honda Del Sol or Pontiac Sunfire.
And finally, if daddy's little girl goes into the fluff-stuff for college, be aware that the day might just come when you go to the office and all the other guys will see just how much your little princess has grown up.
However, there is a way to prevent this embarrassing situation. Note that the sciences;
engineering, computers, medicine, physics, chemistry, etc.
are like a vaccine practically innoculating your little girl from ever showing her assets to the entire world and all the horn-dogs at The House of Bachelortude. Again, Cindy Crawford is the only one to major in engineering, and she gave that up because she had the rare opportunity to become a bona fide supermodel. And although I didn't add it up, the majority of "post playboy careers" a lot of these playmates had were either "dancers" or "strippers."
Only problem is we keep on telling women that math is too "tough" for them and channel them to the majors and careers that are less paying than subjects that have traditionally been pursued by men.
Of course, when we say this, everybody gets in a hissy fits and demands blood. Larry Summers lost his job over it. Feminists and leftists don't like it because women entering the sciences would result in more capitalists and Republicans and take away from the liberal arts.
Besides which...it just occurred to me...if we encouraged girls to major in the sciences, where would we get our Playboy Playmates?
Uhhh..sooo...ummm, yeah, on second thought ENCOURAGE YOUR YOUNG DAUGHTERS TO MAJOR IN FLUFF! We wouldn't want them getting real jobs with real careers. We men need them desperate enough to disrobe for our viewing pleasure.
Besides which, THE GODS OF BACHELORTUDE DEMAND IT!!!!!
Ironically, and VERY SADLY, the best source for finding playmate majors was Wikipedia, and I did not see one, NOT ONE naked chick!
ReplyDeleteOnly in economics can you conduct a study of playboy playmates and not see anything.
"Only in economics can you conduct a study of playboy playmates and not see anything."
ReplyDeleteThat would be true in sociology, too.
I liked this analysis, it's kind of fluffy fun, but it doesn't mean much. For example, almost every CEO in America has what you call a 'fluff' degree. And your comment that marketing degrees trying to pass themselves off as business degrees is strange, since I consider business degrees to be trying to pass them selves off as real degrees. The cirriculum in business schools lack true academic research requirements and rigor. Beyond business schools being just academic fluff, they have no clue as to the intrinsic value of knowledge. If bus. schools hate the idea of real academic pursuits - a "universal" education institution encompassing all knowledge (hence the term "Univers-ity", then bus. schools should form a distinct and separate network of a new type of institution.
ReplyDeletePeople with your attitude usually have no problem with things like academic censorship, and corporations/governments dictating the direction of academic pursuits. Corporate and government collusion to control everything (which is, by the way, the definition of fascism), has strong advocates today, and the author of this analysis is a prime example.
I think people with this mindset just hate freedom in academia because detailed studies of the behaviour and motives of this new corpo/gov world scares the daylights out of them. I'm always, and I mean always, wary of those who tell others what they should or shouldn't read or study, what our free and open academic institutions should or shouldn't do. I thought we got rid of the Hitlers and the Stalins of the world.
Cappy, I believe I have found a use for my MA in crap (aka philosophy) that even you will find incredibly valuable and useful.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, it will also be very short lived.
Long story short, the department through which I earned my MA hired me to teach two philosophy 101 sections this fall semester, but they have found PhD's to take these sections from me in the future, so I will not be kept on after this term. To the extent that I am able, I'm using the class as an opportunity to warn students about fields such as mine.
I've had some early success, and the first was with an economics major. This young gentleman approached me after class and expressed an interest in droppping his econ degree in favor of philosophy.
I convinced him not to. I told him that, based on my own real world experience, if he was really that interested in philosophy that he should minor in it or perhaps even double-major, but I said in no uncertain terms that dropping a marketable degree (econ) in favor of a marginally marketable degree (phil. - there are ways, but it's tough) would be the equivalent of sawing off one of his own legs right before entering a marathon. He got the message, loud and clear, and to my knowledge he is still pursuing econ and may have declared only a minor in philosophy.
