Ashley Graham is First Plus-Size Model to Cover British “Vogue”

Ashley Graham’s January 2017 Vogue U.K. cover (Vogue UK)

Model Ashley Graham is busting boundaries left and right. Earlier this year, she covered Maxim and the coveted Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Now, she’s landed the cover of the fashion bible of the U.K., the British version of Vogue. Shot by famed photographer Patrick Demarchelier, Graham’s cover will be for the January 2017 issue.

Graham is a plus-size model, so her covering these storied publications shows that the fashion industry is coming around to including a wider variety of body types. Let’s hope American Vogue sees this, and follows suit.

Graham’s cover for British Vogue arrives on newsstands today.

On Thanksgiving Break!

First Thanksgiving corn (National Geographic Kids)

I’m taking the week off for Thanksgiving. Hope you, your family and friends have a great holiday! I’ll be back next Monday, Nov. 28th with more of your favorite data-based sexuality content.

How Many People Have Stayed with a Partner for Financial Reasons?

Couple with bills (Buzz Nigeria)

If you ever needed a reason to make your own money, and not depend on someone else, here comes a compelling stat: A survey conducted earlier this year of 2K people in the U.K. revealed that 16% of Brits have stayed in a relationship because of financial reasons in the past. In the present, 28% of Brits are staying in relationships due to financial reasons (though that may not be the only reason).

Some of the aforementioned financial concerns are that 35% of respondents said they couldn’t cover living expenses without their partner’s help, and 10% said their partner paid for luxuries.

I have some questions about methodology here: We don’t know the age ranges of the respondents, or how much they make, among many other things. We can’t extrapolate to see if this is true of any other countries.

Amy Schumer is Forbes’ Highest-Paid Female Comedian

Amy Schumer (US Magazine)

Love her or hate her, Amy Schumer is making bank. On this year’s version of Forbes‘ Highest-Paid Comedians, Schumer debuted at #4. The publication estimated her earning power at $17M. Counted within this figure are her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer, her movie Trainwreck, her $8M advance for her book The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, commercial work and touring.

Forbes‘ Madeline Berg explains why Schumer’s inclusion in this list is so significant:

Not only is she the only female comic on this year’s list, Schumer is also the only woman to ever make the highest-paid comedians list—a big first as women have historically faced difficulty being taken seriously in the funny business.

In another significant feat, Schumer is the only woman to play, and sell out, Madison Square Garden.

For contrast, the highest-paid comedian on Forbes‘ list is Kevin Hart, who pulled in $87.5M.

The Newest CoverGirl Wears a Hijab

CoverGirl Nura Afia (Today)

CoverGirl is making strides in inclusivity in their marketing outreach this year. Earlier, the brand announced beauty blogger James Charles as its first male spokesmodel. Now, CoverGirl has tapped beauty vlogger Nura Afia. Afia wears a hijab as part of her Muslim faith.

The 24-year-old will be the first spokesmodel to wear a hijab. Afia will appear in a commercial, and will serve as an ambassador for the So Lashy! Blast Pro Mascara. She hopes that her wearing hijab will normalize Muslims for the rest of America.

Afia began posting makeup tutorials on YouTube in 2011. She now has 215K subscribers and 13M video views. But this isn’t Afia’s first major brand partnership: she’s previously partnered with Revlon.

Beauty that’s inclusive to Muslims is massive, and poised to grow even bigger. According to Ogilvy Noor, by way of The New York Times:

The Muslim personal cosmetics and care market is now worth more than $54 billion, a figure that is expected to reach $80 billion by 2020.

Men Hostile Towards Women More Likely to Support Trump

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (US Weekly)

If you know any men who come off as hostile towards women (and let’s be honest, we’ve all ran across more than one) they’re more likely to support Trump. It’s science!

Three researchers at The Washington Post surveyed 700 U.S. citizens this past June. (Keep in mind that it was before Trump’s hot-mic revelations that he’s sexually assaulted women in his past.) The goal was to see how ideas about gender, specifically women, affected a potential voter’s ability to support Trump. The researchers tested for this by giving respondents surveys with statements about women and feminism, and then asked who said respondent was supporting in the presidential election.

The results are interesting:

We found that sexism was strongly and significantly correlated with support for Trump, even after accounting for party identification, ideology, authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. In fact, the impact of sexism was equivalent to the impact of ethnocentrism and much larger than the impact of authoritarianism.

To put this plainly: “Hostile sexism was nearly as good at predicting support for Trump as party identification was.”

