How tall (or short) is too tall (or short) for you to find attractive?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’ve redacted the name and link of the poster who wrote this, because it’s a vastly widespread attitude and her post is just one example of such, and I’m not going to make it personal about this poster. (Scan up this thread and find it yourself in you need to know.)

It’s well known, without much serious dispute, that a large majority of females will only consider dating a taller male, and that short males have a very limited dating pool because of it.

Didn’t we have a thread on this just a few months ago? Hold on, lemme see if I can find it . . . I recall the thread had a lot of females agreeing (like several in this thread so far), and a lot of others females who disagree, as if to say “I don’t have any qualm dating a shorter guy therefore it’s not a problem and all those dateless short guys need to quit whining because you’re not entitled to sex.” This point (that it’s not really a problem for short guys) is always proven by post from females saying they’re married to a guy who is only 5’8", or from guys saying “I’m only 5’8” and I don’t have a problem finding dates!"

Uh, 5’8" isn’t all that short for a guy. 5’2", in contrast is. Those are the guys who have a hard time getting dates.

The point also came up again in a very recent thread – the one that got banished to the cornfield, I think, where the same tired old chorus of BSDL (Bullshit, Doubletalk, and Lies) was hashed over again.

Okay, I think this is the earlier thread I had in mind (but there are others too): Women: Would you reject a man solely for being 5’7"? BE HONEST! from March of last year. So 5’7" is so short that some guy thinks he needs to worry about it?

A quick glance shows the poll result: 16 Yes (would reject), 130 No (would not reject) – and yet just a quick glance at just the first few posts shows an emerging pattern of the hypocrisy there.

Post #2: A 5’3" female who would accept a 5’7" male. Okay, bully.
Post #4: A 5’5" female who accepted (and would have been willing to marriy) a 5’7", although she confesses she actually dated a 5’3" male. A few others like this who seemed at least willing to date 2 inches shorter than themselves.
Post #5: A 5’9" female who would rather date taller men, but admits dating one 5’7" .
Post #8: A 5’5" female who prefers 5’6" to 5’8" and maybe taller, minimum of 5’4" but denies height has much to do with her preferences.

That’s as far as I’m going to review that thread now, but you all get the drift?

Or maybe it was this:
Women: would you date a short guy? from February of last year, where a short male is defined as 5’9" :smack: Cites this article in NYPost, that anyone 5’9" or under can pretty much kiss off having any love life in New York.

Still more similar threads:

If I hear the words “I only date tall guys” one more time… – from a 5’6" guy. That’s too short? He even hears it from females shorter than himself.

Okay for women to reject short guys, not okay for guys to reject big girls – 5’10", not clear if he himself has dating trouble because of his height, but is bothered by the double standard. First response (Post #2) from a female who says that any such kind of “bigotry”: "I get so tired of this stereotype being trotted out any time a man feels slighted by a woman… okay, so I’m stereotyping, too.

Now, I admit that I would have a hard time taking a man seriously who was shorter than I am . . ." :dubious:

Men want slender women. Women want tall men. Why the different social stigmas? Yet another thread from a male (doesn’t give his height) wondering why so many females reject shorter men and that isn’t considered a problem, but so many males reject heavier females and are viewed badly for doing that.

A question of my own is: Why do so many of those “heavier” females themselves lament that males are so dickish as to reject heavier females, while refusing to date males shorter than themselves who might wish to date them. (I could name names . . .)

42

Yes, humans are attracted to others based on looks. That is somehow surprising?

43

I’m 5’6", and I prefer guys around my height. I like to look a guy in the eye. Much taller guys make me feel off-scale.

44

Loach, YOU were the OP of one of those threads I linked above.

ETA: From you own OP:

45

I fear no defenestration.

(Living on the ground floor, as I do.)

46

Yes, boohoo, life is hard if you’re outside the norm. Notice how many guys in this thread said a 5’10"-6’ woman was the bees knees? I can tell you, just like in real life, it ain’t many. Guys may love the look of a supermodel, but outside of photographs, standing right in front of them? They’ll choose the petite little flower most of the time.

That’s life on the ends of the bell curve, pal.

47

Don’t feel bad. Some people like a big nose :).

48

A bit more thoughts on this, from an earlier-cited thread (emphasis added):

That sort of thing is pretty blatantly extreme on dating sites, that being the place where, y’know, dating allegedly happens (although I’ve heard to the contrary). It’s like saying the reason money gets stolen from banks is because that’s where so much of the money is.

