This Might Explain the Popularity of Cathy

The New Scientist reports that women get a bigger laugh out of gag cartoon than men do.

In particular, women appear to have a lower expectation that the cartoon will be funny than men. “Women appear to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon. So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it,” says Allan Reiss, one of the study’s authors, at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, US.

I can't think of any comic out there that doesn't come with lower expectations than Cathy. I mean how many times is getting frustrated with trying on swimsuits going to be funny? Two. Three times? Cathy Guisewite has been doing that joke for almost 30 years now - at least two to three times a year. And yet, practically every newspaper in the counry still runs this tripe daily.