# Is being short (and male) so terrible? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 12, 2020, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-being-short-and-male-so-terrible/927870 "2020-12-12T02:47:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-being-short-and-male-so-terrible/927870/121 "2020-12-18T00:39:04Z")
I tend to find short women especially attractive so I’m not sure your view that being a 5’1" female hasn’t negatively affected your life is a fair comparison. Thinking back to my high school days, where female shallowness abounds, there was a particularly short and not terribly intelligent acquaintance of mine. He did poorly with the ladies until he started lifting hard and got ripped. He may have even been using steroids; we weren’t close. After that he had no problem and bedded several attractive ladies in the grade above and the grade below him. In retrospect he reminds me of Barney Rubble who landed Betty so it certainly is something which can be overcome. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-being-short-and-male-so-terrible/927870/122 "2020-12-18T08:26:07Z")
Perhaps if you want to be picky the saying should be “the plural of anecdote is not _remotely likely to be useful_ data”. You ask: “What is a poll except 1000 anecdotes?” A poll is (if it is to be useful) 1000 answers to carefully chosen questions, collected carefully from carefully chosen persons, so as to avoid bias. An anecdote is pretty much by definition has major biasing factors. For a start, anecdotes are recollections _by someone who wants to relate that recollection_, by a person _in a position to give the recollection_. Straight away one has two grounds for strong bias. The chances that you can lump a bunch of anecdotes together and get a useful data set are close to nil. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-being-short-and-male-so-terrible/927870/123 "2020-12-18T19:51:49Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > There is a difference between being ugly, and being plus-sized. Women can be rubenesque and still be beautiful. But some guys wont date any woman over size 9. That indeed is worth of criticism. > > But yeah, pimples, hairs on the face, greasy limp hair, smelly etc, are all reasonable reasons to say no. For women also, except the hairs on the face part. I still think it’s all just preferences. What if I don’t care about pimples or a bit of facial hair, but I’m only attracted to women who wear a size 4 or smaller? Am I a bad person? As long as I’m not letting it determine who I hire or promote, how is it wrong? If we go down the path of telling people who they should be attracted to, we’re into some weird homophobic, heterophobic, incel type territory. It’s not fair, it’s not nice, but I think the alternatives are even worse. Particularly when I was younger and actively trying to date, I was very disappointed that most women prefer taller men, but I didn’t _blame_ them; I just kept looking for those women who didn’t care about my height. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-being-short-and-male-so-terrible/927870/124 "2020-12-18T20:01:01Z")
Agreed. Physical attraction is what it is. My wife had no problem with my being … vertically challenged. She, as she tells it, fell in love with my head of thick curly hair. As you can see from my self-portrait avatar - she bemoans false advertising now … but four now adult kids later no take backs! ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-being-short-and-male-so-terrible/927870/125 "2020-12-18T22:22:00Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > I still think it’s all just preferences. What if I don’t care about pimples or a bit of facial hair, but I’m only attracted to women who wear a size 4 or smaller? Am I a bad person? As long as I’m not letting it determine who I hire or promote, how is it wrong? Well, you make some excellent points. However, fat-shaming is very wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-being-short-and-male-so-terrible/927870/126 "2020-12-20T05:13:28Z")
A five-foot tall psychic escaped from our local jail the other day. He’s a small medium at large, [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-being-short-and-male-so-terrible/927870.md?page=6)