Shine OnWomen buy designer goods to ward off romantic rivals, says study
When female baboons are ready to mate, their simian behinds turn bright red.
When female humans feel threatened by the perceived advances of other female humans toward their mate, they clad their behinds in a bright red Gucci skirt.
While this is a crude simplification of an actual study, it’s actually not too far off the mark.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota found that among the reasons women max out the credit card at designer boutiques is a desire to signal to other women that their partner is devoted so back up! Mind your business, that’s all. Just mind your business.
“We found that a woman who is wearing luxury items and designer brands is perceived to have a more devoted partner and as a result other women are less likely to flirt with him,” says study co-author Yajin Wang in a press release.
“Regardless of who actually purchased the items, other women inferred that the man had something to do with it and is thus more devoted to her.”
Also see: High achievers more likely to be jealous in a relationship, study says
No longer a means to simply boost self-esteem and signal status, Wang and co-author Vladas Griskevicius, an associate professor of marketing and psychology, found that these superficial markers influenced the way women saw their Versace-clad rivals.
The team ran 649 women across the U.S. through a series of five controlled experiments. The women came from all age groups and social backgrounds.
In one experiment, the Toronto Star notes, researchers asked women to describe what they picked up about the partner of a woman dressed head to toe in brand name goods. In more than 50 per cent of the cases, the study subjects believed that the man had decked her out in these items (Destiny’s Child is not impressed) and therefore was more off-limits that a man who splurged on an H&M sweater for his girlfriend’s birthday.
In another experiment, the subjects were walked through a visualization exercise where they were to imagine another woman making the moves on their mate in order to evoke jealousy. Following this visualization, the subjects were asked to draw designer logos. In almost every case, the logo drawn by the jealous subject was twice the size as a subject who had not been walked through the scenario.
"The feeling that a relationship is being threatened by another woman automatically triggers women to want to flash Gucci, Chanel and Fendi to other women," Wang notes. "A designer handbag or a pair of expensive shoes seems to work like a shield, where wielding a Fendi handbag successfully fends off romantic rivals."
Also see: What women (and men) really want in a fight
If there’s any validity to this study, it’s a sad state of affairs for women and a gleeful one for expensive design houses.
It signifies that women equate expensive objects with their partner’s devotion and not items like kindness, patience or affection.
It also stands to reason that not every woman adopts this behaviour. Far from it. For starters, it’s a small pool of them that can afford these goods in the first place, and others simply have the self-esteem and good sense to look for non-material indicators of commitment.
But human nature continues to be a strange and fascinating, red-bottomed beast, as studies like this one reveal.
What do you think: A far cry from the truth or that totally makes sense now about the woman in your office who has that annoying compulsion to flash her Vuitton bag collection?
