Oh women, what frivolous creatures we are! A new study shows that ladies spend an average of eight years of their lives shopping. More accurately, that is 25,184 hours and 53 minutes, according to the results of the OnePoll.com online survey of 2,000 women. It makes my feet ache just to think it.
Naturally, the coverage of this poll is big on all the sex stereotypes we all know and hate. The New York Daily News' coverage includes an obligatory quote from the fiancé of a woman who, he exclaims, "goes [shopping] everyday!" The news rag also talks of all "those minutes spent flipping through the sale rack" and interviews a woman with a passion for sifting through sales bins at Macy's for the "perfect bag." The piece reads like a "Sex and the City" parody.
The funny thing, though, is that if you go to the actual press release about the poll, you won't find these caricatures of avaricious womanhood. "Many men seem to think women only shop when they are buying clothes for themselves," says a spokesperson for OnePoll.com. "But they quite often shop for the entire family and that can be incredibly hard work." Indeed, the average woman spends 94 hours and 55 minutes at the grocery store each year; that's just a few hours short of the 100 hours and 48 minutes she spends shopping for clothes. So, to fiancés and husbands who complain about their lady's constant shopping: You might want to stop, lest she ask you to start doing it yourself.
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