Goliath the Philistine was six cubits and a span. The internet tells me that 6'0" is the manlet cutoff. He should have either embraced his original height, or asked for a discount since the doctor was two inches short of the mark.
No, the opposite. This is driven by apps and screen mediated interaction. In real life every person has thousands of facets that give a holistic impression. And people more easily have genuine connections with each other.
Online there is instead a huge focus on the big few. And they take on the role of dealbreakers.
A random anecdote: there's a guy with a YouTube channel called LookMumNoComputer that features unusual electronic musical instruments and modular synthesizers. Most modular synthesizers use the Eurorack format popularized by Doepfer, but LookMumNoComputer uses his own format with taller panels and 1/4" jacks instead of the Eurorack-standard 1/8" jacks.
He mentions in one of his videos that when people meet him in real life they're often surprised that he's actually fairly tall. In his videos he looks smaller than he really is, in part because the things he's being filmed next to are larger than standard size.
Maybe, but many remote-first companies eventually hold in-person events. I recently met the folks on my all-remote team for the first time, and it was a little jarring to see the differences between expectation and reality.
I would also argue height advantages do not really factor in until one reaches leadership positions. At that point the job probably dictates being in person at least part time.
As I understand it, height bias factors into who gets leadership positions in the first place. Maybe that phenomenon decreases as a result of remote work, though.
I started a new job during Covid I got through my boss. I've never met anyone else at the company in person. We are both shorter than average. Makes you kind of wonder.
Hardly. Eventually people are going to figure out that being "prettier" matters on online and start the arms race there. "Dress For Success" still matters and too many people still ignore it.
Ironically, online video has made things quite good for me as a greybeard. I invested in a good camera and good lighting early in Covid. I always look better than anybody else in the meeting and it gives me gravitas that I really haven't earned.
The downside is that I can't look like shit on calls or it shows. I generally make a point of exercising and then taking a shower directly before starting meetings for the day.
Seems like such an extreme surgery for a few inches. I would think that a treatment as extreme as this should require at least attempted psychiatric treatment before going to full on broken femurs.
But maybe an inch can make much more difference than I think. I am literally one inch taller than this guy and I cannot ever in my life remember someone calling me short or disparaging me for my height.
I do agree that being a little bit taller would be an advantage in many ways. But so would being born into wealth or being extremely attractive.
> I would think that a treatment as extreme as this should require at least attempted psychiatric treatment before going to full on broken femurs.
Isn't this true of any cosmetic surgery? They all carry some amount of expense, pain, and risk.
> I do agree that being a little bit taller would be an advantage in many ways.
I suspect that most people who get this surgery are thinking mostly about their ability to date women. That single issue can definitely be make-or-break for some people's happiness.
Yes, probably for a lot of cosmetic surgery. But even something as invasive as a facelift or breast augmentation doesn't seem nearly as extreme and chiseling through the femur bone and inserting expanding metal pistons.
Most other cosmetic surgeries don't have the risk of making you unable to walk.
I know it's not what you're referring to, but I just have to say that the first doctor to figure out a really plausible way to add a couple inches of penis length without serious side effects is going to be very wealthy.
As a 5'5" guy, no one ever calls me short, and when I joke about being short my friends tell me that they don't perceive me as short unless I'm joking about it, so I stopped haha.
Exactly. I'm same height as guy in the article and no one has ever commented on my height at work (or, pretty much anywhere else). I think Scott had lots of other issues going on, but blames his height.
Of course I would have liked to have been 6' and looked more like a "commanding leader" when I march into a room. Maybe it would have given me a career boost... but I could also get that from hitting the gym and bulking up, or buying better-fitted clothes, or (heaven forbid) put more effort into my job and actually become a more commanding leader!
Find a better community. If people are mocking you (especially for things outside your control, but also generally), you oughtn't be around them. I've left social groups and "friends" behind for lesser things than mocking people over height.
I’m inclined to think the issue is not him but the people he surrounds himself with. I'm vaguely aware of toxic content about short men on social media but don't think I've ever encountered it directly- I use Tiktok frequently but never see this kind of stuff, it's generally positive content and things related to my hobbies because that's what I interact with. Why on earth is this woman he quotes saying toxic shit about short men "one of his favorite influencers?"
I suspect to, to an extent, it's a self-fulfilling issue: once you're sensitive to an issue, you listen out for examples, and then of course pay special attention to the ones you do hear.
I don't remember hearing people refer negatively to baldness... until I started losing my hair and it became (marginally) personal to me.
It is 100% self-fulfilling. Worrying about height is like a thought-virus, once you encounter it, it infects you, but you can do just fine until you come across it. Then the challenge is learning to not give a fuck. Such is the pattern of every insecurity since time immemorial.
You are blessed to be surrounded by a great group of friends!
I have a friend who is short as well, probably 5'5" and he married a girl who is taller than him when she wears her heels. Neither of them care, which is great and I love both of them.
I have another friend who is around the same height or shorter and can't get past how short he is. I keep trying to help him find a girlfriend, but he resists all efforts and I think he's still a virgin at age 45. So the stigma is very real and can be extremely damaging.
I'm 159cm/5'2.6" and people quite often mistake me for a woman.
In school people did call me short but in time I learned to ignore it and to just not hear it. Because there's really nothing that I can or even should do about it.
As a 5'7" guy (which I've come to learn is statistically shorter in the U.S.), this was also the case for me. In my 30-something years on Earth, I never viewed myself as "short" at all. No one said I was short. I felt my height was average and had confidence in myself.
This all changed when my older brother-in-law voiced concerns about my height to my now-wife, saying I was too short for her.
Now, after 5 incredible years of being together, this mind virus has infected us, and we started seeing me as short, or otherwise "deficient". It's truly terrible. Thankfully I'm still incredibly confident, which is what made me attractive to my wife in the first place.
Sucks having family throw doubts into your wife's mind based on your height.
This could be helpful to people who wants to enter some kind of jobs who need more height (like being a police agent in some European countries), but I find a huge thing for other reasons.
For what it means to dating, I think the requirement to be at least 6 feet tall for US women would disappear due to statistics (the mean male height in the USA is 5'9"). Heck, some guys who are 5'7" or 5'9" says to those women they are 6 feet and they believe it; It's more a psychological thing than a real preference as a have seen.
Probably not, but I know cases where some people had silicon prothesis implanted in the head to get up to 5 cm (about 2 inches) of height to pass the requirement, so I won't be surprised someone do this instead.
That's incredibly sad, the comparison to boob and nose jobs is apt. It's a symptom of a sick society when people are so insecure about their bodies they feel they have to undergo unnecessary surgery to fit in.
My cousin had this procedure done almost 30 years ago, but she was pathologically small, at a height which makes it hard to function.
"Safe" is a pretty relative term; there are no shortage of complications that can arise from any of these surgeries (though the risk profiles are different, there are definitely still risks of permanent injury).
At the end of the day, these are elective surgeries too frequently used as an attempt to mask a pathological low self esteem.
While I agree that it’s probably not worth it for the operation, multiple studies have shown that heigh is an important factor in mate selection (and I believe there’s a consensus on it), so using the word insecurity, which refers to a mental problem, diverts thinking of alternative solutions (like better fitness) to a bad direction.
Sure it affects it, but you don't need to be tall or even fit (within reason) to find a mate. There is no need for alternative solutions because the problem has been misstated from the beginning.
As someone who got a nose job, I’ve heard this line too many times to count. It seems that people want to believe the only reason I would remove the hump on my nose is because of society’s beauty standards. I’m not allowed to simply not like it. Why this same logic doesn’t apply to hair dye or clothing, I’ll never know.
Y’know what’s funny too? I’ve never once met someone who both admired big noses and chose to increase the size of their own. I guess that’s society for you…
I'm simply pointing out that criticizing someone for electing to have cosmetic surgery is at odds with social values we (at least in the US) profess in other scenarios.
This is a sensitive topic so don't expect people to comment with anecdotes about people who do want to enhance their nose. That being said, it is popular enough to warrant some businesses [1]. We are also talking about a medical surgery that might not be sufficient for people's needs. Much easier to remove material than add it to the body.
I suppose it's a spectrum of risk and motivation. On one side low risk modifications motivated by vanity such as hair dyes, on the other getting your legs sawn off because you think you're not good enough to find a woman.
Perhaps some nose jobs end up closer to the hair dyes and teeth straightening end of the spectrum, but I can't help but see a clear distinction when you start cutting flesh and breaking bone.
I find these subtle, yet extremely intense neuroses we see so often in Western cultures fascinating. The patient remarks on one TikTok video in particular that seemingly tormented him. I had never once thought a few inches height difference in a couple was odd or even worth remarking upon and yet there seems to be this vast, largely untapped sensitivity in men being short. Similar things for sexual activity (incels) and breast size (breast augmentations are by far the top cosmetic surgery). They all seem to be little things people joke about sometimes but which have disproportionately negative effects on the butt of the jokes' psyches. I wonder if this is unique to Western/materialistic cultures or more widespread. Whichever, I am sure the scale of social media makes these neuroses worse.
Very true; yet they are also famously materialistic and capitalistic (see the many film commentaries on capitalism out of South Korea). I wonder if these surgeries are by Western or Korean beauty standards. That is, are people largely trying to obtain Western features through surgery.
> are people largely trying to obtain Western features through surgery.
In my personal opinion, it depends.
For some, like double eyelid surgery, absolutely yes. For others, like the V-line jaw surgery (aka mandibuloplasty, but the colloquial name is pretty self-descriptive), I would say no.
And some are just universal and are done by people of all kinds of cultures/races, like face-lift surgeries (aka rhytidectomy) or nose-jobs (aka rhinoplasty).
Putin wears lifts, Kim Jong Un is famously self-conscious, etc. - so, no I don't think these insecurities are in any way unique to with Western cultures. And every culture is materialistic.
It's apparently common for Koreans to make operations to widen their eyes to look more like anime characters.
In Japan, it used to be a necessity for women to use extremely tight shoes in order to contain feet growth, as women with large feet were less desired or something.
In Brazil, the most common surgery for women is probably bum enlargement rather than breast.
In some parts of Myanmar, women need to have very long necks decorated with coils... I would guess they obsess over their appearance at least as much as any modern western woman does.
People are people everywhere and will obsess over things that are important to them, no matter how bizarre it may look to someone from a different culture.
> It's apparently common for Koreans to make operations to widen their eyes to look more like anime characters.
I don’t think that’s the exact reason, and they’d probably get mad at you if you said they wanted to look like something Japanese.
Korea and China are developing an independent “anime-like aesthetic” based on MMOs and anime-like American PC games these days; eg Blue Archive and Genshin are a lot more technically advanced than what Japan’s famously poorly paid source of actual anime can produce.
> I wonder if this is unique to Western/materialistic cultures or more widespread.
Not at all, you just don't seem like someone who has much exposure to the world outside of "western cultures". Which is unfortunate, because the rest of your comment has a lot of pretty interesting points to ponder.
As others have mentioned in replies, plastic surgery in South Korea is so commonplace and integral to everyday life, it will blow a lot of people's minds. Plastic surgeries are common high school graduation gifts there (double eyelid surgery seems to be one of the most popular ones).
For a personal example, sister of one of my friends was graduating from a nursing school there, and ended up getting a surgery or two closer to the end of her program, despite resisting it for the longest time. Why? Because photos are required on resumes for pretty much any position there. And she felt like she was at a strong disadvantage compared to her classmates (who all had at least a couple of plastic surgeries done) when it came to job applications, and iirc her suspicion was strongly supported by her experiences.
The Western equivalent is probably braces. They’re not medically necessary in the vast majority of cases and usually more invasive and painful than either nose or eyelid surgery. Yet most people don’t seem to consider them in the same category at all.
braces could be invasive, but i think only for very badly formed teeth.
And i also think braces makes for better teeth health, since straight teeth is less likely to accumulate plaque and cause gum issues in the future. It's not purely cosmetic.
Teeth whitening, on the other hand, is purely cosmetic and i suspect, entirely unnecessary. I dunno how dangerous it is either, but it can't be healthy to bleach your teeth!
If height is so important, why not relocate? I'm 6.2, but Northern European, and I see myself as quite average around these parts, and often meet people taller than me. When I lived in Argentina, I felt like a giant. South tends to have shorter people, so perhaps if you feel out of place, you'd feel more in-place there. Just a thought. At least I'd rather do that than undergo such a treatment.
Socioeconomically, that makes you statistically unlikely to be someone that can afford elective limb-lengthening surgery, so you probably live with it.
The problem is that it's still socially acceptable to see short stature as some objective faux-pas. There's really no difference between a person proudly declaring they only like "white" people and a person declaring they only like "tall" people. If the guy said "Don't be so sure of yourself, black man" maybe it would have been acceptable in the 1920s, but it surely isn't now, and the fact that we can't see that calling someone "short" derogatorily is the same form of prejudicial discrimination shows that we as a society still don't understand the root of racism and prejudice. It's wrong to deride a person based on skin color not because it hurts their feelings, but because our preconceived notions on their inferiority hold no objective basis in reality except those derived from our flawed social perceptions.
Maybe at one time short stature was a decent signal for childhood malnutrition, but in our modern society short stature is mostly a matter of genetics, and there aren't really downsides to short stature in modern life except socially derived ones. It used to be sexy to be fat, but as social perceptions caught up with the reality that calorie dense foods was actually abundant, we shifted our social preferences to fit bodies.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Not trying to guess your height, but it seems you got personally attacked by the fact that society in general looks down on short guys.
Different from skin colour, there's an evolutionary trait to height preference. Studies have shown that heterosexual women prefer partners taller than them. It's understandable this subconscious bias. And what seems like discrimination, it's just a natural product.
Similarly, men have always shown preference to larger breasts and hips, signs of fertility. We can't, even shouldn't, shut down our instincts due to politically correctness.
We can't, even shouldn't, shut down our instincts due to politically correctness.
Of course we should. Relying on reasons that would have been acceptable to a caveman 10,000 years ago is no basis for modern society. We've beaten evolution. Modern science, medicine, and society means evolutionary pressures can be ignored - women with bigger breasts and hips aren't any more likely to have successful offspring now because women without those traits can go to Walmart for baby formula and a GP if their baby gets ill. Evolution has no bearing any more. Why keep using it as a reason?
No we haven't, and that's a good thing because a society made up of completely dysgenic people who need countless supplements and medical products just to stay alive would not be the utopia you're trying to paint it as.
That’s not dysgenic. If you’re in an environment and supplements are available and you function best with them, that’s just a food source you’re adapted to. I don’t go around calling people poorly adapted for needing oxygen and vitamin C.
Becoming reliant on additional external resources to survive is objectively backwards evolution.
You brought up oxygen reliance as a silly point but you're actually right. Humans relying on oxygen actually isn't that great, we can't go into space or underwater (without external support) and we get out of breath when exercising. A group of humans that evolved to not need oxygen at all would be a great genetic improvement.
What anaerobic organisms have you been outcompeted by recently?
I believe the main evolutionary advantage of your anaerobic humans is that they're imaginary, so they don't have tradeoffs, which definitely helps if you want to add features.
I think I'd prefer to be able to detect low O2 instead of instantly passing out; that'd probably be good enough.
But human evolution is basically a story where bigger brains coevolved with increased reliance on more diverse and higher quality food sources. Otherwise, for example, we would have much lower requirements for exogenous Vitamin C, like many other mammals.
It's an impossibility. Evolution is by definition something we can't escape.
> Modern science, medicine, and society means evolutionary pressures can be ignored
No. It means evolutionary pressure will increase and accelerate. Modern science will allow couples to genetically alter/select for best embryos. It will be a genetic arms race to produce the taller, faster, smarter, healthier, etc children.
The advances of modern science will do the exact opposite of what you are claiming. Take down syndrome. Genetic screening has all but eliminated the down syndrome trait from much of the advanced world.
It means evolutionary pressure will increase and accelerate. Modern science will allow couples to genetically alter/select for best embryos. It will be a genetic arms race to produce the taller, faster, smarter, healthier, etc children
People choosing which traits to optimize for isn't evolutionary pressure. Evolution is a very specific mechanism that optimizes through random mutation. Choosing what to optimize for, using science to continue 'undesirable' genetic traits, making people choose who to reproduce with by manipulating what's considered attractive through Pornhub and Instagram, etc are all ways humans are now a poat-evolution species.
The fact we happen to still pick the traits that evolution optimized for in the past is because this is something that's only happened very recently. We're only just starting to move past evolutionary pressure. We could select for anything through science and tech. The fact we'd probably go for things like height, intelligence, etc just means we're not being very imaginative. One day we might decide to push for smaller offspring so we can fit more of them on spaceships, or for children who can survive with less water because the climate is screwed, etc.
The outcome will be the same as evolution, eg optimizing for the survival of the species, but the mechanism that causes it will be very different and absolutely not evolution.
If anything, what you describe is intelligent design, just by humans instead of a god.
> People choosing which traits to optimize for isn't evolutionary pressure.
It sure is. Look up selection or selection pressure ( another name for evolutionary pressure ).
> Evolution is a very specific mechanism that optimizes through random mutation.
Random mutations are meaningless without selection pressure. It's the selection that drives evolution not random mutations. You could have evolution without any mutations - the environment could change which selects for certain existing traits.
> We could select for anything through science and tech.
Which is called evolution. You seem to have a misunderstanding of what evolution is. Evolution isn't only "natural selection". Artifical selection exists. For example, dogs evolved from wolves by human/artificial selection, not "natural" selection. Regardless, it is still evolution.
I don't mean to argue that people shouldn't have preferences, but do you know many men who have breast and hip size requirements for a partner and wouldn't consider someone under those measurements? I'm sure there are some, but I can't imagine that's true of the vast majority of men. There's something rather different about a man's height.
I think it's erroneous to think someone who demands a 6'3 guy won't settle for someone shorter. Those "requirements" as listed on a dating profile are about as strict as "5 years experience with a framework that was released 4 years ago" on a job posting. They're an ideal, There aren't enough men in the world to meet the "6'-6'3" requirement and the majority of would-be partners will have to settle.
"just a natural product" is an argument that has been used for racism as well. White people claimed to be naturally superior to black people which is one way they falsely justified slavery. See "appeal to nature" fallacy.
Obviously taller men are naturally superior to shorter men and so it's just natural that they make more money. /sarcasm
And saying men have always shown a preference for larger breasts is begging the question. There are plenty of studies out there showing that breast size preference is complicated -- bigger is not always better.
Some cultures prefer medium sized breasts (actually, most studies I found this is the preference).[1]
Poorer men might prefer larger breasts and richer men might prefer smaller breasts [2][3]
Or maybe sexist men prefer larger breasts [4]
I don't think we know why women have the breasts they have or if breast size actually is a meaningful signifier of reproductive fitness.
Seems like evidence points that women get breast implants because of their own opinions of their body image and not because it's an actual reproductive advantage.[5]
Yes thank you! My whole argument is that we should reconsider the ingrained belief that short == bad and is some natural truth.
Also I would like to add that not even all cultures like big asses. Some even find the practice of injecting cement into buttocks (to enlarge them) to be repulsive. Different cultures have different preferences. Heck, different cultures can even be sensitive to different colors in their eyes[1].
Once people open their eyes and broaden their minds they'll see that perceptions are extremely malleable.
Height didn't work out for the dinosaurs, and being small works great for the cockroach. There is no objective short == bad in reality.
> Also I would like to add that not even all cultures like big asses.
Isn't this something we're watching evolve in real time? like right now? Cultures that didn't appreciate them now seem to be viewing them in a positive light.
> Different from skin colour, there's an evolutionary trait to height preference.
Does this difference exist? I recall studies that showed that babies are afraid of people who look very different from them and their family members. As such I was under the impression that there was a genetic basis for discrimination of people based on some outward difference in appearance like skin colour that was due to people having an inherent distrust in the 'other.'
If that's the case it's not unreasonable to desire that society progress in a way that mitigate these biases against short people in the same way that we desire that society progresses in a way that mitigate biases against people of colour.
> Similarly, men have always shown preference to larger breasts and hips, signs of fertility. We can't, even shouldn't, shut down our instincts due to politically correctness.
What kinds of things that you feel are due to an instinctual bias to discriminate against short people, and why should we not attempt to shut down this discrimination? If your children were short and they felt like they were discriminated against for being that way, what sort of advice would you give them?
Isn't this another discrimination that short men face? They cannot even engage in a conversation without getting an ad hominem attack. Think napoleon complex.
>There's really no difference between a person proudly declaring they only like "white" people and a person declaring they only like "tall" people.
I get where you're coming from -- criticizing people for what they are, rather than for what they do, is exceedingly unfair -- but I can think of at least three important differences, chief among which are:
1. The shortness of men (barring outright dwarfism) has never been the object of widespread theories about their fundamental inferiority, nor have such theories been enshrined into widespread law.
2. Social institutions have never explicitly conspired to marginalize short men.
3. Redlining, lynching, the selling of persons into slavery, ghettos, etc. have no equivalent in the realm of height.
And to be frank, it's rather shocking that you would suggest otherwise. I don't doubt that you've been treated unfairly, and you are perfectly entitled to complain about it, but that doesn't require you to twist reality.
I think you may have misunderstood the OP and didn’t align with the HN rules of assuming the best meaning.
