For seemingly inexplicable reasons, the fashion industry has always been a bit of a boy’s club, despite the fact that women are the main consumers. But Sarah Mower of the Telegraph recently issued a bold statement by claiming that all of the designers to watch right now are women, and in doing so, she name drops quite a few powerful ladies: the Rodarte sisters (Kate and Laura Mulleavy), Phoebe Philo of Celine, as well as the new brood from London—Mary Katrantzou, Joanna Sykes, Holly Fulton, Louise Gray, Natascha Stolle and Hannah Marshall. Of course, we have to agree with her as we swell in pride for our fellow lovely ladies. But there are more!

This is interesting: a new study done by Trinity College confirmed that more women than men believe in God. In a survey of Americans who claim to be unaffiliated with any religion, 19 percent of men were nonbelievers while only 12 percent of women were. These stats are particularly ironic because, historically, major religions have not been, err, particularly kind or accommodating to women, not to mention the huge elephant in the room—that many major religions don’t have female leaders. So what gives? Why are the ladies more committed to God in spite of the obvious lack of preferential treatment?

Last week, I was in line at the grocery store. I had just finished a hardcore workout at the gym and was starving, so I popped in to pick up a few things. Meanwhile, my Blackberry was going off … emails, questions, work to be done. My mom was calling. My friends were texting about plans for the evening. And most unfortunately, the old woman in front of me was hell-bent on saving $1 on six cans of chicken broth with an expired coupon. Of course the checkout girl wouldn’t let her use the coupon—she smacked her gum and rolled her eyes instead. The old woman persisted in broken English: “One dollar off chicken broth! It say one dollar off chicken broth!” This scene went on like a broken record until finally the checker had to leave her station and get the manager. This process took no less than 20 minutes and the line continued to multiply. The voice inside my head started screaming, until finally I blurted out, “There are other people waiting here! F**k the soup!” It was the F-bomb heard ‘round the grocery store. I immediately felt ashamed as I looked around at all the other seemingly calm shoppers. What happened to me? Why did I fly into a rage?

Who hasn’t had a drink or two before hopping in the sack? I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been guilty. I mean sex—especially with a new person—can be a daunting task. A nice little buzz can help alleviate some stress or spice things up a bit, right? But hold on one second before you polish off that cosmo. Do you really need that drink to get down? A new study conducted in the U.K. about women, sex, and alcohol suggests that maybe the answer is yes. The study concludes that not only do women seem to prefer drunken sex to sober sex, but we also are using alcohol to compensate for confidence, especially about our bodies. After the jump, some more sobering stats that may make you think twice about drinking before getting it on.

All right ladies, we have something seriously sad to chat about—our unhappiness. In fact, we are so increasingly unhappy that Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post is devoting an entire series of blogs to explore what the heck is up with us. Before you blame it on our society, know this: Study after study shows that our happiness has been in decline since the 1970s. Even more disturbing is that this trend spans all countries, cultures, socio-economic levels, ages, and marital statuses. Plain and simple, we are in a collective slump. Worst part? We don’t know why. [Huffington Post]

Men may spend an average of 43 minutes a day — roughly a year of their lives — ogling women, but a new study has found that women spend six months more than that crying! Researchers found that “between birth and the age of 78 a woman will cry for more than 12,000 hours,” or roughly 16 months of her life. The study cites “hunger as a baby to falling out with a partner when older” as reasons for the tears. When I got an accidental mullet a few years back, I cried for three months straight.

Admit it: When you go on a date with a cute guy, you don’t order a big, greasy quarter-pounder and a giant plate of fries, even if you really, really want to. A Canadian study has confirmed what we all know to be sad but true: Women eat smaller meals with fewer calories when dudes are around. Even chicks who chow down amidst both genders tend to go towards the lower end of the calorie scale. Basically, the more guys present, the fewer calories a woman consumes.

Last night, I got drunk. (A few too many Blue Moons.) The night before that, I got drunk. (Vodka tonics.) The night before that, I got really drunk and accidentally made out with a dude two degrees skeevier than I would normally go anywhere near. (Shots followed by champagne.) The night before that, I ... got drunk. (Blue Moon. Again.)