There’s absolutely nothing new or unique to dating sites, that the females there all want Paul Bunyan and nothing less. It goes at least as far back as the stone age, before Internet, when newspapers published personal ads in their classified section, and all action was done by U. S. Snail Mail. Y’all know the old jokes of the day: Farmer ISO wife, must have horse. If interested, send picture of horse.

There were even whole regional publications (similar to Classified Flea Market) devoted just to personal ads. In the S. F. area, it was Lifestyle.

You know how help-wanted ads always list 30 column inches of experience requirements, more than most prospective applicants could accumulate in a typical 40-year career? Dating ads were indistinguishable from that. Every ad contained two lengthy lists of unbelievably superlative adjectives (USA’s), one self-describing the advertiser, and one describing the advertiser’s ISO.

Even then, ONE adjective (including some synonyms or similar phrases) stood way out as being by far the most prevalent: “tall”, in ads by females describing the males they wanted.

I always wanted to get my hands on an electronic, computer-readable copy of those publications. I wanted to write a program to scan the ads, and build a catalog of all the USA’s in all of them, and build histograms of their usage frequencies in four categories:
[ul][li] Males’ USAs describing themselves;[/li][li] Males’ USAs describing their ISOs;[/li][li] Females’ USAs describing themselves;[/li][li] Females’ USAs describing their ISO.[/ul][/li]It was quite clear that “tall”, in the last category above, was by far the most frequently-appearing USA of the whole lot.

ETA: Females also often mentioned themselves as “slender” or any of dozens of synonyms, and occasionally as “heavy” or any of a dozen or so euphemisms. But IIRC, males rarely listed “thin” or any such term as an ISO requirement. Oh, but that’s just because all those males are desperate, y’know, right? :dubious:

49

I’m pretty tall. Too short to be attractive for what, relationship or other?

50

Yes I was. I thought it was extraordinary that they would consider 5’9" as short. Not so much that people have physical attributes that they find attractive or not. The article that struck me as odd and that I used as a jumping off point was far from scientific or unbiased. And I see you neglect to mention the results of my poll. Although also not scientific most said they had no problem dating men under 5’9".

51

Took too long to edit:

I’ve been attracted to women as tall as 6’6" and as short as 4’10". In fact, I probably have what would be considered a mild fetish for small women. Very tall women are more curiosities to me than anything. If they’re built the way I really like a woman to be built, a woman as tall as me will be likely to outweigh me…which I’m really not accustomed to. If they’re really skinny, they tend to look disproportional.

52

There are a few things about dating sites. Women get a lot more attention than men. They usually have more more “likes” or however someone shows their approval. It makes sense to narrow the criteria.

And also specifically about height, I have heard it often enough from women to believe it is true, men lie about their height on dating websites. It seems absurd to me. I wouldn’t think that the first thought you want a woman to have when they meet you is “liar!” Maybe they think they seem taller in real life. Maybe they think that their wonderful personality is enough to overpower any revulsion caused by being lied to. So I have heard from multiple women that they bump up their minimum height by a few inches because they know there are a lot of liars out there.

53

It’s easy to reject a stranger on the basis of something superficial and easily measured like height on a dating site. In real life, people have personalities and are not just a list of “facts,” a picture, and some awkward ad copy.

54

And that too.

55

Well, I wasn’t about to do a full statistical analysis of every one of those threads (is that what you want me to do?), but I did cite some poll statistics from one of the other threads I cited – which showed an even more lopsided result, full of females who agreed that they would date shorter men. And then I cited 4 responses out of the first 7 (the other three responses out of the first 7 weren’t really relevant one way or the other, IIRC) contradicting the poll, or allowing that some females would date 2 inches shorter than themselves. I didn’t review the whole thread, that I’ve read enough to get the gist that they tend to run that way.

Note in THIS very thread, the number of female respondents who either themselves, or someone they mention, will only date taller males AND they like to wear high heels and only want males taller than them even then. And some of those are a bit on the tall side already. They have no-one to blame but themselves if they’ve priced themselves out of the market. (ETA: Especially if 5’9" is “short” now.) I can’t say I’m crying a river over the fate of this one:
And, back before I absolutely ruined my feet with them, I regularly wore 3-4" heels. Being tall is powerful, man. I gave zero rats’ behinds whether anyone thought I “should” be wearing them or not.
Are you doubting that “tall” (and various equivalent words/phrases), when used by females to describe the males they seek, is by far the most commonly used adjective in personal ads and on-line dating profiles? Can you find an adjective that’s used more?