They didn’t equate racism and discrimination based on height, they said that there’s no difference in someone discriminating based on that - meaning discriminating based on something that wasn’t a choice and cannot reasonably be changed.
1. I pointed out this distinction in my initial comment, and the OP has not conceded the point that "x and y are members of set S" is different from "there are no differences beetween x and y".
2. This in turn negates the "best meaning" you seem to be assuming.
And the first point bears repeating. Even if height discrimination and racism are both instances of prejudice based on immutable characteristics, there are very important differences between them.
Your waiving of the rulebook in response to this is puzzling.
>>> You seem to be defending the thesis in the original comment
> Even if height discrimination and racism are both instances of prejudice based on immutable characteristics, there are very important differences between them.
I meant what I said. You claimed that one of the differences between heightism and racism is that "The shortness of men (barring outright dwarfism) has never been the object of widespread theories about their fundamental inferiority". That claim is blatantly false. Why did you make it?
Again, I recognize the injustice you are facing. But surely you can recognize that there are important, meaningful differences with respect to racial discrimination?
To put it differently: I object to your sense of proportion.
> I don't know whats worse. Slavery and having a chance at contributing to the future gene pool with other slaves or plantation owner's wives. Or not having a chance at all at contributing to the gene pool not because of your skin color but because of your height or the amount in your bank account or not wearing clothes that fit or not deciphering the code she emits, etc... Actually when you are a slave you still have a voice.
I don't even know how to respond to this post but I don't think it's worth having no one respond to it. I'm going with direct.
Being a chattel slave is orders of magnitude worse than being short. That you are not able to see that suggests that, perhaps, your personal struggles and disappointments are warping your judgement. You are 'catastrophising'.
No omginternets, you are wrong here. Heightism and racism really is the same thing. If someone who is 160 cm doesn't get the manager job because however is recruiting don't believe his subordinates would respect him because of his lack of stature, then that is just as bad as a black person would't get the manager job because perhaps his subordinates don't respect black people. The point is how limiting the discrimination is, not whatever the historical background was.
In many countries, some jobs are de facto unavailable to short men. Next time you visit a schoolyard. See who the bullied kids are. They might have something in common. It might not be their skin color. It's not talked about a lot because it is taboo. It may be your sense of proportion (haha) that is incorrect.
How do you feel about a white guy who doesn't feel attracted to black women? Is he part of the marginalization of black women by choosing not to date them?
Yeah it think it has it's roots in prejudice. I don't think society is at the point where i can say otherwise. Black women constantly get the short end of the stick on all dating apps across racial groups. On top of that because a large percentage of black mothers end up single mothers. There is also the part of how the black males behave towards them. But that is a different story all together. I am not getting into that.
Fair enough. That's kind of how I feel about the whole thing. It's shitty of people to be nasty to short guys. It's literally not their business.
It's crazy to me to see 5'7" being listed as basically undateable. I'm 5'7" and I'd say a quarter of my male coworkers are shorter than me. Some of them are hispanic or asian, most of them aren't. They don't seem to have any more trouble with relationships than the coworkers that are taller than me. Then again, the happily married man under 35 is not strongly represented in any height range here.
Many women also find symmetrical faces attractive, is that also akin to racism? What about a preference for a square jawline? Preference for thick hair?
Is it immoral (akin to racism) for women to have any preferences at all, or just regarding height?
Height does appear to be correlated with income[1]. So it’s entirely possible that discrimination has existed and continues to exist. People seem to think that because something is difficult to measure, it isn’t there, but that simply isn’t true. Lookism could also be a big problem, but the causal effects of being unattractive are hard to identify. Imagine trying to assemble a treatment and control group for that. Who is going to self identify as being ugly?
I understand your objection to drawing an equivalence between racial discrimination, but even if it isn’t as “bad” can’t it still recognized as a lesser form of bigotry?
They are equated under the principle of injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. You could make the argument that Black people have suffered more at the hands of society, but the injustice of both are in the same class: prejudice.
>You could make the argument that Black people have suffered more at the hands of society, but the injustice of both are in the same class: prejudice.
Again, this is exactly what I am saying.
I am also saying that you go further, and engage in an intellectual slight-of-hand. This happens precisely when you say "there's really no difference [...]".
Yes there is. There are several, important differences that render irrelevant their belonging to the same category. Abraham Lincoln and Pol Pot both belong to the category of "heads of state", but it is laughably incorrect to claim that there are no differences between them. So too with your example.
What you are failing to understand that there can be "no difference" between doing things, yet there is a large difference when one of them is done a lot more and more intensely than the other.
That's the difference between anti-short and anti-Black, not the anti-ness itself.
"There's no difference between anti-shortness and anti-Blackness, except the intensity and commonality" is certainly a statement, its I guess correct in the tautological sense that "X and Y are not different if you exclude all the differences between them", but it's also not a useful statement at that point.
I'd ask in what way the point you're trying to make is useful, either analytically or rhetorically. I don't see how it is offhand.
They are not equivalent and I disagree with the OP's example. Racism is significantly worse. That doesn't mean heightism/lookism is not an injustice worth examining and discussing however
The difference here is that height is also correlated with nutrition and by proxy social class. Whatever that study says, eradicating that type of confounding from statistical associations is hard/impossible.
There's an increase in low birth rate babies (not due to malnutrition), probably due to increased survivability of smaller more frail babies. The fact that they grow up and lead healthy lives means that their society is indeed selecting for the survivability of smaller people.
Right, but selecting for in the present tense (ie past 30 years) is going to have a negligible impact on population statistics.
Also, ruling out that kind of confounding -is- hard… as mostly practiced any measurement error in confounders reduces our ability to ‘control for’ them… but most epidemiology and all nutrition research just glosses over this.
Height and income relationship could be modest or nonexistent if you look at a genetically and socially homogenous population and consider earnings through age 65 or 75. Also, note that as you get up to the retirement age, tall people are more likely to be dead or disabled than short people.
no one is comparing the historical treatment of short people to slaves; they are comparing how preference for some unchangeable attributes are somehow acceptable but preference for others are not.
you are forcing additional context where there is none.
That's just untrue. The claim is that there is "really no difference" between discriminating against Blacks and short people. There are several important differences, and they relate directly to the historical treatment of Black people.
There is no difference in the comparison because they're both based on immutable physical characteristics. There's a difference in the historical context, which you highlight.
This does not follow. There is a difference in historical context, which has a bearing on the real-world effects of height-vs-race discrimination, ergo there are differences between the two.
In exactly the same way: Abraham Lincoln and Pol Pot are both heads of state, but it is incorrect to say there are no differences between them.
You're describing a difference in the outcome, which is the action + the context. I'm not saying the outcomes are the same, I'm saying the action is the same, but the context is different. Subtle distinction, but it may not even have been what the person you originally commented to meant, so I am going to abandon further discussion on this :)
It's a comparison they are never totally the same. That's the point. If women complain they are treated like slaves, do you stop them to explain they aren't actually treated like slaves?
But for whatever reason we might say that racism has led to violent strife or wars, but has social tension between tall and short men led to war? Heavy conflict does not seem to organize along lines of tall vs short.
And on a related question, what is the essence of sexiness, and is attraction to the sexy wrong?
Historically. But if the historical context of slavery did not exist, it would still be just as unacceptable to treat Black individuals differently.
In essence, historical context is largely irrelevant to whether an action is right or wrong. An action is right or wrong in itself (with respect to the contemporary common moral framework, (which may itself be influenced by history) etc.)
As such, treating Black individuals differently is not more or less wrong than treating short individuals differently.
I believe I am being civil. I also think bad faith can be demonstrated, and that it has been.
>As such, treating Black individuals differently is not more or less wrong than treating short individuals differently.
Again, as I have mentioned repeatedly, we agree on this point. Where we disagree is in the assertion that there is "no difference" in effect, precisely because of the historical context.
Historical context does not influence whether an action is right or wrong in itself. You should not need atrocities to be recorded in history to tell you if you are doing the right thing.
It's amazing how circular the responses in this comment thread are getting. There appears to be disagreement on the surface, but in reality almost everyone is presenting a view which is at least compatible with each other's -- if not in direct agreement.
It's not fucked up. Racism isn't bad because of the historical context. It's bad because it's bad. "Shortism" is quite literally exactly as bad as racism.
You keep bringing the argument to the literal definition of “no difference” which no one is arguing against you on. One is heigh and one is race. They aren’t literally the same thing but it’s also clearly not what is being compared here.
There is no difference in the sense that if you can root out the act of discrimination and prejudice here in this instance then you can root it out in other instances (racial discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination) because as others point out they all have the same cause: prejudicial biases based on immutable (and irrelevant to whatever is causing the bias) characteristics.
This is in essence why MLK said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, because injustice is all the same.
We don’t fight racism just because we owe black people. We fight it because it’s fundamentally wrong, and not because black people just happened to have suffered a lot.
I agree that it shouldn’t be used in a derogatory manner, but it’s a fact that people have preferences in who they prefer to breed with. In fact that’s the reason why we are what we are in a positive way. You are being disingenuous or have genetic maladaptive screening of partners if you think otherwise and that maladaptation is naturally evolved away.
My point is that preferences are malleable and there is no objective reality or grounding in modern society for short stature being an undesirable trait (at least going forward). My hypothesis is that short stature historically has been attributed to malnutrition, and therefore destitution as well, which has shaped modern day preferences, but perception lags reality.
EDIT: Also I should add that people are reading my comments automatically into the context of sexual preference, but I was talking more specifically about the general attitude that it's ok to deride people based on their genetic shortness. That being said, even if OK Cupid (Which is just a proxy for dating preference due to the specific nature of how it operates) showed that black woman were the least likely to get matched on OK Cupid doesn't mean it's ok to now make fun of them based on their skin color / cultural / racial background. Our perceptions about short people, black women, etc, are the results of social conditioning. Conditioned behavior will always lag the current reality. It is my belief that short stature does not hold the negative associations it once had, just as whatever was the reason for our preferences against black woman probably do not hold anymore.
We don't go around forcing people to start liking short people or black woman if they have not conditioned themselves to do so yet, but we also shouldn't be accepting adding fuel to the prejudicial fire.
I would say that past preferences are simpler than malnutrition. The biggest brute wins. People feel safe around bigger people if they're on their team. I met Thor Bjornson a few years ago and meeting him was terrifying. I can see that trait as being desirable just from a protection and safety perspective.
Like you said though, that's less necessary in this day and age.
Even if you add that and other hunter-gatherer positive qualities, those don't apply in modern society as much either. Today the frail rich nerd wins, for the most part (or at least their ability to kill a man wit their bare hands matters a lot, lot less).
I don't think anyone is arguing who has greater modern power. I think people are just arguing if the preferences are created through upbringing or do they come from something more innate in our biology.
Agreed. I'll also say though that we have these preferences and a lot of them are hardwired. Some come from upbringing but our brains looking for symmetry in a face or perhaps certain features on men or women come from our DNA.
I find women of a certain size and shape attractive. That doesn't mean I can't find other kinds of women attractive, but you're doing the argument a disservice if you don't think at least some of our preferences are innate.
I think many people over attribute to innateness what is likely caused by childhood upbringing and conditioning over time, which can feel like its innate.
I appreciate this comment and you're probably right at least with me. It's hard to define the lines between genetics and upbringing or maybe a combination of both!
That is a major oversimplification. Many fractures and disc disease are much more common with increasing stature so there are clear limiting factors in play.
You are overestimating and being too kind on “modernity”. Even if today short stature is not a disadvantage (and that’s a big if), it can perfectly well be in one month, after a war or pandemic breaks out, or in a generation when your children will be shorter because of current preferences.
Isn't the opposite equally plausible? Tall people kind of stand out in foxholes, and they require more calories that may not be available in desperate times.
Height is not necessarily an end in itself. It’s much easier to be short than to be tall. For someone to be tall many things have to have gone exactly well. So tallness is a proxy for generic success.
It can, but hasn't. Our prejudice against short people is almost certainly a result of past associations with malnutrition and poverty. I can't speak for other reasons, but this reason for short stature is no longer a main cause in modern Western (or even Eastern) society. Plus what you say about the fickleness of advantage/disadvantage equally applies to tall stature. Maybe Ryanair will start charging tall people extra next month.
Your comment shows your hand on your prejudice, because you're still somewhat commenting from the viewpoint that tallness is still an inherent positive trait. That clearly didn't work out for the dinosaurs. I'm not saying the opposite is true (that shortness is an inherent positive trait), but I do believe we need to dispel our preconceived notions because they are very short-sighted.
Prejudice is always masked as “preference.” Just because you say you prefer X doesn’t mean you know what you want pt what you are talking about. Many people actually choose self-harming things and this is the essence of inexperience and the learning process.
I can think of another genetic factor that has a much, much greater impact on survival. And it is absolutely taboo to mention the heritability or genetic basis of this trait.
Take solace in the fact that if you find yourself on HN, you're likely at least a few SD above the mean in this trait, so you don't have much to worry about. Furthermore, you can use this trait to understand the fickle nature of sexual attraction, and how to obtain whatever it is you're looking for in an efficient manner.
oof, we don't discuss intelligence == genetics == success here, too bad those three are hardly correlated without addressing other factors, edit too bad as in too good, because without the other factors they aren't related. No straight line for you here
Yes, I’ve noticed you can’t meet a rationalist without them trying to recruit you to scientific racism in the first 10 minutes. Mostly because they don’t know what “heritable” means and think all evidence should be believed just because it’s passed in front of their eyes and someone called it evidence.
But there is no reason to believe that 2SD above the mean in the heritable elements of 'intelligence' amounts to much. For all we know, almost everyone is born about the same and there are a few disabled at one tail and a few playing 10 simultaneous games of blindfolded chess at the other.
Muscularity is the strongest predictor of mating success for men.
A study on males aged 18 to 59 found that muscularity is significantly positively associated with the number of total sexual partners and partners in the last year.
Handgrip strength is correlated with self-assessed happiness, health, social confidence, overall physical attractiveness, and overall number of sexual partners.
Researchers recorded short videos of 157 different men. Next, they had a group of male viewers watch videos of the men and asked, “How likely is it that this man would win a physical fight with another man?” Then the researchers had a group of female viewers watch the same videos and asked, “How sexually attractive is this man?” Eighteen months later, the men in the videos completed a questionnaire asking about their sexual history of the previous 18 months. How tough a guy looked to men was a much stronger predictor of mating success than how attractive he looked to women.
In this study, researchers asked two different groups of women to look at photos of different men and rate how strong the men looked. Results showed that the rated strength of a male body accounts for 70 percent of the variance in attractiveness (this is a massive effect size). From the paper: “None of the women produced a preference for weaker men…in both samples, the strongest men were the most attractive, the weakest men were the least attractive.”
Sexual preference is largely shaped by societal influences as well. As I stated at the end there's historical pretext to this: fat women used to be preferred by men. Sexual preferences have changed over time. It's just as wrong as assuming that patriarchal society is some universal truth.
Assuming that it is some innate quality that women are attracted to people taller than them is also flawed. What about homosexual woman? If they both prefer someone taller how does that work?
> As I stated at the end there's historical pretext to this: fat women used to be preferred by men.
Is there a citation? I've heard only the rich were 'plump' in ancient times, though not that it was ever sexually desirable.
> What about homosexual woman? If they both prefer someone taller how does that work?
Nature doesn't always fit our intuition or first hypothesis. IIRC, gay men strongly prefer very fit men, yet they cannot procreate. That struck me as counterintuitive, though if the cause is genetic there could be a variety of factors leading to such genes.
According to the "sneaky bisexual" theory, bisexuality is beneficial because of you can seduce the fit dude maybe he'll let you sleep with his mate, and if he's fit he probably has a high quality mate.
One hypothesis is that gayness is from an evolutionary point of view "too much bisexuality". Similar to how one sickle cell gene is beneficial, but two is deleterious. According to this theory, evolution favors bisexuals, and sometimes produces gays as a side effect of that.
Fat women in mediaeval times would be possibly thinner than an average Western woman now? Have you seen the fattest guy in the World from ~1900s picture he's large but he'd probably fit in an airline seat?
It's really hard to consider these things as "fatter" probably meant larger dowry (!), better survivability, healthier and by extension better for child-rearing. Whilst fatter in Western society now (anorexia, etc., aside) is almost certainly healthier, fitter for child-rearing and such.
Populations were lower and people moved around less, there was far less choice for mates.
But then choosing, rather than falling in love seems strange from where I am.
I’m not saying they were fatter, but that they preferred fatter. Fatness was a proxy for wealth, which meant that it was easier to be emaciated back then, which means people were less likely to be overweight.
Contrast to today where it is easy to be fat, so therefore not hip to be round anymore. That means we’d see more fatter people than in the past because it is easy now.
There are probably many factors that determine preference ranging from genetic, enviromental, personal-history, cultural, that determine it either immediately or through some other mechanisms, but we just don't know that yet. In any case preference isn't comparable to an institution, for many reasons beyond the mechanics of preference.
> This reads like pure cope from a short guy. I don't see how one can dictate to others what they should find attractive. That's not how it works.
No one is dictating anything about attractiveness, and you really shouldn't be trying to marginalize my arguments on the ground that I might be short. It really has no relevancy here. I wasn't talking about dating and people's dating preferences. I was referring specially to the person receiving a derogatory comment about his stature, that was in the context of normal socializing. Again, it is not socially or morally acceptable to deride someone for their skin color, and my point is that it's equally unacceptable to do so on another genetic trait such as height. Just because that random man did not find the height adjusted man to be attractive or not has no bearing on whether he has the right to express derision about his height in such a nonchalant manner. I mean, it shouldn't be made illegal, but it shouldn't be socially acceptable either assuming all parties are not toxic and want to be part of well-intenioned society.
However, if we want to shift the topic to dating/attractiveness, your statement applies to people's "preferences" on race as well. OK Cupid published these preferences against black woman (and also Asian men) on their site. We can use this as an example because it's been more in the spotlight than the topic of stature, and easier to see my point.
My opinion on this is that if you are short/Black/Asian and dating then just skip to the next person who can't see past superficial physical qualities. Usually it's a sign of dating inexperience anyways. It's a free market, and the winners will be those that are able to make a decision beyond superficial factors. Many people can't see past the superficial qualities as trivial as a candidate being a woman instead of a man, and the same thing applies here. It's their loss. Societal trends will always lag reality. We can't force people to get up to speed, nor should we (and I never advocated for this). The best thing to do is to simply reward those who are prescient.
>the winners will be those that are able to make a decision beyond superficial factors
You're just inverting reality now. "The winners of dating are those that pick partners with the least desirable physical traits".
If there's two men with identical personalities, but one is 6'5 and muscular and the other is 4'2 and 300lbs what exactly would a woman be "winning" by going with the second man?
To be charitable to the GP, you could imagine that physical indicators that correlated/anticorrelated with success in the ancestral environment no longer did today, such that if you were picking between the 6'5 and 4'2 guys, the 4'2 guy has a highler likelihood of being a tech millionaire/programmer and resistant to microplastic-based infertility, and thus can provide/reproduce better than the 6'5 guy. I.e. the average woman's attractions aren't calibrated to the modern environment, much how most other instincts aren't calibrated to the modern environment.
So, over time, the rare woman who prefers short obese kings would outcompete the rest. I don't think this particular example is the case, but I do think something like this dynamic is happening.
(In the other direction, actually.)
>there aren't really downsides to short stature in modern life
It even have several health benefits. Except that in dating, women overwhelmingly prefer men over 6', and very small differences like 5'7 vs 5'9 double or triple the matches in online dating sites. If we are talking about 5'6 vs 6'0 the difference is ridiculous, like over 200X more matches. Women even divorce short men at double the rate of tall men. Those sites have years of very precise statistics that support this fact.
Basically this means that in modern dating, if you are short, you are very likely to die alone and this trend will only get worse in the future.
Being tall had several competitive advantages in the past. Basically before guns were invented the bigger guy usually could kill smaller guys, and get more food for the family. Quite obvious that women would prefer the big guy, and instincts don't change that quickly.
I think they actually change faster than most would think. While that specific reason for preferring big guys is out-dated, more recently malnutrition and destitution have been a black mark on short people.
The reason I think societal trends move faster than we think is that I think it was only in the middle of the last century that we still preferred fatter bodies.
I perfectly agree it make sense evolutionarily speaking, I just wonder how that subjectively manifest in a woman mind. I don't think it's the same perceived stimulus vs the consensual sexy perception of a hypertrophied 6 pack.
Lucky for short people, height is a lot less of a factor in modern society. Wealth is a much bigger factor. And what's the best path to wealth? Software. Even more lucky for them, software and internet doesn't care about height.
Is that really why humans are getting taller? Most increase in height has happened in the last 70 years and linked to increases in nutrition. Selective pressure seems implausible as an explanation for any measurable increases in height in historical time.
What if better nutrition has allowed for better selection of taller genes? Back when everyone was more nutrient deficient and had stunted growth, I imagine it would be much harder to select for a suppressed trait.
"taller soldiers are more likely to survive battle and that taller parents are more likely to have sons". This was based on his research of British Army records from the First World War, which showed that "surviving soldiers were on average more than one inch (3.33 cm) taller than fallen soldiers"
I was thinking that the taller men were recruited to the army first, while the rest didn't leave home at all. But eventually everyone would've joined I suppose.
Yep, and studies show after 1980 people have actually been getting shorter (at least in Japan, which can be considered almost a post-modern society when compared to the US) [1].