I bet you’re starting to notice a pattern here. 

Betty Lichtenstein, a 56-year-old in Connecticut, is a really great nurse. So great, in fact, that she was dubbed “Nurse of the Year” by the Connecticut Nursing Association last year. The association spent lots o’ cash setting up a celebratory dinner to bestow Lichtenstein with their top nursing honor. Only, it turns out…she wasn’t actually a nurse. Betty Trudel (her real last name) never went to nursing school and had been posing as a registered nurse for years. [Yahoo News]

I won’t lie—any time “Catch Me If You Can” is on television, you can be pretty sure I’ll be watching it. I’m fascinated by people who assume fake lives and do it so freaking convincingly that no one notices for years. So this got me thinking ... are there any other women out there like Betty?

Yesterday we reported on a survey that claims men spend 43 minutes a day, or almost a year of their lives over a lifetime, eying up the ladies. Great. Fascinating. Not that surprising. Then the study went on to say that us lady-folk stare down our male counterparts about 20 minutes each day, ogling around six different men. To that, I call that bull-s**t! See, what I’m now thinking, after digesting the facts a bit more, is that there’s no way in hell women only spend 20 minutes each day checking out men—it’s got to be at least on par, if not more, with what the men devote. We’ve all answered surveys and we’ve all been known to fib a little here and there (isn’t there a study out there that says women lie during these studies all the time or something!?), whether it was to make ourselves feel better, or to make women-kind look better. Am I right? I say it’s time to come clean on the man-ogling! Women may be more stealth about checking a guy out, and we may not hold our stares quite as long, but let’s be serious…20 minutes of each day? Come on. I’ve seen women on their lunch breaks spend their entire hour outside, pretending to eat their sandwiches or read their magazines while not-so-secretly eyeing every man that passed them by. Not in a I-want-to-jump-his-bones way (well maybe some of the time), but in a, huh-he’s-hot or ha-not-ever sort of way. So ladies, come on, spill it! [Daily Mail]

Damn, it seems like us gals just can’t catch a break! First we found out about summer on-set depression. Now a bunch of new studies are saying that summer is hazardous to women’s health in other ways. And I mean, legitimately dangerous. Sorry to be a downer, but researchers have linked the sunny season to higher levels of autoimmune diseases in women. It seems that us gals are more likely to develop these icky diseases in places where the UV intensity is high. But that’s not all. Research also claims that warm weather decreases amniotic fluid levels in pregnant chicks. This condition, known as oligohydramnios, is a lot more common in the summer because more people get dehydrated. Great, so I guess I can add “summer” to my ever-growing list of health concerns. So is summer still your favorite season? [LA Times]

Robin Katz is your average cute, 25-year-old girl who worked as an investment adviser at Chase Bank by day, and partied hard by night. But it looks like she might be spending some time on Rikers Island soon, after being accused of ganking $110,000 from a Manhattan millionaire’s private account. Robin bounced out of NYC in May, but not before she debited a bunch of cash from someone else’s account and blew it on clothes and booze. When peeps realized what happened, they told Katz to get her arse back to New York. She’s been on the lam ever since. [NY Post]

This sexy brunette certainly doesn’t look like your average thief. But she’s not alone. Check out these other women white-collar criminals.

A new study shows that for women, desire follows – not precedes – sexual arousal. Rosemary Bason of the University of British Columbia explains that, “for many women, desire is not the cause of lovemaking, but rather, its result.” Women often begin sexual experiences feeling sexually neutral, she says, but by the end of the sex sesh, they often feel more aroused than they had before they started fooling around.
Perhaps this is because most women don’t orgasm during intercourse. So, when the man is “satisfied” post-orgasm, the woman probably never reached her climax, and is, well, still wanting to! Obviously.