56

And in this thread there are plenty of men who like dating shorter women. I’m not sure what your point is. Humans are attracted to physical characteristics. So what? Is it harder for a short man to find someone who is attracted to him? Yes. It’s also harder for very tall women. And out of shape people. And people who don’t have a face arranged in a pleasing manner. Are you trying to argue that people should ignore what they find physically attractive? Or just women?

BTW you didn’t have to to a full statistical analysis to see that in the poll in my thread that you quoted 71% of women said they would have no problem dating someone short. Only 8% said they would only date above 5’9" with another 6% stating they had a height cutoff but it was lower than 5’9".

57

Dating sites is a bit of a red herring here. In my (admittedly very limited) experience with IRL face-to-face encounters (well, at least, being in the same room with lots of other people or out on group recreational activities, and so forth), that meme about females mostly not being interested in dating shorter males is very widely believed by males, and apparently is very true.

I was involved in a group discussion once, in which a heavier female (of the sort commonly called “BBW”) expressed dating concerns about her size, despite that she was otherwise quite attractive (and any male who is attracted to, or at least comfortable about “heavy” females would say the same, omitting the qualifier “otherwise”). So I asked her if she would date someone shorter than herself, and she said she would not.

Okay, that’s just one anecdatum. But it’s very common.

Myself, I’ve never played the on-line dating game, and only very rarely and sparsely in the days when it was all done via snail-mail. Yes, I know perfectly well that the M-to-F ratio in those venues runs in the neighborhood of 20-to-1, so that it’s a fool’s errand for all males but the most studly, who have no need in the world to be using personal ads or dating sites.

58

As a youngster, I had a couple of tall girls take an interest in me. Because of that positive reinforcement early on, I’ve been attracted to some taller women in my life. However, I’ve also been hesitant with them, because I’ve had anxiety about…well…y’know…would I be enough to satisfy them?

59

Ok, I have to jump back into the fray here for a minute and talk about we tall girls. Maybe not so much now, but back when I was growing up (I’m approaching 60 yo), if you were female, tall, athletic, etc., you were bullied pretty unmercifully. Moonmoon, chime in if this also applies to you. Imagine, if you will, how embarassing it is when you are 13 yo and a male classmate shouts out to everyone in listening distance that he can put both his feet heel to toe into one of your shoes! I was given the lovely nickname “Ugg, the Cavewoman” that night by my wonderful peers. I was stuck with it until I finished high school, even though most of my classmates had gotten taller and I was no longer the tallest person (not woman, person) in my class. But the damage had been done. I had become incredibly sensitive about my height. Still am. Although now I’m no longer considered all that tall for a woman.

The only way for me to feel ‘womanly’ was to approximate small and delicate in any way I could. The best way to do that was to date a much taller man. Thanks to the wisdom of my mother, I refused to slouch and I wore high heels. I may have been quivering with self-loathing on the inside, but I was tall and proud on the outside. Trying to have a relationship with a man shorter than I would do nothing but bring up all that awful detritus from my early teen years. I wouldn’t be kind to such a man. I would blame him for being something over which he had no control. Truly my problem, not his. But still. Why put someone through that? If anyone knows what it’s like to be belittled because of your height, it’s me. I’m sure it’s equally painful if you’re on the shorter end of the height spectrum.

Yes, I still believe it’s shallow of me to refine so much on height. But I’ve paid the dues and earned the right to it.

60

I’m arguing the point of how shallow so many females are that their definition of “physical attractiveness” in a male is so dependent on said male being taller, and by the shallowness of women who use criteria like that as their first pass filter, by which they immediately rule out males that they might be compatible with on many other grounds if they would take the time to get to know them. Yes, I’m thinking more of in-person venues than dating sites where the shallowest of the shallow (males and females alike) congregate.

I don’t dispute for a moment that females could list a litany of complaints about males’ dating habits too. I just tend to focus on the male POV, being male myself last time I checked.

I think you yourself also agreed that 5’9" was an idiotic height to call “too short”, so there’s nothing impressive that a lot of females would date under 5’9". OTOH, the statistics in that NYPost link that you yourself cited (and repeated in your OP) showed an impressively different story, at least in NYC. Only 1-point-something percent of females would date a male under 5’9". Do the males there all walk on stilts? Ladies of NYC, here’s your Jolly Green Giant!

ETA: Here, a self-described “tall girl” acknowledges her own shallowness, and defends it as her earned entitlement! How often have we heard males being trashed, even here in this board, for their alleged sense of “entitlement”?