This weekend marks the 103rd Remembrance Day, when we pay our respects to young women up and down the country who routinely brave the sub-zero temperatures of British winter, swearing their allegiance to PLT mini dresses, local nightclubs, and the girls. Never with so much as a cardigan – let alone clunking military regalia – these intrepid individuals have yet to fall to frostbite, a layer of Bondi Sands and a beer blanket the only protection required against the piercing cold.
A new study by the British Journal of Social Psychology would suggest there is a method to the madness, too. As outlined by one of the study’s authors, Roxanne Felig on TikTok, women who look “hot” simply do not feel the cold. The investigation was partly based on the time-worn hypothesis that “a hoe never gets cold,” as Cardi B once chirped in a now-viral 2014 video.
“We wanted to test that scientifically,” Felig said, “and so we did. And it is true.” In the TikTok, which has garnered over 40,000 likes, Felig delves into the nitty-gritty, explaining that Cardi B’s statement aligns with objectification theory, which claims that, when women are “highly focused on how they appear externally, it reduces the amount of cognitive resources that they have available to appraise their internal states”.
They say that beauty is pain, but lo and behold, it’s also a superpower. “When women are in a state of objectification, they are less aware of how hungry they are or their heartbeat. They are just less able to recognise their internal states,” Felig said. To test the theory, the study’s authors surveyed women standing outside of nightclubs in the freezing cold, asking them to assess their “state of self-objectification” and how cold they felt. Sure enough, their hypothesis stood up. Women who were dressed up (or down) were less likely to feel biting temperatures. Felig even goes so far as to say that there was “literally no relationship” between the amount of skin on show and how cold these women felt.
It’s the first scientific exploration of its kind, proving, at long last, that looking hot is more than just skin deep. It nourishes, it sustains, and it fortifies. Even when you’re crossing the trenches of Tiger Tiger, Revs, and PRYZM. Where’s your poppy?
