‘Hot’ academic study tests Cardi B’s claim that ‘a hoe never gets cold’
Turns out Cardi B may have been onto something when she famously proclaimed that “a hoe never gets cold” — and now science is backing her up on it.
A new study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology has confirmed why scantily clad women are less likely to catch a chill than their covered-up counterparts.
The study — “When looking ‘hot’ means not feeling cold: Evidence that self-objectification inhibits feelings of being cold” — was co-authored by six scholars, including University of South Florida grad student Roxanne Felig.
Felig, 25, told The Post their research was partially inspired by 29-year-old Cardi’s vintage viral assertion that “it’s cold outside but I’m still looking like a thottie — because a hoe never gets cold.”
“It seemed like what Cardi was saying was that she was too focused on how she looked and what she was wearing to feel cold,” a deadpan Felig explained via TikTok. “We wanted to test that — scientifically — and so we did. And it’s true.”
In order to test “objectification theory,” the researchers surveyed women as they stood outside nightclubs on evenings when temperatures dipped down into the chilly 40s. They asked the participants to report how cold they felt, before their photos were taken and coded for the amount of skin exposure.
“When women are in a state of objectification, they are less aware of how hungry they are, their heartbeat.”
Roxanne Felig, co-author of a new scholarly study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology
They also asked the women how intoxicated they felt and how many drinks they had consumed, as their blood alcohol levels may have affected their reaction to the cold weather.
The results revealed that women who were flashing ample amounts of flesh, clad in crop tops and miniskirts, felt no colder than women wearing coats and pants.
While that may surprise some readers, Felig told The Post that the study results backed up her “When looking ‘hot’ means not feeling cold” study theory.
“There has been an observed phenomenon of women being seemingly unbothered by cold temperatures despite wearing little clothing, so we conducted a field study to test it,” Felig told The Post. “Women who are highly focused on their appearance … have a diminished capacity to feel cold, regardless of how much of their body is exposed to the cold weather.”
Felig further explained, “Objectification theory posits that when women take an outsider’s perspective of their body — when women are highly focused on how they appear externally — it reduces the amount of cognitive resources they have available to appraise their internal states.
“So, when women are in a state of objectification, they are less aware of how hungry they are, their heartbeat … They are just less able to recognize their internal states.”
In other words, the women Felig and her fellow researchers surveyed were so preoccupied with how they were appearing to others that they did not have the time to focus on how cold they were feeling.
On behalf of her fellow scholars, Felig told The Post: “We appreciate Cardi B’s contribution to scientific discovery and hope that she popularizes other phrases that sum up interesting psychological phenomena for us to test!”
Felig, noting that the study is the first of its kind, also stressed that she disliked describing women as “hoes,” and that a woman’s clothing choices were not necessarily connected to her sexual proclivities.
However, she stated that Cardi’s claim that “a hoe never gets cold” was a “good intro to the study.”
The “WAP” rapper, who dropped out of the Borough of Manhattan Community College to kick-start her stripping and music career, has not responded to The Post’s request for comment on the scholarly research she inspired.
However, the music icon was purportedly quite a gifted student when she attended Herbert H. Lehman High School in The Bronx.
Cardi — who became an unexpectedly influential political voice last year — was praised by her history teacher, Joan Hill, who wrote on Facebook: “For those of you on my feed who are trashing Cardi B for representing a political voice, she probably scored higher than you in the US History regents exam and was in my AP govt class… she has a national platform and is using it to speak about things that are important.”