It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Might as well be me. :)
You know, it's funny, "Anonymous", but I posted a somewhat snarkier comment that said almost exactly that, but the Captain didn't publish MINE.
ReplyDeleteI think he's afraid to, because he knows, as usual, I am correct, and he is not. Plus, I can look down on him. Literally.
Sorry busy busting my ass off. Haven't got around to publishing all the posts.
ReplyDeletePaul,
ReplyDeleteI do the same with kids that think they want to go to school for "Business"
I encourage them to go only engineering, sciences, mathematics, or medical/bio.
Cap,
ReplyDeleteMy wife (whose degree is in Literature, all four syllables) says that there ought to be two "p"s in "Crappy".
I'm just the messenger.
First of all, I would assume that most of those girls were lying about having any college experience at ALL other than Frat Parties 101. Despite that wikipedia stated it (we all know what a wonderfully accurate source of information THAT is), I doubt that many of them ever studied anything.
ReplyDeleteSecond of all, as a psychology major who knows plenty of people who have successfully gotten jobs in the field, I don't think that psychology in particular is such a worthless degree as you think it is. Psychology majors who are truly dedicated and willing to put forth the effort have a great chance of getting a job in the future. Prospective playmates are probably the type who score very low in the courses due to their lack of effort. Therefore, it's the low grades that = low chance of getting a job. It has nothing to do with the subject material.
Also, I'd like to know: How sexy would you find it to be looking at a chemical engineering major? Probably not very. Most men who waste away their lives in front of playboy probably have little appreciation for a woman who is much smarter than they are.
And on a final note, what exactly did you say your major was? I'd like to do whatever you chose for a major, so I can sit on my ass all day playing videogames. I spend almost every night studying, but I'd much rather laze around with my buddies drinking and playing games. Sounds like a lot less effort, and apparently it's not "fluff."
YES! Tell everyone what a *horrible* choice Theatre/Acting is; scare them off with stories of having to strip for a living and having their parents find out... no, seriously, please do. Those of us who did it anyways need less competition.
ReplyDeleteThanks ^_^
J
In fairness, some of them will earn a fair chunk of change acting in B-movies and soft core Cinemax porn. Others will date and marry men wealthy enough to treat Playboy as a dating catalog. A few will descend into a chaotic life of drugs and die a miserable death. They'll probably have, on average, access to more money than me.
ReplyDelete"Corporate and government collusion" is also the definition of socialism.
Psychology is actually useful, if you work for state prisons or mental wards; and certain organizational/industrial uses of it. There are just some very "weird" branches of psychology with odd practitioners.
In fairness, people can study and play Xbox. It's not a problem for modern day Renaissance Men.
"Corporate and government collusion is the definition of fascism."
ReplyDeleteThis definition is correct, but not in the way "anonymous" seems to think.
The collusion between government and corporations that we label as "fascism" are the symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself. The disease itself is when we create big government agencies that try to "regulate" the various industries. All that happens is the government agencies get into very cozy relationships with the industries they are meant to "regulate."
We can see this right now with the toy industry and the drug industry.
This is what happened with the railroads, the meatpacking industry, the trucking industry, the telecommunications industry, the drug industry, the toy industry, the airlines, the tobacco industry, etc...through much of the twentieth century (Reagan and Carter de-regulated trucking, the airlines, telecommunications, finance, etc...).
Most of the drive for this bigger government comes from the Left, who want to create "balance" between socialism and capitalism, as they know socialism failed, but they do not like pure laissez-faire capitalism either.
Most of these "liberal" universities are fascist to the core in this sense. Most university faculty are very much for high-taxes, bigger government, nationalization of certain industries, etc...that is what causes fascism.
In a pure free-market, mostly laissez-faire economy, fascism is impossible because there are no governement agencies for industries to get cozy with.
Stanley G. Payne, a scholar of fascism, says that fascism is very related to communism. Fascism is said to be a variant of socialism, but now some scholars wonder if really socialism is a variant of fascism.