I think the stats you are referencing about humans getting taller are from improvements in childhood nutrition. I don't think genetically we've been selecting for taller people, as that is harder to conclude (plus, even if woman select for taller men, men do not necessarily select for taller woman, and woman are part of this too let's not forget).
> Women usually marry the millionaire, but have sex with the pool boy. This dual-mating strategy is instinctive.
Yea and the man has concubines, and the prenup? Pretty sure the woman usually doesn't have the pool boy's children in these stories.
EDIT: See here for a study showing after 1980 people have actually been getting shorter (at least in Japan, which can be considered almost a post-modern society when compared to the US) [1].
Really it's a made up story from "data" that hasn't been shared from someone who is apparently happily married and learned about online dating at least second hand but seemingly just from tropes they've heard in online forums, so I'm not too worked up about the situation.
> plus, even if woman select for taller men, men do not necessarily select for taller woman, and woman are part of this too let's not forget
Men's preferences only matter in a monogamous society, where less attractive women are expected to settle down with less attractive men who will financially support their kids.
But in modern welfare states, less attractive women can still sleep with very attractive men (whom they could never marry), have their children, and rely on the state to financially support their kids.
Which means the rich but unattractive men are, through taxes, paying for the children of the attractive men.
He's not disagreeing with that. . After pregnancy there are about 18 years of raising a kid too-- so ability to provide is a part of selection. In the past women would have to take it into account, but now it's much less necessary because they will be provided for either way
>Which means the rich but unattractive men are, through taxes, paying for the children of the attractive men
I con't understand how so few people realize this. The modern 'incel crisis' is fueled by online dating and government subsidies. It's the perfect combination to ensure reproduction of only the top few percent of men.
i would claim that incels have existed in the past, but there wasn't a convenient way to gather and confide. With the advent of the internet and anonymity, it's easy to gather and confide.
I dont know if you would consider this self-reinforcing though. Saying that this group is self-reinforcing would imply that homosexuals gathering online to talk and confide are similarly self-reinforcing.
I absolutely disagree. How do you support that conclusion?
What I’ve heard from incels makes it easy to understand why women would be uninterested. That worldview and subsequent outcome would seem to be reinforced by spending lots of time with people who reinforce the negativity.
Height, weight, shape, pilosity, generic looks, intelligence, education, success, wealth, virility, etc. are all criteria that are used by people to judge other people and discriminate, whether they're purely esthetic or have functional impact. Society also prizes different things in men and women. These are all forms of discrimination but I think it should be clear that they're nothing like the discrimination of black people. Scale, intention, means, effect, all matter. A puddle isn't an ocean although both will get you wet if you step in them.
If your point is that we should eliminate any and all discrimination... sure. Although it's a far too lofty goal to happen as long as we're biological beings. But saying that "there's really no difference" between color and height discrimination is something you could and should really walk back from rather than attempt repeatedly to defend.
Every single decision you make is based on some criteria that you may not even be able to clearly define. But just because you can't verbalize why you like this person and not the next doesn't make it less of a discrimination process. Do you think that makes you the KKK?
I concede it's arguable which discrimination is of a bigger magnitude, but it doesn't matter. MLK's whole point was that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. That specifically means that no matter how small the injustice is, as long as it's the same class of injustice (prejudice), it's a threat to justice elsewhere.
> I concede it's arguable which discrimination is of a bigger magnitude
Unfortunately you conceded nothing and chose to maintain a position which you not only failed to support no matter how many times you tried, it's also either insulting, dismissive, or absurdly ignorant. If you have to wonder which discrimination is of higher magnitude, against black people or short people you clearly don't grasp the full extent of what discrimination can be. You fail to understand how magnitude makes these 2 cases far more different than the fact that they are "discrimination" makes them similar.
Quoting MLK after wondering which discrimination is bigger (against black people or against people who are 5'9") just adds insult to injury.
You seem convinced that having a hairy mole on your face is exactly like being black or jew as far as discrimination goes. That being rejected by a woman for the mole is the same as being rejected and punished by society for your skin color. Who's to know who suffered more? It's "arguable" because they are "the same class" after all, right? So I concede that you're far more willing to dig yourself in the deepest hole trying to defend an indefensible argument than to actually concede anything.
I'll tell you one thing, no matter how you look like, if people hate your character they might use whatever insult cuts you deeper rather than something they have a personal issue with. So if you do go around telling people being short is like being black and they pick on your height it could be that they have a problem with what you chose to be rather than what you are by nature.
I am sure there are some women for which that's true, but do you really think it's that strong of a universal?
IDK, whenever men write stuff like that I always think to myself "you need to hang around better people". Like you can absolutely 100% find women that cold and calculating and dishonest. But acting like all women are that impulsive is really strange to me. That's like saying all men will beat you up and rob you because it makes sense in evolutionary terms.
We are talking about attractiveness here, you can't choose who you are attracted to. So in one case you have a wife who fucks the pool boy, in the other you have a wife that wants to fuck the pool boy but doesn't since she is a great person. But in both cases you have a wife who is more sexually attracted to others than to you, you can live with that but it is sad for those people. Just like how old men tend to be more attracted to young women than their old wives, and that makes those wives sad even if those men never leave their wife or cheats, reality has a lot of sad facts like that.
You'll never be the most attractive person in the world though. Even if your SO think you're attractive, there's a huge amount of people they'd be more attracted to, if they had the chance to meet them.
I think you’ve nailed the central point here: men get stuck in the friend zone where they can’t have sex with a woman. However, women have the opposite problem where they get stuck in the fuck zone where the man only wants casual sex and doesn’t care about a romantic, emotional, or cohabitative relationship.
Just because you’re getting Tinder matches doesn’t mean you’re finding the type of relationship you want. I see a lot of men on /pol/ unable to see that things can be equally difficult in different ways on the female side.
I'm not convinced the friend zone is real, I think some women are just fine being friends with people they don't want to have sex with. I've gotten out of the "friend zone" with multiple women I know.
There was a study on online dating habits that said that even someone who was 5'8 would need to earn ~138k more than the same 6'0 person to be considered equivalent, controlling for everything else [1]. Of course it is just one study and I havent looked into it fully but nonetheless.
I used to go out with a friend of mine, he's a multiple business owner, a miltimillionarie since he was 25, blonde, blue eyes, etc. Also he's very social, he was always the 'soul of the party' etc. Me, at that time I had a 10 years old car, but I'm 5'9 and he's 5'6.
I always was the one that got the phone numbers, always.
Well chroma is giving an anecdote not necessarily how about how women choose him despite being short, but about the women who did end up choosing him realizing that height ended up being an irrelevant factor given his other qualities.
What is not so lucky for short people is how our modern society rewards tall people with more wealth. S&P 500 CEO’s have an average height of 6ft, compared to the average height of 5ft10in in the US. Also, 30 percent of SP500 CEO’s are 6ft2in or taller, compared to only 3.9 percent of the rest of the US population.
These things matter across the board, not just in the top tier management positions. Each inch of height adds $789 of average yearly salary, which makes a huge difference between a 5ft5 in person compared to someone who is 6ft tall. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/entertainment/naija-fashion/2...
I think you forgot to link the data that makes this obvious?
And remember the point I think is nonsense is specifically, “women overwhelmingly prefer men over 6’”, not that height is the biggest determining factor for attractiveness in men.
I don't know where you are getting your information from. I've talked to plenty of women. Heck, I am on of those. And I've talked to folks that aren't women, too.
It isn't obvious. I've personally never considered height as a qualifier. I've known folks that prefer someone taller than themselves but they wouldn't turn down a shorter man. The preference isn't going to make someone pass, but more akin to preferring dark hair over light hair. You see, preferences don't always add up to action and most folks I've known wouldn't pass on someone because of height.
But if you are only using information from dating apps, your information is going to be seriously skewed for everyone. I might not always care about height, but if you are giving me a list of attributes and I'm looking for casual sex - I'm probably going to choose depending on my whims at the time. Height can make some positions better or worse, after all.
It is also possible that men think height is more important because they think height is important, much like overly muscled comic characters are overly muscled to appeal to men.
I've experienced the "filter" issue with online dating, but my conclusions are entirely different.
I really don't mind it, in fact I appreciate it.
Anyone who would filter me out over something as shallow as height would undoubtedly be an extraordinarily poor match for me.
I prefer quality over quantity.
As to the "die alone" thing - that seems a bit grim.
I'm 46, since age 14 when I actively started dating the longest I've been single was for about 3 months after a bad break-up, and that was by choice.
Sure, when you don't have a height advantage you have to make it up in other ways - personality, fitness level, professional success, etc...
In general, I think my relatively modest stature has been a benefit to me. It forced me to be a better person, and to focus on qualities that matter, rather than superficial things.
I knew there would be answers of the style 'I'm short and Im great with girls' yes, but you are only a data point. I'm talking here of statistics, and in general short guys have it bad, according to online dating sites. You can easily do an experiment with a fake profile and see it yourself.
You're missing the point; not all of those guys are engaging in the kinds of self-improvement and development that could help them have experiences similar to the person to whom you are responding.
For an individual short guy, the quantitative info out there is only detrimental. At best, it's useless. They need a qualitative focus.
The problem with this mindset is that it sort of punishes woman for a perception thrust upon them since childhood. If you think its possible to meet some of these woman and convince them to say “I’m glad I took a chance despite your short stature because it turned out I don’t mind it at all” then I think it’s worthwhile to “help them see the light.” Plus, since this is a societal problem primarily it means you’d also be filtering out a lot of woman simply for the fault of having not enough experience in dating.
I honestly don't even know how to parse or think about that.
Are they entitled to date me, even though they've communicated a clear preference not to, and I'm somehow punishing them by not convincing them that, no I'm a really great guy, really...?
Or is it that I'm such a valuable gem that these helpless women who, through no fault of their own are deeply attracted to tall, dark and handsome, must be rescued from that to date me, short, old and bald - because ... ?
Honestly, I really don't get it.
Everything isn't a societal problem. Some people value certain physical characteristics. Those people tend to be a terrible match for me.
I'm happier with people who value my humor, personality and the way I treat them.
I know multiple tall, classically good looking men who, while they can can get dates, can not maintain them because they have zero relationship skills, and I know just as many short men who have a relationship whenever they want.
While height might be an early filter, it is by no means the only source of attraction. Men would do well to build the rest of their personalities to stand themselves out rather than complain about something they have no control over.
This social disqualification is the reason the truth remains hidden. I'm only 5'9 and have a family, but this was way before social networks and online dating. The world is different now.
>I know
Yes I know many data points that fall outside the curve too. But I'm talking about the curve.
The other great factor for dating success for men is income. You can offset being short by earning a lot of money. Since you are here on HN I assume you earn way more than average Americans.
Each inch of height corresponds to about $25k of yearly income on the attractiveness scale. Do the math, are you still below average? Note that income isn't just what you earn, but what you can be expected to earn in the future, so even if you met a woman as a bright computer science student you would still expect to earn a lot of money.
Confidence gets you past any initial filter (not to be confused with arrogance or assertiveness — be respectful).
Once you get serious, it’s the bigger filters you need to worry about IME.
My then new girlfriend’s friend asked me out of nowhere: “what’s a derivative?” And my answer was “investing or calculus?” Apparently that was a filter for my wife when she dated. She wanted smart men who weren’t just faking it, wouldn’t just start talking about things because they knew something about it, etc. Her and her friend had that simple question. I was basically the first guy to pass it. Hell, I even had some basic filters, like going on a road trip together. Eventually, got married, made babies, and travel around the world. I got lucky — met her semi-randomly on the beach through mutual friends. Neither one of us were looking for a relationship at the time.
>Men would do well to build the rest of their personalities to stand themselves out rather than complain about something they have no control over.
Are you saying that he's missing out on lots of opportunities for self-improvement in the two minutes or less it took to write that comment? It's not wrong for people to complain about things that negatively affect them, and it's not mutually exclusive with trying to fix the problem. There is really no justification for the insistence that short men must not complain at all.
> Basically this means that in modern dating, if you are short, you are very likely to die alone and this trend will only get worse in the future.
I'm 5'6, and after almost 15 years of dating sites to modern dating apps, I have indeed accepted that yes, I will very likely die alone. My therapist has even half-seriously suggested I try lying about my height, and qualms aside, from the studies I've read, any plausible-in-person exaggeration would gain me a couple of percentile points at most.
My theory is that if you stay in a city, you are very likely correct. In a city you have to compete with men much taller and attractive. And women have access to hundreds of those men 24/7 through their cell phones constantly hitting on them. You won't win, but in a smaller city/rural town, you have much more chances.
I am a 5'6 man. I still think a city is much better as I assume the 5'6 man has standards, too. It's not like finding a partner who is willing to settle with you is difficult at all - it is finding one that you feel meets your level of fitness, intelligence, and social status which is considered high (other than your height). In a rural setting you are going to be very limited but a city definitely has options.
I would say be patient. I think as you grow older it becomes less important. And even if 80% of women have fairly strong height preferences I think a solid 20% have close to no preference or would care but are very short themselves.
If your goal is to settle down—as seems to be a commonly expressed desire in this thread—you might find that conservative women are more like minded, for obvious reasons.
Conservative women are more likely to value traditional family structures and gender roles, and thus place a higher priority on getting married and having kids. Even controlling for age, etc., conservatives are 25% more likely to be married than liberals.
I think lots of “liberal” guys would be happier in a conservative environment,[1] with the greater social structure and narrower horizons of conservative society. If what you really want is to settle down, have kids, and live a normal life, you might be making yourself unhappy trying to hack it in the NYC or SF's dating market--which is full of ambitious, individualistic people who aren't placing a high priority on those things. Consider that you might be happier moving to a red county and finding a conservative woman whose life priorities may be more aligned with your's--even if you may have abstract disagreements on immigration policy or the long-term effect of the welfare state.
[1] Of course the opposite is true--but liberally minded people who can't wait to leave Iowa is a well-known trope. We don't talk so much about the folks who went to the big city for education or career opportunities, but would actually be happier in Iowa.
Lol at the emergence of all these archetypes about the dating market etc. you’re not out buying consumable goods; you’re looking for people to spend time with and enjoy each other’s presence. Everytime I hear people complaining about this it is always transparently clear from their own words that they are the problem. Conservative environments are not a plus, but instead a reservoir of retrograde perspectives and unimaginative implementations of false concepts of historical precedent. The lamest approach.
you wouldn't believe how hard they have it when trying to find men who know things about things. It's not very difficult if you actually treat folks with respect except in perhaps the most conservative of places.
Rural America is probably a few inches taller on average than the cities. Also the gender ratios there for young singles tend to be as bad as Silicon Valley.
Lying about your height is actually an acceptable thing to do if it is to get over people's prejudices. In all honesty a good chunk of the people you encountered probably wrote you off prematurely anyways. But online dating and Tinder isn't great when you're trying to look past superficial qualities (your face, your height, your basic physical characteristics) so it's setting you up for failure, not to mention the way these apps are setup makes it really low effort for men to and woman to each have unrealistic expectations, and setup the vast majority for failure.
But if you're still looking for things to try, I would recommend you get some activities (sports, hobbies) and meet people outside of a purely dating context. People's guards will be down and they'll be evaluating you on your other qualities rather than height in these contexts, and the extra time you spend with them is exactly what you need for them to overcome their prejudices.
Thought experiment: Can you apply the same process to other characteristics? For example, is it ok to lie about your race to improve your chances with racists? Even if that works, should you?
Yea, if you think they'll forgive you for lying. If you're asking if it's worthwhile to court a racist then that depends on the other person. Obviously if you can turn them from a racist to not a racist then it's a worthwhile endeavor.
Well since race is an arbitrary social construct with no consistent, objective definition then anyone can choose any racial identity they like without it being a lie.
But when I was in the dating market I wouldn't have been willing to date a racist anyway, so the question is moot.
No only is that first sentence logically groundless, in that the consequent doesn't follow from the proposition, it is also dangerously untrue, please don't go around pretending to be of a racial identity you are in fact not a member of people really don't like it.
I'm a tad over 6' but girls are so used to guys lying about their hight that they usually say I'm 6'2". On multiple occasions I've had my date insist over my objection that I must be taller than that.
It's not a stretch for me to imagine that widespread lying by men about their hight has actually collectively made the problem worse for men, e.g. women insisting on 6 feet because they've dating 5'10" guys claiming to be 6" and decided that was the minimum.
So awkward. I'm just over 6'2" -- and at a recent family reunion had to deal with everyone saying I must be at _least_ 6'4". Because I was much taller than the other 6' guys there... and if I dispute it too vociferously, it's almost an attack on all the guys around me who are lying about their height. It seems there's a 2 or 3 inch bump across the board.
Ya, that happened to me once (Im almost 6’2’’). A guy who couldn't have been 5 10 was insisting he was 6 and that I was taller than stated. What was weird was that we were alone. He was only lying to himself.
And you know what, he was a bit weird looking. He had bad posture. But he was a good guy. A smart, hard working guy with a big heart.
This height thing is annoying. Id gladly trade inches of height in exchange for other inner character traits (courage, perseverance, conscientiousness). Intelligence I have to spare, but what good is it without character?
one thing that people don't realize is that they shrink as they age past a certain point (common to lose an inch), and I believe that bad posture can increase this. When I was 18 I was 6'4 but I'm pretty sure I must be around 6'2 - 6'3 by now. So maybe he got measured one time, without taking shoes off, and stood up really straight and he got told 6 when he was 5'11.6, and it's been like that in his head ever since.
to clarify, because that is what I was last measured at, don't know if I shrank, and anyway don't want conversations, oh people shrink with age about 1 inch so I am probably 6'3 seems too much for someone who asks what height you are which is just filler conversation.
While this does happen, and someday it will happen to me if I survive long enough, I gained close to two centimeters in height within six months of starting a regular weightlifting program which is heavy on squats. Apparently there are enough small support muscles along the spine that bulking all of them up buffed my height stat.
This is distinct from the practice teaching me a more upright posture, which it also did, this isn't subjective height, it's the kind you can measure at some gyms on the weight station in bare feet.
Edit: occurs to me this raises... certain questions! Nothing more biochemically interesting than creatine.
Sometime in the middle of last year I was seated outside a coffee shop and a guy comes up and he's like "how tall are you?" So I say I'm 6'2", which I am, approximately (age shrinking does not seem to have set in last I checked) - and he goes "oh cool I'm 6'8"." and then just turns around and leaves. Though I wasn't checking, I don't think his height was actually much different from my own. Apparently he needed to feel ultra tall or something.
When I consider all the cheaters in online video games who do it solely to "subtly" pad their stats, it's not really that astonishing that widespread height cheating would be a thing too.
Im a quarter inch shy of 6’2’’. So, indeed, 6’1’’.
My old man is 6’4’’ and when I was young he’d rib on me that I never got past 190 (we’re metric background). Now I don’t care much about height. At 70, he’s shrunk to my eye level and of all his traits height is the one Id rather not have inherited and gotten his monastic character instead.
I've had almost this exact thing happen to me a couple times. 5'11,'' so it is impossible for me to state my height without calling out 6' guys who are shorter than me.
It's definitely gotten silly. I'm 6'3" and I have repeatedly had men tell me they were the same height. While in front of me. Looking up at me. I can't do anything but wear a bemused smile and change subjects.
I'm 6'2" (happily married). Yes, I've been confused at other 6'1" and 6'2" guys out there - there IS definitely a fair bit of fibbing going on I think.
That said it doesn't come up that often in my circle.
That doesn't make sense, surely these women know their own height and can estimate from there. 2" is about 5cm, that's a substantial error when it amounts to "how much taller are they than me" and that gap on average is <15cm in USA.
I used to be 6'1" but have reached the age where you shrink. I am now also a tad over 6' and always answer the height question as 6'. My experience is similar to yours. Some women insist I must be 6'2". A couple of times I have just said that maybe I'm closer to 6'1" because it was close to becoming a full blown argument. Needless to say there were not 2nd dates with those women.
Being at the age where you shrink is also the age where many of the women you meet were formerly married. It is amazing how many of them have said that their former spouses were shorter to just taller than them and it bothered them the entire marriage. They say they will never make that compromise again.
> They say they will never make that compromise again
Not surprising to see this sentiment from a group whose marriages all failed. I expect the biggest prediction of long term marriage success is the willingness to compromise on much bigger things than this.
Brother do what I did move to south America, the dollar goes a long way and the ladies love their short kings. I'm amazed walking around here in Argentina how many couples where the woman is a head taller than the guy. Spoiled american women won't go for a guy a head taller than her.
I don't understand how some men will adopt the belief that they're doomed to die alone and would rather accept this fate than simply move to a better dating scene, or just get a mail order marriage.
They adopt this belief based on repeated experience. You're going to take their entire life of observations and tell them to just try harder? What do you think they're doing?
I've seen lots of people (in other contexts) keep failing and give up simply because they are too rigid in their thinking and refuse to try other ways.
No, I'm telling them to do something drastically different, like leveraging that western citizenship / green card or that sweet tech salary into finding a wife. It's unromantic but better than dying alone.
It really makes a lot of sense, especially for tech cities where there's literally too few women, and the men have good jobs and incomes, why not match them with some of all the women around the world who would love to have the opportunity to start a family there.
But that means the local western women would get increased competition, so that will of course needs to be shamed and frowned upon, I don't understand how it's any less romantic than the shallow greedy american women and their 6 foot 6 figures standard.