No wonder all the woke baes are all #ImWithHer.

Donald Trump’s Campaign Has Spent $3.2M+ on Hats Alone

Donald Trump (News2Morrow)

Seriously. I am not fucking with you, I promise.

We’re finally getting to see how the Trump campaign has been spending its money. And the results are…illuminating. Let’s call it that. I don’t think that the results really shocked anyone, as far amount of money goes, but it’s a little, uh, different (to use a real Southern phrase).

The Washington Post got ahold of Trump’s Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, which detail his campaign spending. The report covered June 2015 through September 2016. During that timeframe, Trump’s campaign has spent $1.8M on polling data. But Trump appears to be pinching his pennies so he spend more in another area: namely, hats.

Yes, hats. The campaign has thus far spent $3.2M on hats alone. Within that, the campaign paid $423K to the company that made his “Make America Great Again” hats.

And it’s not just the hats Trump likes:

Overall, Trump’s spent about $15.3 million on collateral — shirts, hats, signs, etc. — more than he has spent on field consulting and voter lists and data.

In case you can’t do math, here’s that info in graph form:

Total Trump campaign spending by category (The Washington Post)

As the Post says of Trump, “he has spent at least twice as much on collateral as he has on payroll.” The Trump campaign employs a lean staff of 82 people.

But come on, with all the other shit that we’ve learned about this (I can’t, in good conscience, call him a man)…thing, this piece of information is almost innocuous and eccentric. Doesn’t take away from the absolute craziness that is this election, though.

Clinton vs. Trump Supporters on Match.com

Dating (The Love Hawk)

Earlier this year, Match.com released its annual Singles in America study. The study surveyed 5K+ singles ages 18-70 in 2015 on a variety of subjects pertinent to those who date. The results are fascinating, in no small part because Donald Trump was still a sideshow attraction and not a full-blown potential threat at the time.

Without further ado, here are some findings:

Clinton supporters are:

70% more likely to discuss politics
102% more likely to lie about their number of past sexual partners
2,133% more likely to expect no physical contact

Trump supporters are:

82% more likely to be unemployed
116% more likely to talk about an ex
1,104% more likely to expect sex on the first date

But some benefits are bi-partisan, as the press release touts:

Individuals who are passionate about political issues (regardless of their affiliation) have better sex, with 13% more orgasms; they are also 32% more likely to experience multiple orgasms.

If that’s not a good reason to get politically involved/educated (or fuck across the aisle, at the very least), I don’t know what is.

Google Trends: Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (CNN)

With all the craziness surrounding this election, I’ve gotten more and more curious about how the Google Trends numbers stack up for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Let’s take a look!

First, here’s a Google Trends graph of searches for the presidential candidates within the past week (Oct. 24-Oct. 31):

National search interest in the candidates, past week (Google Trends)

Here’s the long-term trend of Google users searching “hillary clinton” over the past five years:

Search term ‘hillary clinton’ interest over time (Google Trends)

Check out those spikes!! That first large spike is from Jul. 24-30, 2016. The second spike is Sept. 11-17, 2016.

And here’s the same for “donald trump:”

Search term ‘donald trump’ interest over time (Google Trends)

Here’s how searches for the two candidates look over time (fittingly, Clinton’s in blue, Trump’s in red):

Search terms ‘hillary clinton’ and ‘donald trump’ over time (Google Trends)

Here’s “hillary clinton” and “donald trump” searched over the past 12 months only in the U.S.:

Search terms ‘hillary clinton’ and ‘donald trump’ over the past 12 months in the U.S. (Google Trends)

To be honest, I really don’t know how to parse this data. It seems that people who are searching for Trump…Google him more often? Needless to say, we won’t get any clear answers here.

#ThrowbackThursday: Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1969

Hillary Rodham in ‘Life’ magazine, 1969 (Iowa Public Radio)

Hillary Clinton became nationally known early on, when she was still a college student. In 1969, she was elected to be Wellesley College’s first student commencement speaker at graduation. During her speech, Clinton (then known as Hillary Rodham, her maiden name) addressed remarks made by Massachusetts Republican Senator Edward W. Brooke, who’d previously spoken about the rise of student protests on university campuses. Rodham Clinton then spoke off the cuff in favor of the protests, reasoning that they had a place in public discourse.

Later, she was featured in a Life magazine spread called, “The Class of ’69,” with her commencement speech reprinted. Clinton was also photographed lounging at the Rodham family home.

Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang

Statistics. Economics. Sex.