When I found out that the director of “The Hurt Locker”—a testosterone-rific movie about a team of soldiers disarming roadside bombs in Iraq—was directed by a woman, I wanted to kick myself. Not out of surprise, but because I was surprised. Why did I automatically think that only a man could direct an intense war movie filled with explosions? Nope, the film is being called an “adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense” and it’s all thanks to the directing genius of Kathryn Bigelow. It’s not that I think women can’t make amazing war films. Quite the contrary—I think women have a knack for tapping into raw emotions, and Bigelow creatively mixed high-octane action with emotion and personal relationships. My surprise was simply an innocent, unconscious, yet totally sexist brain fart. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

If you want a job done right, hire more women. According to data from Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Columbia University, and Pepperdine University, having more women in senior management positions means higher profits for a company. So could turning up the estrogen level in big corporations be a lasting fix to the financial crisis that does not involve another bailout? That’s what Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, authors of Womenomics, argued in yesterday’s Washington Post. They say that this latest data makes sense—after all, women are generally better at working with others, not to mention that we make more cautious decisions and think in the long-term, while guys are often about high-risk competition. Could the financial melt down of this year be the death of macho on Wall Street? [Washington Post]

Talk about sticking it to the man. A group of 26 women in Saudi Arabia are now “lingerie graduates.” At a 10-day retreat led by an Australian woman, the group spent 40 hours learning how to correctly fit a bra, display merchandise, and deal with customers. Victoria’s Secret even donated bras to help out with the undie education.

So why was this training needed? In Saudi Arabia, only men can work at malls, meaning that most lingerie stores are staffed by dudes. And come on, who wants their chest measured by some fumbling man who doesn’t know what he’s doing? Plus, there are no fitting rooms in Saudi stores because a woman is prohibited to undress outside her home.

Have you ever berated your boyfriend for looking “just a little too long” at that girl walking by? Well, now he can tell you it’s just science. A new study out of Indiana University found that a woman’s partner status—whether she has a significant other or not— influences her interest in the opposite sex. But the same is not true for dudes. Neuroscientist Heather Rupp asked 59 men and 56 women, ages 17-26, both single and taken, all heterosexual, to give their “gut” reaction when describing pictures of the opposite sex. Rupp found that while subjectivity in describing the photos as attractive, masculine, feminine, etc was not influenced by whether the man or woman had a partner, single ladies looked at the male photos for a longer period of time than those women with partners. The men, on the other hand, stared just as long at the female photos whether they were taken or single.

I’m not too surprised by these results, but speaking as a woman with a boyfriend, a strong “look, but don’t you touch” policy works for me. Is this study true for you? [Science Daily]

Cocaine use in England rose sharply in the five years leading up to 2008, according to a report released Wednesday. The average of English individuals aged 16 to 59 who had used cocaine at least once in their lifetime was 55.7 per thousand people in 2002-2003, but over five years it rose to 72.5 per thousand people. And leading the rise are women, whose consumption of coke almost matched the men’s. The amount of women aged 10 to 25 who had used cocaine in their lifetime was 4.8 percent in 2003, compared with 8.2 percent of men. In 2006, the percentage of women was 6.66, compared with 7.2 percent of men. The study cites three reasons for the rise in use: cheapness, availability, and increased social acceptance. About $70 now buys a gram of coke in England, whereas in the ‘80s, a gram cost about $160. “We’re very much in an age of chemical enhancement and a pill for every ill,” said Jim McVeigh, head of substance use at the Center for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University. So, he added, cocaine is just viewed as another accepted chemical compound. Researchers also say women used cocaine as they became more independent and drank more—drinking and snorting going hand in hand. [Reuters]

I was raised by a working, single mother. She went to Stanford, majored in economics, became a public school teacher, wrote a book, and now works as a journalist. She didn’t give up her job when she had my sister or me, and she certainly didn’t give it up after she and my father divorced. I consider her the ultimate feminist—she’s worked her butt off, made a living on her own, and raised two perfect daughters (just kidding). She’s my hero. But if she had quit her job when I was born, retiring at age 31, would she still be my #1 role model? It’s hard to say.

For the first time ever three women competed in an annual Israeli truck-pulling competition. The female contestants had to pull a 7.5-ton truck (about 16,535 lbs.) 30 meters (about 98 ft.). Vera Spaniev, a 32-year-old former weightlifter, won the ladies competition. Check out the video above to see women with bulging muscles and painful looks of determination and focus. [Reuters]