Just stop using apps like Tinder, they attract the worst of the worst, by what I see, especially in the US. Even if you were above 6', you wouldn't want to date a woman obsessed with height.
In my group of friends, the shorter ones (around 1,73m) are the most successful ones.
Ah, so it is. The converter I used gave 5 feet 8.11 inches, and that last number tripped up my mental rule for rounding measurements in 12-inch feet such that I came out incorrectly with 5'9".
1.7m vs 1.8m is a difference of 10cm. That's WAY too large of a difference to not settle on using cm. Adding an additional decimal point would be oddly specific.
so you're saying you've never had a date. I'm like 5'8 maybe 5'9 depending on when you measure me. it's not that hard to get a date. I even have computer nerd chub.
I'm an old man with children. Fortunately when I was dating, internet almost didn't exist. Women barely had any choice except the guys they saw everyday. Now is a total different world.
This is like the single lump of labor fallacy except its the single lump of mammaries fallacy. There are still roughly the same number of women chasing the same number of men in a larger more connected graph as there are in many smaller disconnected ones.
Come on, women aren't a monolith. We're talking about one factor (height). It might be important to some women, it might not be as important to other women.
Obviously those percentages can't be accurate. Just look around. The average person at age 35 is in a long-term heterosexual relationship. That's still the default. Not everyone, but way more than 20%.
These kinds of power law statistics describe sexual attraction and activity, but that selects for different characteristics than long-term relationships - where things like intelligence, honesty, reliability, etc., come to the fore.
It shouldn't need to be said, but Tinder is not representative of all human relationships.
How are all the women settling down with 20% of the men again precisely? A women would rather have all of your attention, time, and resources than 2% of a slightly taller dudes.
Even if you assume temporal polygamy (serial marriages), I would consider an individual with one woman for 20 years to be more successful than one with 5 women 10 years each.
IME Dating apps are a terrible way to meet women. All they have to go off are a few pictures and some numerical stats - and it's a sausage fest, the odds are stacked way against you.
I'm not denying there's a preference. I'm saying dating apps amplify them by putting them front in centre. Where as you meet and have a good rapport with someone IRL you're not probably not sitting there thinking "Wait is he an inch shorter than my minimum height on tinder?"
Dating apps are a way to gain insight into how UX manipulates desire + how applications produce behavioral statistics which we then clumsily project into iron laws of psychology.
I was never as appalled as I was when watching very successful, intelligent female friends of mine use Tinder. The shallowness of it is unparalleled. The quickness with which they'd reject perfectly good looking people was hard to believe.
There's a lot to say about how the structure and dynamics. of a tool guide how we use it, and that's very much at play here.
These same people acted FAR different in the outside world. I think the notion of a complete lack of scarcity leads our brains in this unachievable quest for perfection (based on nothing but a picture).
I'd say get off the platform, but you also have to go where the people are! I'm just glad I'm not dating anymore.
Tall women are easy to get dates with, well unless they are the fashion model types who are hot enough to get the in-demand tall guys. There are lots of cute tall women who are unfairly neglected.
I'm average height and was married to a 5' 11" woman for a while. It always felt weird. It's much more comfortable for me to be with a woman who is a similar height, or a touch smaller, just for ergonomic reasons like how it feels when you hold hands or put your arms around each other.
I don't understand hot short women demanding tall guys as a kind of trophy. I know they can get them, because they are hot, but they'd be more comfortable with someone closer to their height.
My girlfriend is 5'11" (and taller than me, and a model, dancer, etc etc) and yes it is a bit hard to reach standing, but I figure that's a common human experience. Sitting down and such you don't even notice.
I haven't asked if the concept of needing an even taller guy has ever occurred to her, but the even stranger one of either of us caring if she's wearing heels sure hasn't come up.
Move to India! You’ll be average height and being white will be a big plus.
Also, I'll observe that the median Hispanic man in America is a hair under 5' 7" (66.7"), yet Hispanic couples account for almost a quarter of births in America. Just a data point!
Stop thinking about it and grow a pair. It pays off. I had a lot of anxiety too when I started dating. Just act like its not a issue and the right girl will too.
Its not the height, its the strut. Online women cant see you strut so heights the proxy.
My wife's cousin’s 5’6’’ but Ive seen women go up to him and strike a conversation by the way he walks. Ive been in parties where he’s nailed every girl (including sisters and wives) in the room. Me? Nothing much, and Im 6’2’’
I know many people shorter than you and are quite popular with girls. Look outside your own countries , for example , someone average could become very popular in some Asian counties if you are white. ( not that I agree with it but it is the reality) .
I have a friend who is not more than 5’4” and is incredibly popular with women. He works out a lot and has studied the art and science of getting women interested in having sex with him the way I studied electrical engineering.
Trying to play a broken game honestly, is a losing proposition.
Social taboos get established to keep the winners winning. Go find yourself a gold digger. It is fine. Maybe go date women in cultures where 5.6 is not too short. Hell, I'd say that a mail order bride (more likely an economic refugee who appreciates your wealth) is still better than dying alone. It is a brutally objectifying system and you have to play to your strengths.
Sure, there are social taboos around this. But when the system fails you, you have to look at alternatives outside. If you are too insecure about being THAT guy, then lie about till you start believing the lie.
Every non-abusive individual deserves an honest chance at pursuing a relationship. If the thought of dying alone is painful, then cheat the system.
All is fair in love and war. Haters be damned.
P.S: get out of the bay area / seattle. These places are dating deserts.
P.P.S: it is obviously advice for the the edge case. Only refer use it within the context of traditional options having died out.
I'm a short guy (5'6") married for nearly 2 decades to an even shorter woman (4'11"). Perhaps its easy for me to say it because I've beaten the odds, but it seems to me it would be better to die alone than to be in a shitty relationship or to be in a relationship with someone that thinks they are making a concession by dating a shorter person. People cannot help what they are/are not attracted to so I have no animosity towards women that like tall guys, but even if that shrinks the dating pool 200x that's a better situation than wasting time with a person that isn't really into you.
Also, gold diggers are shitty people. You can't have a real relationship with one.
I can't blame the desperate people that volunteer to become mail order brides for thinking that screwing over some poor sap from a 1st world country is a lesser evil than them having to remain in poverty, but you'd have to be insane to marry one.
There's no way to cheat the system, if a person isn't genuinely attracted to you, whether its physically or otherwise, you have no chance of building a life with them that's going to make the two of you happy.
It’s not beating the odds though. There’s countless millions of women around the world who would be thrilled to be dating a 5’6” American/imperial unit user. The problem only exists if you limit yourself arbitrarily to a very small pool of women having a particular nationality and skin color.
95% of women are not American. And only a very small percentage of those are gold diggers or mail order brides. The vast majority are just normal people with normal dreams of having a modest family.
If someone is 5’6 and having trouble meeting someone, they should consider if their own criteria are irrational.
>And only a very small percentage of those are gold diggers or mail order brides. The vast majority are just normal people with normal dreams of having a modest family.
I wasn't saying that all women are gold diggers or mail order brides. I was responding to a person saying that a short man struggling to find a long term relationship should look into those two options.
>It’s not beating the odds though.
I was mostly joking by this, although I have beaten the odds in other ways by being married to the same person for almost 20 years (at least by US standards).
>If someone is 5’6 and having trouble meeting someone, they should consider if their own criteria are irrational.
the "system" isn't failing you, because there is no such thing as a system, and even if there is, this system isn't there to benefit you or ensure you don't remain maidenless.
> Every non-abusive individual deserves an honest chance at pursuing a relationship.
Yes, but it's only the chance is given to you, not the result. It's not like there are regulations preventing you from seeking a fruitful relationship.
Someone is going to have to define, a little more explicitly, what a mail-order bride is, since the actual catalogues which inspired this term haven't existed in 2 decades.
Meeting any partner who isn't currently a US Citizen if you are is abusive? Meeting any partner who was born of lower economic status than you is abusive?
I'm an American man engaged to a foreign woman and am familiar with all of this - including negative stereotypes of cross-border relationships that in any other area (race, gender, orientation) would long since be considered deeply bigoted and unacceptable.
> Every non-abusive individual deserves an honest chance at pursuing a relationship.
Darwinian evolutionary theory dont's say 'Survival of non-abusive individuals', it says 'Survival of the fittest'. Not having a relationship is evolution's way to kill your genes because they are not fit for reproduction, and that's why its so painful, because you instinctively know you are dying. That's why people do crazy painful dangerous things as enlarging their legs bones.
Human trafficking doesn't become acceptable because somehow you believe the person is getting enough out of the deal. If you have to rebrand a trafficked individual an "economic refugee" you are working on a marketing degree not a conscience.
There are billions of women out there and they can't all marry the 6'6" quarterback because there are only so many of them in the universe. I find that people who claim that the mating game is irretrievably broken often have the idea that they are of a certain caliber and wont consider anyone beneath them.
This attitude is usually combined with a complete failure to understand their actual grade in the opposite sex' eyes, a negative attitude, and or inability to function in this arena.
Basically usually 5s and 6s who are convinced they are 8s and 9s who disdain women who are also 5s and 6s while projecting a negative dejected attitude. This might not be you but its like 90% of the people who project the same attitude.
Why would they date people who they don't want?
The lower your expectations into the gutter advice is blindly parroted but is idiotic.
Being alone is a lot better than finding someone who sucks.
Most of those are in other countries though, so you'd have to be willing to date internationally ("mail order brides"?) to meet them. And if you're American, a large number of foreigners may pretend to love you only to divorce you the moment they get a green card out of you.
I have never heard of anyone who got scammed for a green card not least of which because to get a green card good for 10 years you have to actually stay married at least 2 years. Seems like a very long con.
There are in your own locality as a young person just as many eligible females as their are males. Odds for the woman actually get progressively worse every year as the population of eligible males decreases faster because young men die more frequently and exit the effective marriage pool from her perspective in other ways whether it is because they have non intention of looking for permanent attachment or because they prefer young women regardless of their age.
I'm 5'5, pretty average (ie. not rich or particularly physically attractive), and I've consistently had attractive romantic partners my entire life. US-based, metropolitan area if that matters.
I don't really have any advice, but I really don't think your height is limiting you. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely harder than if you were six inches taller, but it's not that bad.
It's one factor of many that affects your overall attractiveness and many people don't care about it at all.
Yes at the very least it’s important not to hide it because it acts as a great filter for those who do care about it (which I’ve never been bitter about either—we all have preferences in attractiveness)
I’m also 5’5 and don’t really have this problem. I was upfront about my height on dating sites back when I used them and a few women mentioned it was a dealbreaker but that also never stopped me from getting plenty of matches and going on a lot of dates.
These anecdote-based "it's not that bad" comments are very misguided. Even the OP article clearly points out statistically even small differences like 5'7 vs 5'8 make huge differences and something like 5'6 to 6'0 can have 200x difference.
This is by no means "fine" seeing (1) finding a romantic partner is one of the most important determiners of mental health (2) youth today is going through a huge social isolation crisis. If you're short you're seen (not explicitly, but through statistical regression to the mean) as a lesser person.
I think it's absolutely crucial to understand this is not "fine" and compansate accordingly. This seems like the responsible truth to me.
I am the same height as you and now married. 10-15 years ago I came to the conclusion that dating sites and apps are the last places I should try. They encourage people to pre-judge you based on superficial characteristics that you can never win. It's simply not a fair fight. I've found that I stood a better chance in face to face situation: at least then I can display unique characteristics rather than just be a sheet of specs.
My wife also happens to be shorter than me and she has never been on any dating site.
How about trying a different city/country? In Warsaw, Poland, the gender inbalance is like 2 to 1 single women to men around the age of 35. This makes women drop certain criteria, and height may be one of the first to go.
When lacking height, you need to compensate by boosting other markers, that women latch on.
Things like managerial position, luxurious housing, car, dressing etc.
They don't, and after nearly 14 years of relationship & marriage & kids, I don't think women really care. But it gives confidence, and confidence makes you attractive.
move to an east coast city, wait a few years (older women care less about this stuff), get in good shape, start drinking and going to bars/meetups/events, especially related to your hobbies
This problem in online dating doesn't just apply to the single physical characteristic of height. It's a clusterfuck of ticking boxes and underdeveloped expectations. A 5 year old boy might tick "no girls", while a 14 year old boy might tick "big boobs", and a 30 year old man might tick "good education and stable job."
It's as if we all go into it like ordering at a Burger King, except Have it your way (tm) comes out tasting like crap because we realize we aren't chefs. Online dating is how a bureaucrat decides to choose their life partner. The boxes you tick in online dating aren't important and are there just to pander to users.
I’m a 5’1 guy and I ended up marrying someone who was 5’3, I never expected to get results on a dating site though, I knew my wife from a social setting for months before we started dating.
Pep talk: Everybody dies alone. Sorry, not very "peppy" perhaps. All right, how about this: Quantity of women (i.e. numbers who prefer tall guys on some app) is not the same as quality of women. It's kind of the opposite in fact, if humanity is anything like a bell curve. The mainstream, with its sheer numbers, is full of dullards. The most blindingly, boringly average people, from essentially the center of the gene pool in every way, are the ones we tend to find most attractive. Which is great for selecting for reproductive fitness for the species overall. Evolution will trick you into doing its bidding. But thanks to modernity, reproduction itself is really only relevant if you choose to make it so, and even then, only for like the first third or half of your life. Which is a time horizon that's hard to see when you're in it, but clear as day by the time you hit 40 or 50 and your kids are starting to be independent.
So try to play the long game. You might meet your special someone later in life, who knows. Meanwhile in the short term, whoever doesn't appreciate you for what you are, look at it kind of like "well fuck 'em anyway," like they just self-selected out of your filter. Regardless, I'm 100% certain you won't be helping anything by trying to trick people into liking you. And I'm about 80% sure you won't even get anywhere by trying earnestly to be whatever stupid thing they want or think they want, or that some cost-free process of entering profile info on an app encourages them to blithely and carelessly say they want (because why not?). This goes not just for being short but for any human trait you do or don't possess. (And the only reason I allow 20% of hope there is because there's a possibility that through concerted effort you might actually manage to improve yourself in some way. But it should be something that came from you, something you yourself want to strive for, not something to please some fickle asshole and make them like and approve of you.)
It's not about what they want. It's about who you are, and whoever is the "audience" for that, is who you should be focusing on. What does Slayer care about Ariana Grande fans? Maybe on some level they wish they had as many fans as she does, but I'm pretty sure they aren't out there trying to impress them or win them over by being more Ariana-Grande-like. (I don't even know if Slayer is still a band; I might be dating myself.)
Editing to further bloviate:
Who is going to mate with all the short women of the world? Tall guys? No, they're mostly looking for tall girlfriends. But short women need love too, and the ones who aren't so shallow and lacking in logistical foresight as to demand someone two full feet taller than themselves, are out there. Just a thought.
One detail stuck out to me in this piece: The fact that this guy continues to read anti-short-people hate online, and still reflexively feels slighted, but then "remembers" that he got this surgery, kind of speaks to the fact that a big part of this is in his own head. Hear me out. I'm not suggesting people aren't being total douches about those of diminutive stature, because I've witnessed it and I'm quite sure they are. If someone is saying a sentence where if you put "black" let's say, in place of "short," there would be hell to pay, well then... there should be hell to pay. It's not right. At the same time, there is always evil shit out there being hurled at someone. Even tall white rich males. (Maybe especially them, lately.) Do you let that inside your head and make it your own thought that follows you around, day and night, far outside the reach of the douche who said it? It's difficult to practice the level of mental & emotional discipline it takes to cast such thoughts out, but it is an area where you have some degree of control over the situation.
That's why it's important to lie about height & income (at least until you're looking to settle down with a permanent trusting relationship). If you're not cheating, you're not trying.
Jokes aside, percieved attractiveness privilege is by far the most prominent form of discrimination in society today. (After wealth) Watching good.looking people coast through hard things purely because doors mysteriously open for them, is one of those things that you'd never believe it unless you see it.
Height is obviously the most prominent of those features among men. Sadly, it is tied to the most fundamental of social phenomenon (mating), and no amount of moralizing around it is going to change anything unless women change change their dating preferences. (Goes both ways, but women are generally the ones with hangups over height)
We are on a website filled to the brim of people using their abnormal intellects to excel beyond the vast majority of society and amass wealth. I'd go so far as to say that double digits of posters here are part of the 1%. Stop whining about a superficial perceived inferiority that has no real impact on your ability to survive and thrive, and use your galaxy brains to figure out how the mating game works. I'm relatively short and not that attractive but spent a bit of effort on understanding others are looking for in a man and it paid off. There are billions of people out there.
Could you please give more details so that frustrated youngsters like me can learn from your experience. What did you do to understand? And what are your conclusions?
Men start off mostly worthless by default from a dating perspective, and gain attractiveness as they gain money and status. So, make money and gain prestige. Pretty-boys who peak in high school are the exception.
Women peak in physical attractiveness to men as soon as they mature. Emotional maturity plays a role in attractiveness, and that generally improves over time, so peak overall attractiveness for your average woman is probably in her 20s.
So, ignore women in your 20s and make lots of money, and then, when you're 30 and rich, marry a 20-year old.
This is one way, but I don't think it's the only way. I believe it is worth to explore other options and you get double benefits: the woman and any other attribute that helped you get the woman in the first place, being it confidence, humour, style, fitness, or any other thing. It's hard but I believe it's also good to give it a shot.
I don't disagree, money is just one dimension of the whole edifice. I guess I'd distinguish between depreciating and appreciating assets: youthful beauty is fleeting, so in terms of long-term payoff a man's better off cultivating the 'hot dad' look, so that their attractiveness peaks between 30-50. Confidence, humour, are good things to build up that stick around- I'd wrap that all up in 'your personality', which I agree is good to cultivate. I'd guess it's roughly equally important as your financial situation (and the two are intertwined/interdependent to some degree).
Lastly, fitness is a red queen's race, kind of like aging; time works against you, and the worse your body gets the harder it is to get fit (fitness protects against a lot of chronic problems that make exercise harder) so there's never a better time to get/stay fit than now.
TL:DR; I agree that everything you mentioned is inherently valuable and will also help you get women, so long as we don't forget money and competence!
First caveating with the statement: this is all generalization, and there are always exceptions. I'm speaking about stereotypical straight cis-gender relationships here.
* what you want and what women want out of a relationship are in many ways very different
* On a related note, what women find attractive is very different from what men find attractive.
* Do not project your ideas of what you are attracted to onto women's likes, especially when it comes to physical characteristics
* Confidence, presence, and humor will get you past 90% of the crowd
* Spend some effort on style and clothing. If you don't want to be stylish, then at least be unique.
* Recognize that women are also horny and want sex as much as men. The difference is the approach and the ritual around getting there. You'll need to understand what turns a women off during this "dance", e.g. being too explicit about it at the wrong time.
* Do not get so easily dejected by rejection. Build up a thick skin and laugh it off.
* Regularly inject yourself into conversations with women, and when you find a common interest, don't hesitate to take advantage of that and deepen the conversation and eventually schedule something with them.
* Understand what the signs are of someone who is attracted to you, e.g. playing with hair, teasing, other body language. Once these are noticable you can go in for a kiss or an invitation back home.
* Recognize that there are effectively infinite women out there, and each one is going to have different history that shaped their preferences, either an earlier boyfriend or crush or favored celebrity or whatever, and some percentage of them will have preferences that overlap with you and give you an advantage. Even if it's something you think is unattractive, not everyone agrees. So don't give up.
Thanks for sharing those reflections. Although I lack experience, I feel that all what you said is valuable and that reflecting/working on all those points would certainly improve building connections with women.
I am naturally a bit shy and reserved with women. I am also not very witty and humorous (except when drunk) and I have a historical record of nerdiness and introversion. Coupled with a short stature, it makes me lack in confidence (I got some rejections due to height in the past, but in no way I think height is a limiting factor. I believe being fit and confident can make wonders). I am in mid-twenties and I realised that I need to change this and I need to seriously work on it to live a normal life and find a partner.
Also recognize that "finding a partner" is overrated, and don't be in a rush. The consequences of a bad choice in partners can potentially last a lifetime, so be picky as well when it comes to commitments. It can take months or even years to really know someone. Be less picky when it comes to flings. Speaking of which, just because you had sex with someone doesn't mean you are under any obligation to maintain monogamy or a relationship with them. In fact, don't go in under the assumption that a relationship will happen. Let it develop naturally.
This is not true. Women prefer men who are relatively taller than them.
Obviously it’s better to be taller because that opens up more options. But the preference women have is for you to be taller than she is not that you have to hit some absolute value of 6’.
I went in this fully expecting you to be correct but drastically pessimistic in terms of hard numbers. Instead you were exactly wrong on the easiest point to check divorce rate. Short men tend to marry later on average but divorce at a substantially lower rate.
The part about 200x the matches is both obviously pulled out of the air and grossly exaggerated. It looks like on average women tend to prefer men who are taller but not hugely different in height from themselves.
If you are 5'6" you are most apt to be most attractive to women who are 5'4" or shorter which is helpfully 43% of women in the US.
You say you are very likely to die alone based entirely on a malarkey stat you pulled from thin air. You don't need hundreds of matches in a dating app to find one person you want to spend your life with. You need to instead cultivate qualities that would inspire ONE of many potentially worthwhile mates out there to make time with you and then work on enriching your life and relationship.