With socialism, the government owns everything. With fascism, a corporation with a monopoly or a group of corporations with a monopoly (oligopoly) end up owning each industry, which creates the equivalent of pure Marxist Soviet and Mazo-style socialism.
It used to be believed by some that the above would be the natural result of a laissez-faire economy, and that governmetn intervention was necessary to prevent such monopolies and oilgopolies from taking over.
Now we know it is just the opposite; in a laissez-faire economy, we have creative destruction; businesses, big and small, are born, grow old, and die. With extensive government regulation, however, Big Businesses can gain monopolies.
Remember, the Nazi Party stood for "National Socialist workers Party."
There is a common mis-belief that fascism is the "ultra-Right" and socialism is the "ultra-Left." In reality, both are forms of Leftism.
Marxists and Nazis hated each other, because Nazis allowed private property ownership. They thought pure laissez-faire capitalism had failed (Great Depression), but they understood that Marxist socialism did not work either, so they sought to create a balance. Marxists, on the other hand, hated the Nazis because private property ownership is the height of all sins to them.
But while private property ownership is necessary for capitalism, it doesn't make a society capitalist on its own. What makes an economy capitalist is when the scarce resources are rationed via the natural fluctuations of the price system.
The Nazis and Italian fascists (and FDR's New Deal, which copied much of the Nazi and Italian fascist policies), did not allow this. There were stirct price and wage controls, production quotas, etc...and since the price system could not fluctuate on its own, these fascist societies were ultimately a variant of socialism.
In modern times, we come very close to fascism with heavy-duty government regulation in many industries, from big-government agencies, but we still allow the price system to work its magic. This is very close to fascism, but not fully fascist (although Democrats favor nationalization of the healthcare system, nationalization of the oil industry, and both Republicans and Democrats tried price controls in the 1970s).
This isn't to say government regulation isn't needed either; it is, but that is why we must remain vigilant in keeping government limited.
This is also how the European economies of today, while having ltos of government intrusion, can still give their people an okay standard of living in comparison to the fascism of Nazi Germany or fascist Italy; because the price system fluctuates on its own. In countries that come very close to pure fascism though, like France, the economy performs very poorly.
Question... How many females that participate/study Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, etc.... Or in other words "real" degrees are drop dead gorgeous or even somewhat-kinda-sorta-maybe-if-i'm-drunk-good-looking?
ReplyDeleted of statistics than I have might want to lay those results over those of this study.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.eqsq.com/vivreladifference/2008/06/19/virginity-at-college/
The prevalence of virginity by major taken.
My business degree prepared me to start a company and I make 6-figures.
ReplyDeleteSomeone has to run things for those engineers and scientists.
Capitalist Pig: wonderful summary! Any suggested reading with good historical synopses like this?
ReplyDeletePolitical Pulse: out of the 30 or so women that I knew who were studying Engineering at the same time as me in a multi-disciplinary university there are 2 that had the faces and figures that would get them into Playboy. Two that were capable of passing first year, that is. I don't count first year students as Engineers because they have yet to prove that they can handle either the heavier-than-normal courseload (8 per term, first year) or the data processing capability (8 courses per term second year, heavy on the theoretical maths, physics, chemisty, statistics, etc) that is required of an Engineer. I think that this would put them at or ahead of the maintstream population.
IMHO all degrees test whether an applicatant can handle the level of thought required to do a particular career, and then teach them to think like someone in that career. In our case, very few of the math/physics/chemistry would ever be used again in the real world. The training we got was in how to think so that we could learn to do the job from those who would be our mentors. The two drop-dead-gorgeous graduated engineers would find a momentary increase in their pay if they posed, but I think that they knew that they'd never be taken seriously as engineers again.
Check out some of the european playboys and thier models credentials. A LOT more to the sciences, particularly russian.
ReplyDeleteNo jobs, try sex work ladies.
I suspect this only enhances your theory though. fluffy el'crapo degrees dont have jobs so sex work calls. But when hard science career track degress also dont have jobs, well, still gotta eat...