Here’s a switch: there’s an American teen invasion in Britain. High schoolers in the U.K. who see movies like Napoleon Dynamite and Mean Girls  want proms of their very own. Over the past few years Hummer limos, tuxedo rentals, and candy-colored ball gowns have been selling/renting like hot cakes across the country. Really, of all our American traditions—baseball, putting cheese on everything, driving on the right side of the road—why, oh why, did they pick this one? To the senior class of the U.K., let The Frisky save you $1000 bucks and some emotional scarring—forget the frills, kids. Stay home, buy a six-pack, crank up the radio, and invite your date over. The best things about prom night are free. [Wall Street Journal]

5. “My man gives real loving that’s why I call him Killer/He’s not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, he’s a thriller/He takes his time and does everything right/Knocks me out with one shot for the rest of the night/He’s a real smooth brother, never in a rush/And he gives me goose pimples with every single touch”—Salt ‘N’ Pepa featuring En Vogue, “Whatta Man”, Very Necessary
This is, like, the ultimate man objectification song. Remember how awesome the video was, with Pepa in the bathtub? I wish Salt could get it together so there could be a real reunion.

In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, lingerie stores that display their wares on mannequins make many people uncomfortable. “If I was passing by with my family and saw something displayed vulgarly on a mannequin, we would all find the situation awkward and embarrassing,” said one shopping mall manager. However, the store owners displaying lingerie in their windows don’t think they should stop showing people what they sell—how else will people know what they have inside? One 21-year-old woman even said she hates passing by lingerie stores because men often hang around them. The cultural differences between there and here are so interesting and apparent in regards to lingerie shopping. When I was in middle school, it was a huge rite of passage when you started shopping at Victoria’s Secret (and stopped getting embarrassed when your mother mentioned the word “bra”). [Arab News]

One of the questions in the nature vs. nurture regarding homosexuality is if homosexuality is hereditary, and those in same-sex relationships can’t reproduce, why hasn’t homosexuality disappeared? A new Italian study might explain part of this. According to findings from the University of Padova in Italy, homosexuality in males might be caused by the same genes that increase fertility in females. This would mean that in the same family, if a male inherited this gene, he would be gay, and if a female inherited this gene, she would be more fertile and possibly give birth to more babies than normal, making up for her brother’s lack of offspring and passing on the gene. Now, this conclusion seems to make sense for gay men, but not for lesbians, and the researchers think there’s an entirely different explanation for that. [LiveScience]

Wonderbra is trying to organize the world’s biggest underwear shoot ever, and let me tell you, there is a lot of competition in this category. They’re looking for 1,000 women in London to photograph in their new line of bras. We smell a bigger version of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. At least with so many models, the people will be so small that airbrushing won’t really be a factor. [MarieClaire.co.uk]

The Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibits “discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages” was signed into law by President Kennedy 45 years ago. Since then, women have brought their earnings up, but things still aren’t quite there. For the past five years, the deficit between women’s and men’s wages has remained at about 23 to 24 cents on the dollar. Still, the number of women earning more than the national median pay level rose by 1.7 million between 2000 and 2005. Do you think men and women will ever make equal wages, or are obstacles like pregnancy and motherhood always going to prevent this from happening? [WSJ.com]

If your neighbor keeps you up with her loud lovemaking, no worries, there may be absolutely no reason to envy her sex life. See, scientists studied chimpanzee “copulation calls” and discovered that the females who made lots of noise were more concerned with bagging as many males as possible, no matter what their status, rather than getting with the most important men in the bunch. The gals who were mating with the strong males often kept quiet so as not to let their rivals know what was going on. This seems comparable to the girl with the hottest boyfriend not feeling the need to brag about having a hunk on her arm. The fact that she’s with the studliest guy around is enough of a statement. Well, that and her perfect hair. [Metro.co.uk]

The War in Iraq, the recession, the high price of gas, the second season of Gossip Girl is over…sigh. What the world needs now is love, sweet love!  And Sanrio, the creators of Hello Kitty, have wrapped some up in two cute little furry packages with a big pink bow!  They just announced some new characters called Cherinacherine—two besties with big brown eyes that live in a cherry forest. Squeal! Sanrio, of course, plans on merchandising up the wazoo, but guaranteed you’ll want it all too. Who could say no to those adorable little furballs?  [Mainichi]

Vampires are back baby, in a little movie that’s got a whole lot of underground buzz called Twilight—check out the trailer above. Based on a series of young adult novels by Stephanie Meyer, the film is seriously all the kiddies are talking about on the internet it seems. So, because I like to be hip with the young crowd, I decided to do some research. For starters, Twilight is a love story between an average, beautiful heroine named Bella and a vampire named Edward Cullen (played by the hottie who was Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter). What’s awesome about Edward and his family is that they are totally rebellious and abstain from drinking human blood and drink animal blood instead—friends of PETA they are not. Anyway, it reminded me of my own youth, spent crushing on goth boys, and I decided to put together a list of the Hottest Vampires.

You might think the trailer for the movie The Women makes the movie look lame, and it very well could be, but did you know the movie is a remake of a 1939 classic starring Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Butterfly McQueen, Hedda Hopper, and more? Well, both movies are part of the “female ensemble movie” genre, according to a Variety article, and this differs from the “woman’s film” or “chick flick” genre in that there are more than three female leads. See, there are girl movies, and then there are movies with lots of girls in them. For some reason, there aren’t all that many of these movies, Variety says, but we have plenty of favorite female ensemble movies on our list. Keep reading for our top five.

Last night I was watching Hardball and Chris Matthews asked one of his guests, radio host Heidi Harris, why most women vote Democratic. She said, “Sadly, a lot of women are very emotional, and they tend to think with their hearts and not with their minds about some of these issues. They tend to feel more of these kind of things than think it through.” This annoyed me, on a number of levels, because A) I don’t think it’s true that women, in general, vote with their hearts not their heads, B) I don’t see what the problem is with voting with your heart, in theory, and C) can’t you vote with both? Like, the head follows the heart or another such phrase? Anyway, then Harris launched into a whole rant about how women don’t really care about issues like abortion rights because the young women can’t remember a time without Roe V. Wade, and older women are too dried up to get pregs anyways. It was way insulting. But it got me thinking about the election and how you vote.

While professional soccer players are battling it out in the Euro 2008 competition, a chat room website decided to go and make a more appealing version of the competition in which topless women from various countries played against each other. Actually they were more than topless. In fact they were only wearing thongs. On Sunday, the Austrian team beat Germany 10-5, and spectators enjoyed every minute of play. [Reuters]