The problem with this fatalistic attitude is twofold. Firstly it spoils all hope of success to believe in yourself not one whit and second it holds that somehow MEN or at least yourself are rational whole mental and emotional creatures while somehow women are irrational animals who somehow cannot even see you. It's degrading to you and to hypothetical mates.
>If you are 5'6" you are most apt to be most attractive to women who are 5'4"
In which fantasy world that study was done? lets see.
mmm 2012, the year Tinder was created, so it was basically in a different era, but let's continue.
I see 'questionnaire based data' so it's self reported data! Of course you are going to report that you love 5'6' men. But you really don't. People say politically correct things, and then do a different thing, and this is specially true in dating. Look for studies based on Tinder or other recent online dating sites to have more accurate and real data.
> Basically this means that in modern dating, if you are short, you are very likely to die alone and this trend will only get worse in the future.
Maybe in America. Plenty of countries where the average height is lower than what the article mentions. Not to mention that most European countries are "ahead" regarding respect than America.
>Except that in dating, women overwhelmingly prefer men over 6', and very small differences like 5'7 vs 5'9 double or triple the matches in online dating sites.
This is why you shouldn't put height in your dating profile, so you filter out a bunch of superficial people.
There’s definitely a lot of stories were person A recounts their meeting person B by saying “I almost didn’t meet your [father|mother] if it hadn’t been for…” where the meeting was almost blocked by some arbitrary prejudicial filter due yo inexperience. I think it can work to your advantage as a filter but given how poorly online dating works for anything but matching on superficialities you might practically end up filtering out everyone.
Yep. Nobody wants to talk about it, but the amount of abuse that is directed from otherwise-socially-conscious women towards short men is pretty disgusting. It's extremely common for groups of women to laugh at and deride short men, both online and publicly in real life. It's eye-opening. (And before you ask, no I am not short, I've just witnessed the abuse first hand).
Personally, the short men I know still get play. Women have a wide variety of tastes, as do men; and the taste really just needs to be tried once to get a probability for it to stick.
That said, women being callous and cruel in groups about height, fitness, etc is more congruent to locker room talk. You probably won't hear it because it's behind your back and usually not by people you know. I say that as having been witness to this kind of private talk before.
Yeah. My point about promiscuity is that it hasn't hindered my dating ability. I agree with the locker room talk but I disagree that it's a problem. And it's not just women. If anything I've had my stature shit talked more often by other men.
I was just summarizing why I think you probably wouldn't hear it directly from women. Men definitely do it too, but as you said, probably in a more noticeable/direct fashion. That said, after years of social movements that have made very targeted complaints using identity, I would not cast that kind of stone. Trying to use shitty data and anecdotes to declare, "Men/women are problematic because of x" is really not helpful. Really, at the end of the day, nobody on this planet has any business commenting on someone's features they were born with. It's easy enough to stick to that.
Didn't see any study about that, but its true that women not only reject unfit men (short, poor, etc.) but sometimes are actively hostile and abusive to them. Perhaps is a instinctive behavior from a past were rapes were much more common than today.
100%, but you're right that nobody wants to talk about it. I guess I've just adapted by growing thick skin around the issue and just not letting it bother me.
That thick skin is, IMHO, a trait that I think has become vastly underappreciated in our society.
Thick skin doesn’t solve the issue though. Shorter men are valued less in society regardless of how little you let it effect you emotionally. This has real tangible effects for your everyday experience.
Being made fun of and the source of jokes is never going to be solved by having “thick skin”. Shorter men will still be seen as lesser even if they don’t let it effect them mentally. End of the day - your material being will be markedly different than those with greater height regardless of how you respond to it. For some - this will be so severe that they will likely die alone due to it even though they themselves are not troubled by their height or the jokes people make about them. And honestly - letting it get to you might actually help.
Sometimes I wish I had been more insecure growing up because then I would’ve treated my acne and not had all the facial scarring. I almost didn’t get braces because I didn’t see the issue with my extremely British teeth. I wasn’t concerned about my attire (but I should have been!) because I didn’t think it mattered and I wasn’t concerned. Again - thick skin can actually be quite detrimental to your outcomes!
This happens more often then you think. I’ve seen basically every minority group imaginable get told to develop thick skin and get over their “imaginary problems” (black, asian, indian, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, asexual, straight, poor, rich etc), even on more liberal corners of the internet.
I don't think you're wrong to point this out, but it's also obvious that nobody is discriminating against men for being short or women for being fat the way people discriminate and have discriminated against people for being members of those groups.
I don't recall any red-lining against short men, separate water fountains or schools for short men, short-men not being allowed to get married, etc. Also, remind me the next time the NYPD sets up some extremely questionable surveillance of short-men at northeastern universities or a presidential candidate adopts banning foreign short-men from the country as part of his campaign platform.
Almost all "socially conscious" people are just pretending so they fit in.
Only ~10% of people have actual social consciousness that affects their life choices.
We'd be in a better place if we started from the assumption that everybody is prejudiced, it takes work for any of us to overcome it, and the work is never complete.
I've seen hypocrisy and cruelty from people of all backgrounds. But anecdotally, among the "socially conscious women" I've spent time around, this, which is one of three top comments on the article, is a common sentiment:
> This is a reminder that the patriarchy hurts everyone and men should be just as invested in destroying it as women.
It's an example of the harms that emerge from hidebound gender roles, preconceptions about the desirability of male dominance and female submission, and stultified ideals of attractiveness.
Just as women benefit when society learns to accept and appreciate a wider variety of body types, so do men.
Doesn't this only make sense though if patriarchy is a priori defined by gender roles? It falls apart if any non-patriarchal system develops or prefers any gender roles. On what basis is it claimed that only a patriarchy has gender roles?
You are talking about “a patriarchy”, they are talking about “the patriarchy”. In other words this particular one we are living in with it’s built in assumed gender roles.
I understand, I am asking why the gender roles being "built in" is exclusive to patriarchy. Suppose we replace patriarchy with matriarchy. Are there no built in assumptions about gender and everyone treats each other nicely?
I believe it's an emergent phenomenon, so unless there is a plan to enforce that from emerging, you're going to be very unsatisfied even if "the patriarchy" is removed. But my question that I want to understand is, are "gender roles" by definition a patriarchal concept? If so, "the patriarchy" will always be a boogeyman to blame any time gender roles emerge. If not, then tying them to patriarchy is dishonest.
I would guess that both monogamy and historical gender roles derive from the economics of an agricultural society. We had thousands of years where almost all people were agriculturalists. It’s only within the last hundred or so that we have large numbers of people no longer closely tied to agriculture. I expect both expected gender roles and our societal concept of marriage to undergo profound changes.
> I aspire to a society where gender expression is independent from societal roles.
Brilliant. We're all in this together struggling to be generous to each other. There will always be tension between men and women and divergent gender roles will always exist, but things can be better than they are today.
There can be less of people of one gender or another demeaning others for physical characteristics, and more celebration of variety. I hope that more people can find it in themselves to accept when an olive branch is held out to them. This huge thread with hundreds of comments is a catalog of anguish showing how much potential there is for us to do better and be better — in daenz's formulation, being less of a "mean piece of shit" — for each other.
That's not true though. It's women who believe in patriarchal gender roles that are more likely to date short men, because they focus on a man's suitability as a potential provider rather than his looks.
Thinking about this more, I think the far simpler explanation is "being a mean piece of shit hurts everyone" and it applies to pretty much any belief system and doesn't require a complete restructuring of society on the hopes that it'll prevent people from being mean.
Mate selection is not and should not be institutionalized which means that you are within your rights to discriminate on...anything. Your criteria may be based on "taste", past experiences or downright prejudice. It is inevitable that as you pick a mate, you discriminate.
You can't stop that nor should you. We can however openly discuss criteria that are unhealthy, perverted, make no sense...in an attempt to open people's minds. Not to control whom they can date, rather to open up possibilities. People may be missing out a lot by being needlessly restrictive.
As old man I might provide a shortcut. Cliche as it is, character stands the test of time. What is somebody like? Select for that, the rest is a bonus.
I don't know if that's the issue people are bringing. I think people are talking about the active derogatory and communicated bias towards shorter men.
Not being attracted to short men and not wanting to reproduce with them is a personal thing. But going on record ridiculing them, saying bad things about them, mocking their height, that's not okay, and it's true that if it was done about their race it would be frowned upon, but seems to be acceptable for height.
I think that's a fair issue to bring up.
It also seems there might be real measurable pay-gaps, and that might need addressing as well.
"But going on record ridiculing them, saying bad things about them, mocking their height, that's not okay, and it's true that if it was done about their race it would be frowned upon, but seems to be acceptable for height."
I fully agree, and you can extend that to men being bald, and many other bodily aspects. I think in particular contexts it's fine to make the occasional joke but that's entirely different from making it a widespread thing.
There are a LOT of hair restoration ads in a particular commute path near me. Like it's a self-referential trope. I used to thing it was just funny. But then, I thought a bit about how a series of similar ads about breast augmentation would be met with criticism of body shaming. It's just... socially acceptable to handle male pattern baldness this way, I guess. It feels pretty gross when you pick it apart that way.
But one can detect and judge appearance much more quickly (instantly, in most cases) than personality. It seems much more efficient to select those you consider physically attractive first and then date to check for a compatible character, than the other way round. Just like (excepting bisexuals) most of us instantly disqualify 3.5 billion people as potential partners for being the wrong sex, even if they might have great characters.
You're right, but my point is that by slightly relaxing the physical criteria, you get a wider selection of personalities.
For example, it's ridiculous to ask for an exact height. Height is a spectrum. By demanding 6" or taller, you can't seriously justify how somebody that is 5"9 is an absolute deal breaker.
Similarly, if you're not attracted to fat people, you could still consider somebody a little overweight. Weight is not a static quality.
You may be attracted to brunettes, but I would opt to see that as a preference, not a hard requirement.
My point is that "attractive enough" is a better strategy as all of these things are ultimately unimportant if the personality doesn't match.
Deriding people based on their height is wrong. But preference for tall males is based on a preference for strength, athleticism, and ability to fight. This is true in all human cultures. If you think it's outdated, consider sports. Almost all MLB pitchers are > 6' and that's not even getting into basketball. In terms of fighting, although stature is less relevant than ever, there are plenty of ongoing military conflicts.
This is true for lots of things. Being fast is better than being slow. Being smart is better than people simple. Being attractive is better than being ugly. Being fit is better than being fat. This isn't a happy realization but it's true and it's healthy to accept it.
The dimension along which all people are equal is a metaphysical or religious dimension, not an empirical one.
> There's really no difference between a person proudly declaring they only like "white" people and a person declaring they only like "tall" people.
People can like whoever they want to like. Some people may only like those of a certain height, weight, race, class, and any other attribute you may want to think of, but it is not necessarily wrong. It is up to each individual to have the freedom to date whoever they wish.
You might be conflating this with the societal denigration of certain races or classes, which is surely bad because there really is no reason to denigrate them, but that is not the same as saying everyone must be attracted to those of any combination of the above such factors.
Racism is not just bad when it's phrased in a negative way. I can say I only like living next to white people because that's my "preference". That is still racist, the same way it is racist if you prefer to only date people of a certain skin color. The fact that many people do not see any issues with such statements says a lot about their relation with the idea of human races. Much of society still very much believes in it. In fact, racial thinking is going through a Renaissance currently.
> That is still racist, the same way it is racist if you prefer to only date people of a certain skin color.
That's not racists at all, that's just a person's personal preference for what they find attractive, and it often can't be helped.
We develop our models of what we find attractive early in our development by what we are exposed to.
It scares me a little that you don't know this, yet feel confident enough in your knowledge to type out these words.
Is it racist if I only like blonds? No, but that does rule out more than a few races of people that can't naturally grow blond hair. You're allowed to have physical preferences for certain traits. What you shouldn't do though is treat people differently because they don't have those traits that you value.
What would be racist is if I said I only hire [insert race], or I only let [insert race] people rent my condo.
> What you shouldn't do though is treat people differently because they don't have those traits that you value.
so back to your example - if you only liked blonds, and exclusively date them, then are you not treating other potential dates "differently" (in the sense that you do not date them or even give them as chance)?
> we shifted our social preferences to fit bodies.
I'm shifting all the way back on that one. Fat is fit. So I was talking to a girl, a model in fact, I was a model too, met a lot of models. I said I am going to want exactly the sort of woman I want, and no other, without any other man's judgment being taken into consideration at all.
So it's actually about white fat versus brown fat cells, apparently. Saturated or unsaturated, based on diet, to a lesser extent fat but to a greater extent sugars and especially toxins[1]. So without it women look ripped and bony. All the models I saw like that looked great on TV but terrible in real life, the models who didn't get work had that...that baby fat I guess you could call it. I got her to come around on the subject she was like, "yeah, a thin but not too thin and even layer of fat, it looks good!"
[1] Many but not all psychiatric compounds. All of them alter body fat, I think. Fluoride, for lots of reasons. So hard to escape that F'ing F atom. Then what other toxins...pesticides and especially fire-retardant.
> It's wrong to deride a person based on skin color not because it hurts their feelings, but because our preconceived notions on their inferiority hold no objective basis in reality except those derived from our flawed social perceptions.
No... if that were true then it would be OK to deride someone who was born with a deformed limb, because in that case the "inferiority" would really have an "objective basis in reality". They would be objectively inferior at certain tasks then someone without it. Does that make it ok to insult them?
Suggesting racism (or prejudice) is wrong simply because it's not objectively inferior is missing the point.
The actual answer, which I think you would have come to eventually, is that deride someone for an attribute they had no control over, is the essence of prejudice.
People do not chose to be born in a poor country, in an abusive family, black, French, short or handicap, these are simply the hands they were dealt.
There are a reasonable number of women on dating sites that like saying pretty horrible things about shorter guys in there profiles.
I don't know that it does much but I've always treated it as a bit of a red flag and swiped left.
I don't think there's anything wrong with say, being attracted to someone taller than yourself, but I don't understand feeling the need to public ridicule someone about a physical trait you aren't attracted to.
If they were smarter they would know it hurts their ranking in the algorithms. All that, “if you’re not X swipe left” makes you appear less desirable when people do swipe left. I consider it a stupidity filter. You can do niche marketing after the match has taken place, before that you need broad appeal.
Likewise, for some reason it still seems to be socially acceptable among the educated professional and managerial classes to discriminate against the less intelligent and even openly mock them. There seems to be a social consensus now that it's wrong to make fun of people with an IQ below about 70 (intellectually disabled) but apparently those in the roughly 71 - 99 IQ range are fair game. Is that morally right? I don't understand it.
There's a kind of funny thing here that people see being short as a kind of deficiency.
I'm about 5"8, and am actually really happy with my height - it's perfect for the types of sports I do, I fit quite nicely on an airplane, and have no problem if I were to drive a smaller car.
I imagine for taller people those things could be a hassle, that flying would be a real pain, that they might look silly on a motorbike / skateboard, and coule develop back problems from bending down.
When it comes to dating, online dating apps suck in general, but honestly I've never felt like I've missed out. People don't even seem to truly know what they find attractive until they have someone placed in front of them. I've even had this experience myself where I've found a super tall girl attractive when I'd typically go for the shorties.
It's sad that people feel the need to do these operations. Honestly, I feel they could achieve a better outcome (feeling confident / adequate) by doing some martial arts and hitting the gym.
As others have mentioned it also depends where you live. The only time I truly felt short was in Amsterdam where it felt like the local bars were packed full of giants lol. I Thailand and India I've had the opposite experience.
In a century or two it will be wild that doctors could just get up in the morning and do these things. How far does this stuff have to go for anyone to reckon with this? If I have a psychological need, with a fancy name, for people to eat me, can a surgeon just cut off my arm and feed it to people? Why not?
A searchable consequence of Lookism is body dysphoria.
IPEDs have never been that popular and it is only a matter of time before men start to artificially enhance their appearance via makeup too.
Tiktok is amplifying those network effects and beauty standard competition pressures to a never before seen level. Mankind should have banned it while it was still time.
People choose mates based on perceived genetic fitness using proxy metrics, such as symmetry, height, skin color and other traits (which may or may not be genetic, but is assumed to be, like intelligence).
the fact that today, women have become more selective of these traits than the past, due to their new found economic opportunities and freedoms, means that some subset of males who would've been selected in the past (when women's choices were much more limited) are now alienated (rightly or wrongly so).
But i dont believe there to be a solution to this lookism problem, while still maintaining freedom of choice in mates.
I do believe there's a solution to systemic racism, but not for "lookism".
I can't comment about the career opportunities that tall people seem to get more of, but the main take away I have from this article is people should stop using social media. It will always surface something to be insecure about.
Also, I've seen short (and bald!) people have amazing dating lives. The key is that they're confident, funny, and actually care about the people they interact with. It's so easy to blame something like height so one don't have to improve who they are on the inside.
This is the kind of surgery I might expect someone who is closer to 5 feet might use to get nearer to normal range. I'm pretty much average myself (71 inches) and I wouldn't look at a 67 inch tall guy and think "wow he's short." He's still taller than the vast majority of women. I think the money would be better spent on therapy if it really is that depressing to be 5'7".
Also, anybody making short jokes is a jerk and should be shamed. Anyone calling 5'7" short has some problems of their own to sort out.
This guy runs an OnlyFans where he gets paid to dominate other men. He psychologically wants to be taller because he doesn’t feel like his (completely unremarkable) height is appropriately dominating.
>Scott first heard about the procedure when he was in high school. He watched a few YouTube clips about it but dismissed it at the time. “I was like, ‘That’s sick, I would never do that.” But he kept researching, and about three years ago, he became convinced it was the solution he was looking for. “I felt miserable,” he said. “There were things throughout my day, every day, that would bother me. I felt attacked or unfairly criticized due to my height.” Then he had a revelation: “When I realized what was really holding me back was the obstacle of money, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just a game. If I can get $75,000, then I’m done feeling like this.’”
>The goal gave him clarity. “I was not waking up and crying every day in my mask, walking around the neighborhood. Instead, it became ‘OK, I just have to get on my grind and figure out how to get the money.’” So Scott, who is bi, got to work and, in February 2021, started an OnlyFans page. Within a few months on the platform, he zeroed in on a niche: financial domination, a form of humiliation kink where clients pay him to degrade them and take their money. By January 2022, by supplementing his OnlyFans earnings with some of his savings and a small loan, he had enough to pay for the procedure.
The real critique of findom is that most forms of it are probably financial crimes, or at least tax evasion. (Even on OF, did you report “donations” as gifts, tipped income, regular income? If it’s a gift, did the donor report it? That could matter eventually.)
I don't think we can fully trust the narrative. It seems unlikely that his niche is a coincidence, and it's fair to read personality characteristics into it.
Ehhh... I think it's pretty clear we're dealing with kind of a complicated anecdote here where it's not clear which ways the causality is flowing. It's more like a karmic diffraction pattern than something so linear as cause and effect.
I really hate the idea that people dealing with actual problems with objective evidence of being real problems should go to therapy at substantial cost to have somebody gaslight them into believing that their real problems don't matter. Sure somebody could have delusional views of how much their height matters, and such people could consider therapy, but I'd reckon most people glum about their height have a pretty objective view of it.
The biggest issue I have with limb lengthening surgery is that it's expensive and likely to lead to a lifetime of pain and, lets be real, if you DO become genetically successful you're going to have your son be in the same position of subjecting himself to a lifetime of pain to be sexually successful.
I guess my only advise is the controversial view that you should do nothing and shrug your shoulders at the arbitrary nature of the world. Maybe buy some heel lifts and wear them to your job interviews. Putin does it and it doesn't require you to experience a lifetime of pain. Lie about your height on the internet too.
I would potentially agree, but how many of these people are 75th percentile (I assume that's what you meant) in height in their city? Global or national averages are pretty irrelevant for them.
As studies have shown, 90% of women select the top 10% of men in online dating apps (with height being the #1 criteria) - so being in the bottom 25% is still an difficult circumstance.
I'm 5'7" and don't recall ever being teased about my height specifically. Some of the bullies I grew up with were shorter than me. I certainly had a miserable time with online dating, and assumed height was a big factor, but it didn't make me feel short. My wife used to complain that she couldn't wear high heels while we were dating. We met on Tinder.
I was insecure about balding in my 20's, but buzz cutting my hair solved that. I got teased about the buzz cut at work for a few days, but it was simply well intended humor due to folk noticing the change.
> There are no concrete numbers on how many people are having this procedure (though a 2020 BBC report found that hundreds of men have it every year)
So, by "hundreds" they mean definitely less than a thousand people. Presumably much less, or else they'd have "almost a thousand". But in any case, they really have no idea how many people are undergoing this surgery, or how much it has changed over time, because nobody has any hard numbers. Not a strong basis for a headline.
I am not trying to trivialize the anxiety or social stigma short men face, but the phrase but "becoming more popular" in this headline is such a weak, almsost meaningless statement that I wish they would have crafted a less click-baity headline.
I mean women suffer from this too, my gf is 5.1 and constantly complains about not finding things in her size, not being able to reach stuff, so I mean, i suppose it is a real disadvantage
I can imagine how humilitating it must feel if someone has to get a milkcrate to put in your garage so you can reach a shelf.
For "normal" shortness (eg non-dwarfism), there is no way women generally have a comparable negative experience to men (that is not to comment in any way on the many other prejudices women face); the latter have a significant part of their social place and psychological health influenced by it.
isn't the average for women 5.4-5? Thinking you look like a child seems like a fairly big social disadvantage, the difference between 5.10 and 6.2 is relatively comparable.
When I am in a store and I can't reach for the item on the highest shelf, I unapologetically jump to get it, not minding what other people think. It's the store's fault for not providing a chair.
Not if the lengthening is in the legs and only 2-3 inches. Your torso may appear short when compared to the legs (but probably not at just 2-3 inches), but the arm length's appropriateness to body size is more often going to be based on comparison to the torso itself. People don't normally fold up so their arms and legs are near enough to make a proper comparison.
Short stature actually is objectively a disadvantage in dating and the workplace for men.
However, as someone who is barely 5'7", I have never found there to be a lot of joking or something about it or anything really in my face.
I know it has affected me. But I also don't really feel inferior in any way. Compared to human males overall I am fairly close to average in height.
But really my self-worth is based on things like integrity and problem solving ability. So if I don't trigger a mating instinct in a lot of females that's too bad, but I don't actually feel like a lesser person or something.
I actually believe that within a few hundred years unaugmented biological humans are going to be mainly irrelevant. Things will be run by AIs/robots with far superior intellects and capabilities, along with some cyborgs (maybe).
In fact, I believe that the human form will become passé among intelligent agents.
Being tall isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Always hitting your head on things, and being short of breath all the time because the air is thinner up there.
Unable to buy pants, kitchens and bathrooms are too short so cooking and washing dishes are back-aching activities. Economy seating in airplanes is almost impossible. Vacuum cleaner handle not long enough. Few car brands have seats that go back far enough.
It’s very hard to buy a bicycle.
Nothing terrible, just annoyances. No big deal compared to dumb social prejudice against shorter men.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 352 ms ] threadSends chills down my spine thinking about ethan hawke's character cracking his leg bones to increase his height. Insane.
Online there is instead a huge focus on the big few. And they take on the role of dealbreakers.
He mentions in one of his videos that when people meet him in real life they're often surprised that he's actually fairly tall. In his videos he looks smaller than he really is, in part because the things he's being filmed next to are larger than standard size.
I saw an excellent educational video recently from a guy that was, how to put it, dressed almost like a hobo.
Ironically, online video has made things quite good for me as a greybeard. I invested in a good camera and good lighting early in Covid. I always look better than anybody else in the meeting and it gives me gravitas that I really haven't earned.
The downside is that I can't look like shit on calls or it shows. I generally make a point of exercising and then taking a shower directly before starting meetings for the day.
But maybe an inch can make much more difference than I think. I am literally one inch taller than this guy and I cannot ever in my life remember someone calling me short or disparaging me for my height.
I do agree that being a little bit taller would be an advantage in many ways. But so would being born into wealth or being extremely attractive.
Isn't this true of any cosmetic surgery? They all carry some amount of expense, pain, and risk.
> I do agree that being a little bit taller would be an advantage in many ways.
I suspect that most people who get this surgery are thinking mostly about their ability to date women. That single issue can definitely be make-or-break for some people's happiness.
Most other cosmetic surgeries don't have the risk of making you unable to walk.
Of course I would have liked to have been 6' and looked more like a "commanding leader" when I march into a room. Maybe it would have given me a career boost... but I could also get that from hitting the gym and bulking up, or buying better-fitted clothes, or (heaven forbid) put more effort into my job and actually become a more commanding leader!
And what if you have done all that and are still mocked for your height?
My point is only that when height is a barrier, there are almost certainly other things that can be improved, with some effort.
(or, buy lifts, which is zero effort and effective for an inch or 1.5" boost)
I don't remember hearing people refer negatively to baldness... until I started losing my hair and it became (marginally) personal to me.
I have a friend who is short as well, probably 5'5" and he married a girl who is taller than him when she wears her heels. Neither of them care, which is great and I love both of them.
I have another friend who is around the same height or shorter and can't get past how short he is. I keep trying to help him find a girlfriend, but he resists all efforts and I think he's still a virgin at age 45. So the stigma is very real and can be extremely damaging.
In school people did call me short but in time I learned to ignore it and to just not hear it. Because there's really nothing that I can or even should do about it.
Do you have really long hair? This could be why
This all changed when my older brother-in-law voiced concerns about my height to my now-wife, saying I was too short for her.
Now, after 5 incredible years of being together, this mind virus has infected us, and we started seeing me as short, or otherwise "deficient". It's truly terrible. Thankfully I'm still incredibly confident, which is what made me attractive to my wife in the first place.
Sucks having family throw doubts into your wife's mind based on your height.
For what it means to dating, I think the requirement to be at least 6 feet tall for US women would disappear due to statistics (the mean male height in the USA is 5'9"). Heck, some guys who are 5'7" or 5'9" says to those women they are 6 feet and they believe it; It's more a psychological thing than a real preference as a have seen.
My cousin had this procedure done almost 30 years ago, but she was pathologically small, at a height which makes it hard to function.
At the end of the day, these are elective surgeries too frequently used as an attempt to mask a pathological low self esteem.
While I agree that it’s probably not worth it for the operation, multiple studies have shown that heigh is an important factor in mate selection (and I believe there’s a consensus on it), so using the word insecurity, which refers to a mental problem, diverts thinking of alternative solutions (like better fitness) to a bad direction.
Y’know what’s funny too? I’ve never once met someone who both admired big noses and chose to increase the size of their own. I guess that’s society for you…
What most commenters talk about here is a nuance in why person decides to have a surgery, though.
[1] - https://www.floridacosmeticsurgerycenter.com/services/plasti...
Perhaps some nose jobs end up closer to the hair dyes and teeth straightening end of the spectrum, but I can't help but see a clear distinction when you start cutting flesh and breaking bone.
In my personal opinion, it depends.
For some, like double eyelid surgery, absolutely yes. For others, like the V-line jaw surgery (aka mandibuloplasty, but the colloquial name is pretty self-descriptive), I would say no.
And some are just universal and are done by people of all kinds of cultures/races, like face-lift surgeries (aka rhytidectomy) or nose-jobs (aka rhinoplasty).
In Japan, it used to be a necessity for women to use extremely tight shoes in order to contain feet growth, as women with large feet were less desired or something.
In Brazil, the most common surgery for women is probably bum enlargement rather than breast.
In some parts of Myanmar, women need to have very long necks decorated with coils... I would guess they obsess over their appearance at least as much as any modern western woman does.
People are people everywhere and will obsess over things that are important to them, no matter how bizarre it may look to someone from a different culture.
You've confused Japan with China.
I think not: https://heianjapanweb.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/blog-post-tit...
Or even random spam that claims to have some evidence of the practice occurring in Japan?
I don’t think that’s the exact reason, and they’d probably get mad at you if you said they wanted to look like something Japanese.
Korea and China are developing an independent “anime-like aesthetic” based on MMOs and anime-like American PC games these days; eg Blue Archive and Genshin are a lot more technically advanced than what Japan’s famously poorly paid source of actual anime can produce.
Not at all, you just don't seem like someone who has much exposure to the world outside of "western cultures". Which is unfortunate, because the rest of your comment has a lot of pretty interesting points to ponder.
As others have mentioned in replies, plastic surgery in South Korea is so commonplace and integral to everyday life, it will blow a lot of people's minds. Plastic surgeries are common high school graduation gifts there (double eyelid surgery seems to be one of the most popular ones).
For a personal example, sister of one of my friends was graduating from a nursing school there, and ended up getting a surgery or two closer to the end of her program, despite resisting it for the longest time. Why? Because photos are required on resumes for pretty much any position there. And she felt like she was at a strong disadvantage compared to her classmates (who all had at least a couple of plastic surgeries done) when it came to job applications, and iirc her suspicion was strongly supported by her experiences.
And i also think braces makes for better teeth health, since straight teeth is less likely to accumulate plaque and cause gum issues in the future. It's not purely cosmetic.
Teeth whitening, on the other hand, is purely cosmetic and i suspect, entirely unnecessary. I dunno how dangerous it is either, but it can't be healthy to bleach your teeth!
The problem is that it's still socially acceptable to see short stature as some objective faux-pas. There's really no difference between a person proudly declaring they only like "white" people and a person declaring they only like "tall" people. If the guy said "Don't be so sure of yourself, black man" maybe it would have been acceptable in the 1920s, but it surely isn't now, and the fact that we can't see that calling someone "short" derogatorily is the same form of prejudicial discrimination shows that we as a society still don't understand the root of racism and prejudice. It's wrong to deride a person based on skin color not because it hurts their feelings, but because our preconceived notions on their inferiority hold no objective basis in reality except those derived from our flawed social perceptions.
Maybe at one time short stature was a decent signal for childhood malnutrition, but in our modern society short stature is mostly a matter of genetics, and there aren't really downsides to short stature in modern life except socially derived ones. It used to be sexy to be fat, but as social perceptions caught up with the reality that calorie dense foods was actually abundant, we shifted our social preferences to fit bodies.
Different from skin colour, there's an evolutionary trait to height preference. Studies have shown that heterosexual women prefer partners taller than them. It's understandable this subconscious bias. And what seems like discrimination, it's just a natural product.
Similarly, men have always shown preference to larger breasts and hips, signs of fertility. We can't, even shouldn't, shut down our instincts due to politically correctness.
Of course we should. Relying on reasons that would have been acceptable to a caveman 10,000 years ago is no basis for modern society. We've beaten evolution. Modern science, medicine, and society means evolutionary pressures can be ignored - women with bigger breasts and hips aren't any more likely to have successful offspring now because women without those traits can go to Walmart for baby formula and a GP if their baby gets ill. Evolution has no bearing any more. Why keep using it as a reason?
No we haven't, and that's a good thing because a society made up of completely dysgenic people who need countless supplements and medical products just to stay alive would not be the utopia you're trying to paint it as.
You brought up oxygen reliance as a silly point but you're actually right. Humans relying on oxygen actually isn't that great, we can't go into space or underwater (without external support) and we get out of breath when exercising. A group of humans that evolved to not need oxygen at all would be a great genetic improvement.
I believe the main evolutionary advantage of your anaerobic humans is that they're imaginary, so they don't have tradeoffs, which definitely helps if you want to add features.
I think I'd prefer to be able to detect low O2 instead of instantly passing out; that'd probably be good enough.
It's an impossibility. Evolution is by definition something we can't escape.
> Modern science, medicine, and society means evolutionary pressures can be ignored
No. It means evolutionary pressure will increase and accelerate. Modern science will allow couples to genetically alter/select for best embryos. It will be a genetic arms race to produce the taller, faster, smarter, healthier, etc children.
The advances of modern science will do the exact opposite of what you are claiming. Take down syndrome. Genetic screening has all but eliminated the down syndrome trait from much of the advanced world.
People choosing which traits to optimize for isn't evolutionary pressure. Evolution is a very specific mechanism that optimizes through random mutation. Choosing what to optimize for, using science to continue 'undesirable' genetic traits, making people choose who to reproduce with by manipulating what's considered attractive through Pornhub and Instagram, etc are all ways humans are now a poat-evolution species.
The fact we happen to still pick the traits that evolution optimized for in the past is because this is something that's only happened very recently. We're only just starting to move past evolutionary pressure. We could select for anything through science and tech. The fact we'd probably go for things like height, intelligence, etc just means we're not being very imaginative. One day we might decide to push for smaller offspring so we can fit more of them on spaceships, or for children who can survive with less water because the climate is screwed, etc.
The outcome will be the same as evolution, eg optimizing for the survival of the species, but the mechanism that causes it will be very different and absolutely not evolution.
If anything, what you describe is intelligent design, just by humans instead of a god.
It sure is. Look up selection or selection pressure ( another name for evolutionary pressure ).
> Evolution is a very specific mechanism that optimizes through random mutation.
Random mutations are meaningless without selection pressure. It's the selection that drives evolution not random mutations. You could have evolution without any mutations - the environment could change which selects for certain existing traits.
> We could select for anything through science and tech.
Which is called evolution. You seem to have a misunderstanding of what evolution is. Evolution isn't only "natural selection". Artifical selection exists. For example, dogs evolved from wolves by human/artificial selection, not "natural" selection. Regardless, it is still evolution.
Obviously taller men are naturally superior to shorter men and so it's just natural that they make more money. /sarcasm
And saying men have always shown a preference for larger breasts is begging the question. There are plenty of studies out there showing that breast size preference is complicated -- bigger is not always better.
Some cultures prefer medium sized breasts (actually, most studies I found this is the preference).[1] Poorer men might prefer larger breasts and richer men might prefer smaller breasts [2][3] Or maybe sexist men prefer larger breasts [4]
I don't think we know why women have the breasts they have or if breast size actually is a meaningful signifier of reproductive fitness. Seems like evidence points that women get breast implants because of their own opinions of their body image and not because it's an actual reproductive advantage.[5]
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20862533/
[4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23412650/
[5] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-we-do-it/202001/...
Also I would like to add that not even all cultures like big asses. Some even find the practice of injecting cement into buttocks (to enlarge them) to be repulsive. Different cultures have different preferences. Heck, different cultures can even be sensitive to different colors in their eyes[1].
Once people open their eyes and broaden their minds they'll see that perceptions are extremely malleable.
Height didn't work out for the dinosaurs, and being small works great for the cockroach. There is no objective short == bad in reality.
[1] https://gondwana-collection.com/blog/how-do-namibian-himbas-...
Isn't this something we're watching evolve in real time? like right now? Cultures that didn't appreciate them now seem to be viewing them in a positive light.
Does this difference exist? I recall studies that showed that babies are afraid of people who look very different from them and their family members. As such I was under the impression that there was a genetic basis for discrimination of people based on some outward difference in appearance like skin colour that was due to people having an inherent distrust in the 'other.'
If that's the case it's not unreasonable to desire that society progress in a way that mitigate these biases against short people in the same way that we desire that society progresses in a way that mitigate biases against people of colour.
> Similarly, men have always shown preference to larger breasts and hips, signs of fertility. We can't, even shouldn't, shut down our instincts due to politically correctness.
What kinds of things that you feel are due to an instinctual bias to discriminate against short people, and why should we not attempt to shut down this discrimination? If your children were short and they felt like they were discriminated against for being that way, what sort of advice would you give them?
I get where you're coming from -- criticizing people for what they are, rather than for what they do, is exceedingly unfair -- but I can think of at least three important differences, chief among which are:
1. The shortness of men (barring outright dwarfism) has never been the object of widespread theories about their fundamental inferiority, nor have such theories been enshrined into widespread law.
2. Social institutions have never explicitly conspired to marginalize short men.
3. Redlining, lynching, the selling of persons into slavery, ghettos, etc. have no equivalent in the realm of height.
And to be frank, it's rather shocking that you would suggest otherwise. I don't doubt that you've been treated unfairly, and you are perfectly entitled to complain about it, but that doesn't require you to twist reality.
The point at which I disagree is when you imply that this is somehow comparable to institutionalized slavery and Jim Crow laws.
They didn’t equate racism and discrimination based on height, they said that there’s no difference in someone discriminating based on that - meaning discriminating based on something that wasn’t a choice and cannot reasonably be changed.
It doesn't hold because:
1. I pointed out this distinction in my initial comment, and the OP has not conceded the point that "x and y are members of set S" is different from "there are no differences beetween x and y".
2. This in turn negates the "best meaning" you seem to be assuming.
And the first point bears repeating. Even if height discrimination and racism are both instances of prejudice based on immutable characteristics, there are very important differences between them.
Your waiving of the rulebook in response to this is puzzling.
> Even if height discrimination and racism are both instances of prejudice based on immutable characteristics, there are very important differences between them.
I meant what I said. You claimed that one of the differences between heightism and racism is that "The shortness of men (barring outright dwarfism) has never been the object of widespread theories about their fundamental inferiority". That claim is blatantly false. Why did you make it?
To put it differently: I object to your sense of proportion.
I don't even know how to respond to this post but I don't think it's worth having no one respond to it. I'm going with direct.
Being a slave is worse. What in the actual fuck.
In many countries, some jobs are de facto unavailable to short men. Next time you visit a schoolyard. See who the bullied kids are. They might have something in common. It might not be their skin color. It's not talked about a lot because it is taboo. It may be your sense of proportion (haha) that is incorrect.
The mental gymnastics is astounding
It's crazy to me to see 5'7" being listed as basically undateable. I'm 5'7" and I'd say a quarter of my male coworkers are shorter than me. Some of them are hispanic or asian, most of them aren't. They don't seem to have any more trouble with relationships than the coworkers that are taller than me. Then again, the happily married man under 35 is not strongly represented in any height range here.
Is it immoral (akin to racism) for women to have any preferences at all, or just regarding height?
I understand your objection to drawing an equivalence between racial discrimination, but even if it isn’t as “bad” can’t it still recognized as a lesser form of bigotry?
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~apostlew/paper/pdf/short.pdf
Yes. In fact, that's exactly what I said.
It's also worth calling out the sheer madness of equating height discrimination to racism, and pretending not to see the problem.
Again, this is exactly what I am saying.
I am also saying that you go further, and engage in an intellectual slight-of-hand. This happens precisely when you say "there's really no difference [...]".
Yes there is. There are several, important differences that render irrelevant their belonging to the same category. Abraham Lincoln and Pol Pot both belong to the category of "heads of state", but it is laughably incorrect to claim that there are no differences between them. So too with your example.
That's the difference between anti-short and anti-Black, not the anti-ness itself.
I'd ask in what way the point you're trying to make is useful, either analytically or rhetorically. I don't see how it is offhand.
See Japan: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/12/national/scienc...
There's an increase in low birth rate babies (not due to malnutrition), probably due to increased survivability of smaller more frail babies. The fact that they grow up and lead healthy lives means that their society is indeed selecting for the survivability of smaller people.
Also, ruling out that kind of confounding -is- hard… as mostly practiced any measurement error in confounders reduces our ability to ‘control for’ them… but most epidemiology and all nutrition research just glosses over this.
you are forcing additional context where there is none.
You are arguing in bad faith, just like the OP.
In exactly the same way: Abraham Lincoln and Pol Pot are both heads of state, but it is incorrect to say there are no differences between them.
And on a related question, what is the essence of sexiness, and is attraction to the sexy wrong?
Can we keep discussion civil? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - "Assume good faith."
> There are several important differences,
Historically. But if the historical context of slavery did not exist, it would still be just as unacceptable to treat Black individuals differently.
In essence, historical context is largely irrelevant to whether an action is right or wrong. An action is right or wrong in itself (with respect to the contemporary common moral framework, (which may itself be influenced by history) etc.)
As such, treating Black individuals differently is not more or less wrong than treating short individuals differently.
>As such, treating Black individuals differently is not more or less wrong than treating short individuals differently.
Again, as I have mentioned repeatedly, we agree on this point. Where we disagree is in the assertion that there is "no difference" in effect, precisely because of the historical context.
It's amazing how circular the responses in this comment thread are getting. There appears to be disagreement on the surface, but in reality almost everyone is presenting a view which is at least compatible with each other's -- if not in direct agreement.
This is in essence why MLK said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, because injustice is all the same.
We don’t fight racism just because we owe black people. We fight it because it’s fundamentally wrong, and not because black people just happened to have suffered a lot.
EDIT: Also I should add that people are reading my comments automatically into the context of sexual preference, but I was talking more specifically about the general attitude that it's ok to deride people based on their genetic shortness. That being said, even if OK Cupid (Which is just a proxy for dating preference due to the specific nature of how it operates) showed that black woman were the least likely to get matched on OK Cupid doesn't mean it's ok to now make fun of them based on their skin color / cultural / racial background. Our perceptions about short people, black women, etc, are the results of social conditioning. Conditioned behavior will always lag the current reality. It is my belief that short stature does not hold the negative associations it once had, just as whatever was the reason for our preferences against black woman probably do not hold anymore.
We don't go around forcing people to start liking short people or black woman if they have not conditioned themselves to do so yet, but we also shouldn't be accepting adding fuel to the prejudicial fire.
Like you said though, that's less necessary in this day and age.
Thor could be 8ft tall and able to lift to a house. It won't save him from a drone swarm designed by a nerd at Lockheed.
I find women of a certain size and shape attractive. That doesn't mean I can't find other kinds of women attractive, but you're doing the argument a disservice if you don't think at least some of our preferences are innate.
See this article about an isolated tribe that has developed an ability to see shades of green other humans cannot: https://gondwana-collection.com/blog/how-do-namibian-himbas-...
Even if part of it is genetics, it shows even that is easily malleable therefore manipulatable for long term goals.
Your comment shows your hand on your prejudice, because you're still somewhat commenting from the viewpoint that tallness is still an inherent positive trait. That clearly didn't work out for the dinosaurs. I'm not saying the opposite is true (that shortness is an inherent positive trait), but I do believe we need to dispel our preconceived notions because they are very short-sighted.
Take solace in the fact that if you find yourself on HN, you're likely at least a few SD above the mean in this trait, so you don't have much to worry about. Furthermore, you can use this trait to understand the fickle nature of sexual attraction, and how to obtain whatever it is you're looking for in an efficient manner.
Muscularity is the strongest predictor of mating success for men.
A study on males aged 18 to 59 found that muscularity is significantly positively associated with the number of total sexual partners and partners in the last year.
Handgrip strength is correlated with self-assessed happiness, health, social confidence, overall physical attractiveness, and overall number of sexual partners.
Researchers recorded short videos of 157 different men. Next, they had a group of male viewers watch videos of the men and asked, “How likely is it that this man would win a physical fight with another man?” Then the researchers had a group of female viewers watch the same videos and asked, “How sexually attractive is this man?” Eighteen months later, the men in the videos completed a questionnaire asking about their sexual history of the previous 18 months. How tough a guy looked to men was a much stronger predictor of mating success than how attractive he looked to women.
In this study, researchers asked two different groups of women to look at photos of different men and rate how strong the men looked. Results showed that the rated strength of a male body accounts for 70 percent of the variance in attractiveness (this is a massive effect size). From the paper: “None of the women produced a preference for weaker men…in both samples, the strongest men were the most attractive, the weakest men were the least attractive.”
See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
See also https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2017...
Assuming that it is some innate quality that women are attracted to people taller than them is also flawed. What about homosexual woman? If they both prefer someone taller how does that work?
Is there a citation? I've heard only the rich were 'plump' in ancient times, though not that it was ever sexually desirable.
> What about homosexual woman? If they both prefer someone taller how does that work?
Nature doesn't always fit our intuition or first hypothesis. IIRC, gay men strongly prefer very fit men, yet they cannot procreate. That struck me as counterintuitive, though if the cause is genetic there could be a variety of factors leading to such genes.
One hypothesis is that gayness is from an evolutionary point of view "too much bisexuality". Similar to how one sickle cell gene is beneficial, but two is deleterious. According to this theory, evolution favors bisexuals, and sometimes produces gays as a side effect of that.
It's really hard to consider these things as "fatter" probably meant larger dowry (!), better survivability, healthier and by extension better for child-rearing. Whilst fatter in Western society now (anorexia, etc., aside) is almost certainly healthier, fitter for child-rearing and such.
Populations were lower and people moved around less, there was far less choice for mates.
But then choosing, rather than falling in love seems strange from where I am.
Contrast to today where it is easy to be fat, so therefore not hip to be round anymore. That means we’d see more fatter people than in the past because it is easy now.
No one is dictating anything about attractiveness, and you really shouldn't be trying to marginalize my arguments on the ground that I might be short. It really has no relevancy here. I wasn't talking about dating and people's dating preferences. I was referring specially to the person receiving a derogatory comment about his stature, that was in the context of normal socializing. Again, it is not socially or morally acceptable to deride someone for their skin color, and my point is that it's equally unacceptable to do so on another genetic trait such as height. Just because that random man did not find the height adjusted man to be attractive or not has no bearing on whether he has the right to express derision about his height in such a nonchalant manner. I mean, it shouldn't be made illegal, but it shouldn't be socially acceptable either assuming all parties are not toxic and want to be part of well-intenioned society.
However, if we want to shift the topic to dating/attractiveness, your statement applies to people's "preferences" on race as well. OK Cupid published these preferences against black woman (and also Asian men) on their site. We can use this as an example because it's been more in the spotlight than the topic of stature, and easier to see my point.
My opinion on this is that if you are short/Black/Asian and dating then just skip to the next person who can't see past superficial physical qualities. Usually it's a sign of dating inexperience anyways. It's a free market, and the winners will be those that are able to make a decision beyond superficial factors. Many people can't see past the superficial qualities as trivial as a candidate being a woman instead of a man, and the same thing applies here. It's their loss. Societal trends will always lag reality. We can't force people to get up to speed, nor should we (and I never advocated for this). The best thing to do is to simply reward those who are prescient.
You're just inverting reality now. "The winners of dating are those that pick partners with the least desirable physical traits".
If there's two men with identical personalities, but one is 6'5 and muscular and the other is 4'2 and 300lbs what exactly would a woman be "winning" by going with the second man?
So, over time, the rare woman who prefers short obese kings would outcompete the rest. I don't think this particular example is the case, but I do think something like this dynamic is happening. (In the other direction, actually.)
It even have several health benefits. Except that in dating, women overwhelmingly prefer men over 6', and very small differences like 5'7 vs 5'9 double or triple the matches in online dating sites. If we are talking about 5'6 vs 6'0 the difference is ridiculous, like over 200X more matches. Women even divorce short men at double the rate of tall men. Those sites have years of very precise statistics that support this fact.
Basically this means that in modern dating, if you are short, you are very likely to die alone and this trend will only get worse in the future.
The reason I think societal trends move faster than we think is that I think it was only in the middle of the last century that we still preferred fatter bodies.
It’s not so much that being bigger helps you get stuff, it’s that it’s unfakable proof that you’ve been getting stuff long term.
"taller soldiers are more likely to survive battle and that taller parents are more likely to have sons". This was based on his research of British Army records from the First World War, which showed that "surviving soldiers were on average more than one inch (3.33 cm) taller than fallen soldiers"
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Returning_soldier_effect
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/12/national/scienc...
> Women usually marry the millionaire, but have sex with the pool boy. This dual-mating strategy is instinctive.
Yea and the man has concubines, and the prenup? Pretty sure the woman usually doesn't have the pool boy's children in these stories.
EDIT: See here for a study showing after 1980 people have actually been getting shorter (at least in Japan, which can be considered almost a post-modern society when compared to the US) [1].
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/12/national/scienc...
You'd be surprised.
Men's preferences only matter in a monogamous society, where less attractive women are expected to settle down with less attractive men who will financially support their kids.
But in modern welfare states, less attractive women can still sleep with very attractive men (whom they could never marry), have their children, and rely on the state to financially support their kids.
Which means the rich but unattractive men are, through taxes, paying for the children of the attractive men.
Men don't select, because we don't get pregnant, our instinct is to mate with whoever we can. Women are nature's selector, not men.
I con't understand how so few people realize this. The modern 'incel crisis' is fueled by online dating and government subsidies. It's the perfect combination to ensure reproduction of only the top few percent of men.
It’s really not. It’s fueled by echo chambers and it’s self-reinforcing.
I dont know if you would consider this self-reinforcing though. Saying that this group is self-reinforcing would imply that homosexuals gathering online to talk and confide are similarly self-reinforcing.
It doesn’t imply that at all. Sexual attraction isn’t reinforced by being around a given orientation.
Go hang out with gay people exclusively for a few weeks and let me know if you find yourself attracted to the same sex.
exactly - and i'm saying that incels aren't self-reinforcing either.
What I’ve heard from incels makes it easy to understand why women would be uninterested. That worldview and subsequent outcome would seem to be reinforced by spending lots of time with people who reinforce the negativity.
If your point is that we should eliminate any and all discrimination... sure. Although it's a far too lofty goal to happen as long as we're biological beings. But saying that "there's really no difference" between color and height discrimination is something you could and should really walk back from rather than attempt repeatedly to defend.
Every single decision you make is based on some criteria that you may not even be able to clearly define. But just because you can't verbalize why you like this person and not the next doesn't make it less of a discrimination process. Do you think that makes you the KKK?
Unfortunately you conceded nothing and chose to maintain a position which you not only failed to support no matter how many times you tried, it's also either insulting, dismissive, or absurdly ignorant. If you have to wonder which discrimination is of higher magnitude, against black people or short people you clearly don't grasp the full extent of what discrimination can be. You fail to understand how magnitude makes these 2 cases far more different than the fact that they are "discrimination" makes them similar.
Quoting MLK after wondering which discrimination is bigger (against black people or against people who are 5'9") just adds insult to injury.
You seem convinced that having a hairy mole on your face is exactly like being black or jew as far as discrimination goes. That being rejected by a woman for the mole is the same as being rejected and punished by society for your skin color. Who's to know who suffered more? It's "arguable" because they are "the same class" after all, right? So I concede that you're far more willing to dig yourself in the deepest hole trying to defend an indefensible argument than to actually concede anything.
I'll tell you one thing, no matter how you look like, if people hate your character they might use whatever insult cuts you deeper rather than something they have a personal issue with. So if you do go around telling people being short is like being black and they pick on your height it could be that they have a problem with what you chose to be rather than what you are by nature.
IDK, whenever men write stuff like that I always think to myself "you need to hang around better people". Like you can absolutely 100% find women that cold and calculating and dishonest. But acting like all women are that impulsive is really strange to me. That's like saying all men will beat you up and rob you because it makes sense in evolutionary terms.
Just because you’re getting Tinder matches doesn’t mean you’re finding the type of relationship you want. I see a lot of men on /pol/ unable to see that things can be equally difficult in different ways on the female side.
Jesus christ this place gets weird sometimes...
Please, share it with us then
[1] https://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf table 5.5
Women filter on height the same way that men filter on weight & age. If you don't pass that first filter, it doesn't matter what your advantages are.
I always was the one that got the phone numbers, always.
These things matter across the board, not just in the top tier management positions. Each inch of height adds $789 of average yearly salary, which makes a huge difference between a 5ft5 in person compared to someone who is 6ft tall. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/entertainment/naija-fashion/2...
Is this actually true?
> if you are short, you are very likely to die alone
This also seems like nonsense.
And remember the point I think is nonsense is specifically, “women overwhelmingly prefer men over 6’”, not that height is the biggest determining factor for attractiveness in men.
It isn't obvious. I've personally never considered height as a qualifier. I've known folks that prefer someone taller than themselves but they wouldn't turn down a shorter man. The preference isn't going to make someone pass, but more akin to preferring dark hair over light hair. You see, preferences don't always add up to action and most folks I've known wouldn't pass on someone because of height.
But if you are only using information from dating apps, your information is going to be seriously skewed for everyone. I might not always care about height, but if you are giving me a list of attributes and I'm looking for casual sex - I'm probably going to choose depending on my whims at the time. Height can make some positions better or worse, after all.
It is also possible that men think height is more important because they think height is important, much like overly muscled comic characters are overly muscled to appeal to men.
I've experienced the "filter" issue with online dating, but my conclusions are entirely different.
I really don't mind it, in fact I appreciate it.
Anyone who would filter me out over something as shallow as height would undoubtedly be an extraordinarily poor match for me.
I prefer quality over quantity.
As to the "die alone" thing - that seems a bit grim.
I'm 46, since age 14 when I actively started dating the longest I've been single was for about 3 months after a bad break-up, and that was by choice.
Sure, when you don't have a height advantage you have to make it up in other ways - personality, fitness level, professional success, etc...
In general, I think my relatively modest stature has been a benefit to me. It forced me to be a better person, and to focus on qualities that matter, rather than superficial things.
I acknowledge that there's a difference and that it needs to be made up for in other ways.
Everyone has challenges. Tall people, minorities, gay people, short people, poor people, rich people... the list is endless.
We all have challenges.
We shouldn't measure ourselves by our challenges. We should measure ourselves by the effort we put in to overcome.
When I see a handicapped person climb a mountain, the thing I find extraordinary isn't the handicap, it's the phenomenal effort to transcend.
I don't have anything close to those problems. I'm just a bit vertically challenged.
I'll be double damned if I'm going to let that hold me back, or bemoan how unlucky I am because of it.
For an individual short guy, the quantitative info out there is only detrimental. At best, it's useless. They need a qualitative focus.
I'm punishing women who are rejecting me?
I honestly don't even know how to parse or think about that.
Are they entitled to date me, even though they've communicated a clear preference not to, and I'm somehow punishing them by not convincing them that, no I'm a really great guy, really...?
Or is it that I'm such a valuable gem that these helpless women who, through no fault of their own are deeply attracted to tall, dark and handsome, must be rescued from that to date me, short, old and bald - because ... ?
Honestly, I really don't get it.
Everything isn't a societal problem. Some people value certain physical characteristics. Those people tend to be a terrible match for me.
I'm happier with people who value my humor, personality and the way I treat them.
It's not any more complicated than that.
I know multiple tall, classically good looking men who, while they can can get dates, can not maintain them because they have zero relationship skills, and I know just as many short men who have a relationship whenever they want.
While height might be an early filter, it is by no means the only source of attraction. Men would do well to build the rest of their personalities to stand themselves out rather than complain about something they have no control over.
This social disqualification is the reason the truth remains hidden. I'm only 5'9 and have a family, but this was way before social networks and online dating. The world is different now.
>I know
Yes I know many data points that fall outside the curve too. But I'm talking about the curve.
> Yes I know many data points that fall outside the curve too. But I'm talking about the curve.
you respond with a data sample of 1.
I have no idea who is right - assuming country=US in any case, since most of the data and experiences are from there - but come on.
This is his claim. I call bullshit.
Each inch of height corresponds to about $25k of yearly income on the attractiveness scale. Do the math, are you still below average? Note that income isn't just what you earn, but what you can be expected to earn in the future, so even if you met a woman as a bright computer science student you would still expect to earn a lot of money.
http://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf
Once you get serious, it’s the bigger filters you need to worry about IME.
My then new girlfriend’s friend asked me out of nowhere: “what’s a derivative?” And my answer was “investing or calculus?” Apparently that was a filter for my wife when she dated. She wanted smart men who weren’t just faking it, wouldn’t just start talking about things because they knew something about it, etc. Her and her friend had that simple question. I was basically the first guy to pass it. Hell, I even had some basic filters, like going on a road trip together. Eventually, got married, made babies, and travel around the world. I got lucky — met her semi-randomly on the beach through mutual friends. Neither one of us were looking for a relationship at the time.
</anecdata>
What a keeper! My wife randomly invoked Coase theorem the other day while we were chatting on our commute home. Coming up on ten years now. :)
Are you saying that he's missing out on lots of opportunities for self-improvement in the two minutes or less it took to write that comment? It's not wrong for people to complain about things that negatively affect them, and it's not mutually exclusive with trying to fix the problem. There is really no justification for the insistence that short men must not complain at all.
This is a remarkably unhealthy attitude, and callous to boot.
I'm 5'6, and after almost 15 years of dating sites to modern dating apps, I have indeed accepted that yes, I will very likely die alone. My therapist has even half-seriously suggested I try lying about my height, and qualms aside, from the studies I've read, any plausible-in-person exaggeration would gain me a couple of percentile points at most.
I would say be patient. I think as you grow older it becomes less important. And even if 80% of women have fairly strong height preferences I think a solid 20% have close to no preference or would care but are very short themselves.
[1] Of course the opposite is true--but liberally minded people who can't wait to leave Iowa is a well-known trope. We don't talk so much about the folks who went to the big city for education or career opportunities, but would actually be happier in Iowa.
But if you're still looking for things to try, I would recommend you get some activities (sports, hobbies) and meet people outside of a purely dating context. People's guards will be down and they'll be evaluating you on your other qualities rather than height in these contexts, and the extra time you spend with them is exactly what you need for them to overcome their prejudices.
But when I was in the dating market I wouldn't have been willing to date a racist anyway, so the question is moot.
How did that go for Rachel Dolezal?
You might have some luck over there :)
It's not a stretch for me to imagine that widespread lying by men about their hight has actually collectively made the problem worse for men, e.g. women insisting on 6 feet because they've dating 5'10" guys claiming to be 6" and decided that was the minimum.
And you know what, he was a bit weird looking. He had bad posture. But he was a good guy. A smart, hard working guy with a big heart.
This height thing is annoying. Id gladly trade inches of height in exchange for other inner character traits (courage, perseverance, conscientiousness). Intelligence I have to spare, but what good is it without character?
Even if someone asks me my height I probably just say 6'4' and leave it at that.
This is distinct from the practice teaching me a more upright posture, which it also did, this isn't subjective height, it's the kind you can measure at some gyms on the weight station in bare feet.
Edit: occurs to me this raises... certain questions! Nothing more biochemically interesting than creatine.
When I consider all the cheaters in online video games who do it solely to "subtly" pad their stats, it's not really that astonishing that widespread height cheating would be a thing too.
So…you are 6’1”?
Im a quarter inch shy of 6’2’’. So, indeed, 6’1’’.
My old man is 6’4’’ and when I was young he’d rib on me that I never got past 190 (we’re metric background). Now I don’t care much about height. At 70, he’s shrunk to my eye level and of all his traits height is the one Id rather not have inherited and gotten his monastic character instead.
You’ve discovered a new unit of measurement - the “dating inch”. Applicable not just to height.
That said it doesn't come up that often in my circle.
...should stick to dating insects, surely.
Being at the age where you shrink is also the age where many of the women you meet were formerly married. It is amazing how many of them have said that their former spouses were shorter to just taller than them and it bothered them the entire marriage. They say they will never make that compromise again.
Not surprising to see this sentiment from a group whose marriages all failed. I expect the biggest prediction of long term marriage success is the willingness to compromise on much bigger things than this.
But that means the local western women would get increased competition, so that will of course needs to be shamed and frowned upon, I don't understand how it's any less romantic than the shallow greedy american women and their 6 foot 6 figures standard.
Just stop using apps like Tinder, they attract the worst of the worst, by what I see, especially in the US. Even if you were above 6', you wouldn't want to date a woman obsessed with height.
In my group of friends, the shorter ones (around 1,73m) are the most successful ones.
Naturally.
Yay. I'm 5'8
He's the shorter one and he had the most success of all of us.
Ahem, that's almost exactly the average height for a male in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_countr...
My point is, it doesn't matter that much. It matters, sadly, but not to the point where you can't find women that are attracted to you.
It shouldn't need to be said, but Tinder is not representative of all human relationships.
Mode maybe, but not the mean.
Yes, and plenty of men likes obese women over 50 year old. But its a relatively low percentage.
Scott's problem is he's on social media (particularly Tik Tok) and apparently works or worked in a toxic environment.
Hang out with people IRL.
My additional accecdata: it's really, really not. Even for an individual, stated preferences are often not that true in practice.
There's a lot to say about how the structure and dynamics. of a tool guide how we use it, and that's very much at play here.
These same people acted FAR different in the outside world. I think the notion of a complete lack of scarcity leads our brains in this unachievable quest for perfection (based on nothing but a picture).
I'd say get off the platform, but you also have to go where the people are! I'm just glad I'm not dating anymore.
I'm average height and was married to a 5' 11" woman for a while. It always felt weird. It's much more comfortable for me to be with a woman who is a similar height, or a touch smaller, just for ergonomic reasons like how it feels when you hold hands or put your arms around each other.
I don't understand hot short women demanding tall guys as a kind of trophy. I know they can get them, because they are hot, but they'd be more comfortable with someone closer to their height.
I haven't asked if the concept of needing an even taller guy has ever occurred to her, but the even stranger one of either of us caring if she's wearing heels sure hasn't come up.
Also, I'll observe that the median Hispanic man in America is a hair under 5' 7" (66.7"), yet Hispanic couples account for almost a quarter of births in America. Just a data point!
Stop thinking about it and grow a pair. It pays off. I had a lot of anxiety too when I started dating. Just act like its not a issue and the right girl will too.
My wife's cousin’s 5’6’’ but Ive seen women go up to him and strike a conversation by the way he walks. Ive been in parties where he’s nailed every girl (including sisters and wives) in the room. Me? Nothing much, and Im 6’2’’
Ps I am from south East Asian country
Social taboos get established to keep the winners winning. Go find yourself a gold digger. It is fine. Maybe go date women in cultures where 5.6 is not too short. Hell, I'd say that a mail order bride (more likely an economic refugee who appreciates your wealth) is still better than dying alone. It is a brutally objectifying system and you have to play to your strengths.
Sure, there are social taboos around this. But when the system fails you, you have to look at alternatives outside. If you are too insecure about being THAT guy, then lie about till you start believing the lie.
Every non-abusive individual deserves an honest chance at pursuing a relationship. If the thought of dying alone is painful, then cheat the system.
All is fair in love and war. Haters be damned.
P.S: get out of the bay area / seattle. These places are dating deserts.
P.P.S: it is obviously advice for the the edge case. Only refer use it within the context of traditional options having died out.
Also, gold diggers are shitty people. You can't have a real relationship with one.
I can't blame the desperate people that volunteer to become mail order brides for thinking that screwing over some poor sap from a 1st world country is a lesser evil than them having to remain in poverty, but you'd have to be insane to marry one.
There's no way to cheat the system, if a person isn't genuinely attracted to you, whether its physically or otherwise, you have no chance of building a life with them that's going to make the two of you happy.
95% of women are not American. And only a very small percentage of those are gold diggers or mail order brides. The vast majority are just normal people with normal dreams of having a modest family.
If someone is 5’6 and having trouble meeting someone, they should consider if their own criteria are irrational.
I wasn't saying that all women are gold diggers or mail order brides. I was responding to a person saying that a short man struggling to find a long term relationship should look into those two options.
>It’s not beating the odds though.
I was mostly joking by this, although I have beaten the odds in other ways by being married to the same person for almost 20 years (at least by US standards).
>If someone is 5’6 and having trouble meeting someone, they should consider if their own criteria are irrational.
I agree.
the "system" isn't failing you, because there is no such thing as a system, and even if there is, this system isn't there to benefit you or ensure you don't remain maidenless.
> Every non-abusive individual deserves an honest chance at pursuing a relationship.
Yes, but it's only the chance is given to you, not the result. It's not like there are regulations preventing you from seeking a fruitful relationship.
Meeting any partner who isn't currently a US Citizen if you are is abusive? Meeting any partner who was born of lower economic status than you is abusive?
I'm an American man engaged to a foreign woman and am familiar with all of this - including negative stereotypes of cross-border relationships that in any other area (race, gender, orientation) would long since be considered deeply bigoted and unacceptable.
Darwinian evolutionary theory dont's say 'Survival of non-abusive individuals', it says 'Survival of the fittest'. Not having a relationship is evolution's way to kill your genes because they are not fit for reproduction, and that's why its so painful, because you instinctively know you are dying. That's why people do crazy painful dangerous things as enlarging their legs bones.
There are billions of women out there and they can't all marry the 6'6" quarterback because there are only so many of them in the universe. I find that people who claim that the mating game is irretrievably broken often have the idea that they are of a certain caliber and wont consider anyone beneath them.
This attitude is usually combined with a complete failure to understand their actual grade in the opposite sex' eyes, a negative attitude, and or inability to function in this arena.
Basically usually 5s and 6s who are convinced they are 8s and 9s who disdain women who are also 5s and 6s while projecting a negative dejected attitude. This might not be you but its like 90% of the people who project the same attitude.
Most of those are in other countries though, so you'd have to be willing to date internationally ("mail order brides"?) to meet them. And if you're American, a large number of foreigners may pretend to love you only to divorce you the moment they get a green card out of you.
There are in your own locality as a young person just as many eligible females as their are males. Odds for the woman actually get progressively worse every year as the population of eligible males decreases faster because young men die more frequently and exit the effective marriage pool from her perspective in other ways whether it is because they have non intention of looking for permanent attachment or because they prefer young women regardless of their age.
I don't really have any advice, but I really don't think your height is limiting you. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely harder than if you were six inches taller, but it's not that bad.
It's one factor of many that affects your overall attractiveness and many people don't care about it at all.
This is by no means "fine" seeing (1) finding a romantic partner is one of the most important determiners of mental health (2) youth today is going through a huge social isolation crisis. If you're short you're seen (not explicitly, but through statistical regression to the mean) as a lesser person.
I think it's absolutely crucial to understand this is not "fine" and compansate accordingly. This seems like the responsible truth to me.
My wife also happens to be shorter than me and she has never been on any dating site.
I heard that in NYC in US it’s similar.
When lacking height, you need to compensate by boosting other markers, that women latch on. Things like managerial position, luxurious housing, car, dressing etc.
It's as if we all go into it like ordering at a Burger King, except Have it your way (tm) comes out tasting like crap because we realize we aren't chefs. Online dating is how a bureaucrat decides to choose their life partner. The boxes you tick in online dating aren't important and are there just to pander to users.
You're being overly dramatic and don't have any to support your claim. It is not really necessary to date dozens of women before getting married.
Dating many women in the first place is only the norm in a few western countries.
Also, I believe the dating apps are mostly used for casual sex, so the statistics there are not really relevant in the end.
So try to play the long game. You might meet your special someone later in life, who knows. Meanwhile in the short term, whoever doesn't appreciate you for what you are, look at it kind of like "well fuck 'em anyway," like they just self-selected out of your filter. Regardless, I'm 100% certain you won't be helping anything by trying to trick people into liking you. And I'm about 80% sure you won't even get anywhere by trying earnestly to be whatever stupid thing they want or think they want, or that some cost-free process of entering profile info on an app encourages them to blithely and carelessly say they want (because why not?). This goes not just for being short but for any human trait you do or don't possess. (And the only reason I allow 20% of hope there is because there's a possibility that through concerted effort you might actually manage to improve yourself in some way. But it should be something that came from you, something you yourself want to strive for, not something to please some fickle asshole and make them like and approve of you.)
It's not about what they want. It's about who you are, and whoever is the "audience" for that, is who you should be focusing on. What does Slayer care about Ariana Grande fans? Maybe on some level they wish they had as many fans as she does, but I'm pretty sure they aren't out there trying to impress them or win them over by being more Ariana-Grande-like. (I don't even know if Slayer is still a band; I might be dating myself.)
Editing to further bloviate: Who is going to mate with all the short women of the world? Tall guys? No, they're mostly looking for tall girlfriends. But short women need love too, and the ones who aren't so shallow and lacking in logistical foresight as to demand someone two full feet taller than themselves, are out there. Just a thought.
One detail stuck out to me in this piece: The fact that this guy continues to read anti-short-people hate online, and still reflexively feels slighted, but then "remembers" that he got this surgery, kind of speaks to the fact that a big part of this is in his own head. Hear me out. I'm not suggesting people aren't being total douches about those of diminutive stature, because I've witnessed it and I'm quite sure they are. If someone is saying a sentence where if you put "black" let's say, in place of "short," there would be hell to pay, well then... there should be hell to pay. It's not right. At the same time, there is always evil shit out there being hurled at someone. Even tall white rich males. (Maybe especially them, lately.) Do you let that inside your head and make it your own thought that follows you around, day and night, far outside the reach of the douche who said it? It's difficult to practice the level of mental & emotional discipline it takes to cast such thoughts out, but it is an area where you have some degree of control over the situation.
What? Tall guys date short girls all the time.
Jokes aside, percieved attractiveness privilege is by far the most prominent form of discrimination in society today. (After wealth) Watching good.looking people coast through hard things purely because doors mysteriously open for them, is one of those things that you'd never believe it unless you see it.
Height is obviously the most prominent of those features among men. Sadly, it is tied to the most fundamental of social phenomenon (mating), and no amount of moralizing around it is going to change anything unless women change change their dating preferences. (Goes both ways, but women are generally the ones with hangups over height)
Men start off mostly worthless by default from a dating perspective, and gain attractiveness as they gain money and status. So, make money and gain prestige. Pretty-boys who peak in high school are the exception.
Women peak in physical attractiveness to men as soon as they mature. Emotional maturity plays a role in attractiveness, and that generally improves over time, so peak overall attractiveness for your average woman is probably in her 20s. So, ignore women in your 20s and make lots of money, and then, when you're 30 and rich, marry a 20-year old.
Lastly, fitness is a red queen's race, kind of like aging; time works against you, and the worse your body gets the harder it is to get fit (fitness protects against a lot of chronic problems that make exercise harder) so there's never a better time to get/stay fit than now.
TL:DR; I agree that everything you mentioned is inherently valuable and will also help you get women, so long as we don't forget money and competence!
* what you want and what women want out of a relationship are in many ways very different
* On a related note, what women find attractive is very different from what men find attractive.
* Do not project your ideas of what you are attracted to onto women's likes, especially when it comes to physical characteristics
* Confidence, presence, and humor will get you past 90% of the crowd
* Spend some effort on style and clothing. If you don't want to be stylish, then at least be unique.
* Recognize that women are also horny and want sex as much as men. The difference is the approach and the ritual around getting there. You'll need to understand what turns a women off during this "dance", e.g. being too explicit about it at the wrong time.
* Do not get so easily dejected by rejection. Build up a thick skin and laugh it off.
* Regularly inject yourself into conversations with women, and when you find a common interest, don't hesitate to take advantage of that and deepen the conversation and eventually schedule something with them.
* Understand what the signs are of someone who is attracted to you, e.g. playing with hair, teasing, other body language. Once these are noticable you can go in for a kiss or an invitation back home.
* Recognize that there are effectively infinite women out there, and each one is going to have different history that shaped their preferences, either an earlier boyfriend or crush or favored celebrity or whatever, and some percentage of them will have preferences that overlap with you and give you an advantage. Even if it's something you think is unattractive, not everyone agrees. So don't give up.
I am naturally a bit shy and reserved with women. I am also not very witty and humorous (except when drunk) and I have a historical record of nerdiness and introversion. Coupled with a short stature, it makes me lack in confidence (I got some rejections due to height in the past, but in no way I think height is a limiting factor. I believe being fit and confident can make wonders). I am in mid-twenties and I realised that I need to change this and I need to seriously work on it to live a normal life and find a partner.
Obviously it’s better to be taller because that opens up more options. But the preference women have is for you to be taller than she is not that you have to hit some absolute value of 6’.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/link-between-mens-height-divo...
The part about 200x the matches is both obviously pulled out of the air and grossly exaggerated. It looks like on average women tend to prefer men who are taller but not hugely different in height from themselves.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
If you are 5'6" you are most apt to be most attractive to women who are 5'4" or shorter which is helpfully 43% of women in the US.
You say you are very likely to die alone based entirely on a malarkey stat you pulled from thin air. You don't need hundreds of matches in a dating app to find one person you want to spend your life with. You need to instead cultivate qualities that would inspire ONE of many potentially worthwhile mates out there to make time with you and then work on enriching your life and relationship.
The problem with this fatalistic attitude is twofold. Firstly it spoils all hope of success to believe in yourself not one whit and second it holds that somehow MEN or at least yourself are rational whole mental and emotional creatures while somehow women are irrational animals who somehow cannot even see you. It's degrading to you and to hypothetical mates.
In which fantasy world that study was done? lets see.
mmm 2012, the year Tinder was created, so it was basically in a different era, but let's continue.
I see 'questionnaire based data' so it's self reported data! Of course you are going to report that you love 5'6' men. But you really don't. People say politically correct things, and then do a different thing, and this is specially true in dating. Look for studies based on Tinder or other recent online dating sites to have more accurate and real data.
This study is based on data about actual pairings (parents of recently born children in the UK). Nothing to do with "reported preferences".
Maybe in America. Plenty of countries where the average height is lower than what the article mentions. Not to mention that most European countries are "ahead" regarding respect than America.
This is why you shouldn't put height in your dating profile, so you filter out a bunch of superficial people.
Why would it only get worse? How do you know this? I'm puzzled by the certainty.
That said, women being callous and cruel in groups about height, fitness, etc is more congruent to locker room talk. You probably won't hear it because it's behind your back and usually not by people you know. I say that as having been witness to this kind of private talk before.
That thick skin is, IMHO, a trait that I think has become vastly underappreciated in our society.
Being made fun of and the source of jokes is never going to be solved by having “thick skin”. Shorter men will still be seen as lesser even if they don’t let it effect them mentally. End of the day - your material being will be markedly different than those with greater height regardless of how you respond to it. For some - this will be so severe that they will likely die alone due to it even though they themselves are not troubled by their height or the jokes people make about them. And honestly - letting it get to you might actually help.
Sometimes I wish I had been more insecure growing up because then I would’ve treated my acne and not had all the facial scarring. I almost didn’t get braces because I didn’t see the issue with my extremely British teeth. I wasn’t concerned about my attire (but I should have been!) because I didn’t think it mattered and I wasn’t concerned. Again - thick skin can actually be quite detrimental to your outcomes!
I don't recall any red-lining against short men, separate water fountains or schools for short men, short-men not being allowed to get married, etc. Also, remind me the next time the NYPD sets up some extremely questionable surveillance of short-men at northeastern universities or a presidential candidate adopts banning foreign short-men from the country as part of his campaign platform.
I've seen hypocrisy and cruelty from people of all backgrounds. But anecdotally, among the "socially conscious women" I've spent time around, this, which is one of three top comments on the article, is a common sentiment:
> This is a reminder that the patriarchy hurts everyone and men should be just as invested in destroying it as women.
Just as women benefit when society learns to accept and appreciate a wider variety of body types, so do men.
Brilliant. We're all in this together struggling to be generous to each other. There will always be tension between men and women and divergent gender roles will always exist, but things can be better than they are today.
There can be less of people of one gender or another demeaning others for physical characteristics, and more celebration of variety. I hope that more people can find it in themselves to accept when an olive branch is held out to them. This huge thread with hundreds of comments is a catalog of anguish showing how much potential there is for us to do better and be better — in daenz's formulation, being less of a "mean piece of shit" — for each other.
Calling it patriarchy is just another in the long stream insults to maleness that has become common, in the worst sense of the word common.
Thinking about this more, I think the far simpler explanation is "being a mean piece of shit hurts everyone" and it applies to pretty much any belief system and doesn't require a complete restructuring of society on the hopes that it'll prevent people from being mean.
Let me get this straight, so women abusing and being hostile to short men, is the men's fault? lol you logic is incredible sometimes.
Mate selection is not and should not be institutionalized which means that you are within your rights to discriminate on...anything. Your criteria may be based on "taste", past experiences or downright prejudice. It is inevitable that as you pick a mate, you discriminate.
You can't stop that nor should you. We can however openly discuss criteria that are unhealthy, perverted, make no sense...in an attempt to open people's minds. Not to control whom they can date, rather to open up possibilities. People may be missing out a lot by being needlessly restrictive.
As old man I might provide a shortcut. Cliche as it is, character stands the test of time. What is somebody like? Select for that, the rest is a bonus.
Not being attracted to short men and not wanting to reproduce with them is a personal thing. But going on record ridiculing them, saying bad things about them, mocking their height, that's not okay, and it's true that if it was done about their race it would be frowned upon, but seems to be acceptable for height.
I think that's a fair issue to bring up.
It also seems there might be real measurable pay-gaps, and that might need addressing as well.
I fully agree, and you can extend that to men being bald, and many other bodily aspects. I think in particular contexts it's fine to make the occasional joke but that's entirely different from making it a widespread thing.
For example, it's ridiculous to ask for an exact height. Height is a spectrum. By demanding 6" or taller, you can't seriously justify how somebody that is 5"9 is an absolute deal breaker.
Similarly, if you're not attracted to fat people, you could still consider somebody a little overweight. Weight is not a static quality.
You may be attracted to brunettes, but I would opt to see that as a preference, not a hard requirement.
My point is that "attractive enough" is a better strategy as all of these things are ultimately unimportant if the personality doesn't match.
This is true for lots of things. Being fast is better than being slow. Being smart is better than people simple. Being attractive is better than being ugly. Being fit is better than being fat. This isn't a happy realization but it's true and it's healthy to accept it.
The dimension along which all people are equal is a metaphysical or religious dimension, not an empirical one.
People can like whoever they want to like. Some people may only like those of a certain height, weight, race, class, and any other attribute you may want to think of, but it is not necessarily wrong. It is up to each individual to have the freedom to date whoever they wish.
You might be conflating this with the societal denigration of certain races or classes, which is surely bad because there really is no reason to denigrate them, but that is not the same as saying everyone must be attracted to those of any combination of the above such factors.
That's not racists at all, that's just a person's personal preference for what they find attractive, and it often can't be helped.
We develop our models of what we find attractive early in our development by what we are exposed to.
It scares me a little that you don't know this, yet feel confident enough in your knowledge to type out these words.
Is it racist if I only like blonds? No, but that does rule out more than a few races of people that can't naturally grow blond hair. You're allowed to have physical preferences for certain traits. What you shouldn't do though is treat people differently because they don't have those traits that you value.
What would be racist is if I said I only hire [insert race], or I only let [insert race] people rent my condo.
so back to your example - if you only liked blonds, and exclusively date them, then are you not treating other potential dates "differently" (in the sense that you do not date them or even give them as chance)?
I'm shifting all the way back on that one. Fat is fit. So I was talking to a girl, a model in fact, I was a model too, met a lot of models. I said I am going to want exactly the sort of woman I want, and no other, without any other man's judgment being taken into consideration at all.
So it's actually about white fat versus brown fat cells, apparently. Saturated or unsaturated, based on diet, to a lesser extent fat but to a greater extent sugars and especially toxins[1]. So without it women look ripped and bony. All the models I saw like that looked great on TV but terrible in real life, the models who didn't get work had that...that baby fat I guess you could call it. I got her to come around on the subject she was like, "yeah, a thin but not too thin and even layer of fat, it looks good!"
[1] Many but not all psychiatric compounds. All of them alter body fat, I think. Fluoride, for lots of reasons. So hard to escape that F'ing F atom. Then what other toxins...pesticides and especially fire-retardant.
No... if that were true then it would be OK to deride someone who was born with a deformed limb, because in that case the "inferiority" would really have an "objective basis in reality". They would be objectively inferior at certain tasks then someone without it. Does that make it ok to insult them?
Suggesting racism (or prejudice) is wrong simply because it's not objectively inferior is missing the point.
The actual answer, which I think you would have come to eventually, is that deride someone for an attribute they had no control over, is the essence of prejudice.
People do not chose to be born in a poor country, in an abusive family, black, French, short or handicap, these are simply the hands they were dealt.
There are a reasonable number of women on dating sites that like saying pretty horrible things about shorter guys in there profiles.
I don't know that it does much but I've always treated it as a bit of a red flag and swiped left.
I don't think there's anything wrong with say, being attracted to someone taller than yourself, but I don't understand feeling the need to public ridicule someone about a physical trait you aren't attracted to.
Stop trying to sanitise the world, that's why no one can live in it.
I'm about 5"8, and am actually really happy with my height - it's perfect for the types of sports I do, I fit quite nicely on an airplane, and have no problem if I were to drive a smaller car.
I imagine for taller people those things could be a hassle, that flying would be a real pain, that they might look silly on a motorbike / skateboard, and coule develop back problems from bending down.
When it comes to dating, online dating apps suck in general, but honestly I've never felt like I've missed out. People don't even seem to truly know what they find attractive until they have someone placed in front of them. I've even had this experience myself where I've found a super tall girl attractive when I'd typically go for the shorties.
It's sad that people feel the need to do these operations. Honestly, I feel they could achieve a better outcome (feeling confident / adequate) by doing some martial arts and hitting the gym.
As others have mentioned it also depends where you live. The only time I truly felt short was in Amsterdam where it felt like the local bars were packed full of giants lol. I Thailand and India I've had the opposite experience.
People choose mates based on perceived genetic fitness using proxy metrics, such as symmetry, height, skin color and other traits (which may or may not be genetic, but is assumed to be, like intelligence).
the fact that today, women have become more selective of these traits than the past, due to their new found economic opportunities and freedoms, means that some subset of males who would've been selected in the past (when women's choices were much more limited) are now alienated (rightly or wrongly so).
But i dont believe there to be a solution to this lookism problem, while still maintaining freedom of choice in mates.
I do believe there's a solution to systemic racism, but not for "lookism".
Also, I've seen short (and bald!) people have amazing dating lives. The key is that they're confident, funny, and actually care about the people they interact with. It's so easy to blame something like height so one don't have to improve who they are on the inside.
Also, anybody making short jokes is a jerk and should be shamed. Anyone calling 5'7" short has some problems of their own to sort out.
This guy runs an OnlyFans where he gets paid to dominate other men. He psychologically wants to be taller because he doesn’t feel like his (completely unremarkable) height is appropriately dominating.
>Scott first heard about the procedure when he was in high school. He watched a few YouTube clips about it but dismissed it at the time. “I was like, ‘That’s sick, I would never do that.” But he kept researching, and about three years ago, he became convinced it was the solution he was looking for. “I felt miserable,” he said. “There were things throughout my day, every day, that would bother me. I felt attacked or unfairly criticized due to my height.” Then he had a revelation: “When I realized what was really holding me back was the obstacle of money, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just a game. If I can get $75,000, then I’m done feeling like this.’”
>The goal gave him clarity. “I was not waking up and crying every day in my mask, walking around the neighborhood. Instead, it became ‘OK, I just have to get on my grind and figure out how to get the money.’” So Scott, who is bi, got to work and, in February 2021, started an OnlyFans page. Within a few months on the platform, he zeroed in on a niche: financial domination, a form of humiliation kink where clients pay him to degrade them and take their money. By January 2022, by supplementing his OnlyFans earnings with some of his savings and a small loan, he had enough to pay for the procedure.
Ehhh... I think it's pretty clear we're dealing with kind of a complicated anecdote here where it's not clear which ways the causality is flowing. It's more like a karmic diffraction pattern than something so linear as cause and effect.
The biggest issue I have with limb lengthening surgery is that it's expensive and likely to lead to a lifetime of pain and, lets be real, if you DO become genetically successful you're going to have your son be in the same position of subjecting himself to a lifetime of pain to be sexually successful.
I guess my only advise is the controversial view that you should do nothing and shrug your shoulders at the arbitrary nature of the world. Maybe buy some heel lifts and wear them to your job interviews. Putin does it and it doesn't require you to experience a lifetime of pain. Lie about your height on the internet too.
That's my point. If you're 25th percentile in height, you don't have an actual height problem. Treat the depression.
I was insecure about balding in my 20's, but buzz cutting my hair solved that. I got teased about the buzz cut at work for a few days, but it was simply well intended humor due to folk noticing the change.
So, by "hundreds" they mean definitely less than a thousand people. Presumably much less, or else they'd have "almost a thousand". But in any case, they really have no idea how many people are undergoing this surgery, or how much it has changed over time, because nobody has any hard numbers. Not a strong basis for a headline.
I am not trying to trivialize the anxiety or social stigma short men face, but the phrase but "becoming more popular" in this headline is such a weak, almsost meaningless statement that I wish they would have crafted a less click-baity headline.
However, as someone who is barely 5'7", I have never found there to be a lot of joking or something about it or anything really in my face.
I know it has affected me. But I also don't really feel inferior in any way. Compared to human males overall I am fairly close to average in height.
But really my self-worth is based on things like integrity and problem solving ability. So if I don't trigger a mating instinct in a lot of females that's too bad, but I don't actually feel like a lesser person or something.
I actually believe that within a few hundred years unaugmented biological humans are going to be mainly irrelevant. Things will be run by AIs/robots with far superior intellects and capabilities, along with some cyborgs (maybe).
In fact, I believe that the human form will become passé among intelligent agents.
It’s very hard to buy a bicycle.
Nothing terrible, just annoyances. No big deal compared to dumb social prejudice against shorter men.