Is that a fat woman gets to see a short guy as "equivalent" a form of sexual affirmative action?

[Wesley_Clark]

@drewder

Honestly, attraction wise, being short is worse than being fat for the exact reason given by the OP. Attraction is generally based, subconsciously and consciously, on the person’s ability to parent children who will also be able to parent children. That’s what our genes command from us.

A short person can be short for two main reasons, bad genes and bad nutrition, both of which speak volumes as to the suitability of a person to father children. If bad nutrition then the person, or that person’s parents, have for whatever reason been unable to acquire enough food to grow normally which means that man is less likely to be able to provide enough food for their own children.
Or when shortness is due to bad genes it means that the person will almost never produce tall children. Also tallness being important in that it makes a man, faster, stronger, tend towards health, and is an indicator for intelligence. [1][2]

Overweight on the other hand indicates that a person has been successful for a long time at acquiring more food with less work. In times where food was hard to get, e.g. 99.999% of human history, this was a strong indicator that a man was well suited to providing for their wife and children and that they were unlikely to starve or suffer from malnutrition.

On top of that if I’m tall and fat and you’re fit and short, than if I go on a diet I won’t be fat any more but you’ll still be short.

1. Are tall people smarter than short people? Research finds ‘moderate’ genetic connection between height, IQ – New York Daily News
2. Why Are Taller People More Intelligent Than Shorter People? | Psychology Today

While valid points, this doesn’t explain why a woman being short is not used against her. A woman who is 2 SD below average height (maybe 4’11") will not face the same negative impacts on her mating life as a man whose height is 2SD below average (maybe 5’4"). Women value tall men, men do not value tall women. Height is a sign of good genetics and good nutrition (as well as resistance to infections and parasites), but it only seems to matter for male attractiveness.

As far as weight, my understanding is it is more ratios that matter. A woman’s waist should ideally be 70% the size of her hips and chest, a man’s waist should ideally be less than 75% the size of his shoulders. How fat/thin you are beyond that isn’t important.

If anything, fat/thin dynamics are a class issue. When the poor ate a spartan diet and did manual labor, being fat was a sign of sexual attractiveness since only the rich had the surplus time and money to get fat. When poor people ate processed food and became obese (and didn’t have the money or time to obsess over their appearance) then thin became in. It is argued that one reason thinness is attractive now is that thinness is like peacock feathers. Only people with surplus time and money can afford to be thin. Planning all your meals, spending hours at the gym, obsessing over calories, etc. imply you have a surplus of time, money and energy. Poor people who are raising 3 kids and a full time job do not have the time, money and energy for that.

So there is a strong class component in whether a society prefers fat people or thin people. When being fat is a sign of surplus resources (time and money), people find fat people sexy. When being thin is a sign of surplus resources (time and money), people find thin people sexy.

[DerekMichaels00]

@drewder

A short person can be short for two main reasons, bad genes and bad nutrition, both of which speak volumes as to the suitability of a person to father children. If bad nutrition then the person, or that person’s parents, have for whatever reason been unable to acquire enough food to grow normally which means that man is less likely to be able to provide enough food for their own children.

tell me you’re joking; those are not the two main reasons. Genetics is THE main reason. Nutrition may add 2 or 3 inches to final height, but not the 6, 10 inches that can make or break dating/sex, and even social/professional lives for men (since the jocks are always the cool kids and are usually taller).

@drewder

Also tallness being important in that it makes a man, faster, stronger, tend towards health, and is an indicator for intelligence. [1][2]

The correlation coefficient in these studies tends to be very small, as in a math fluke, but not enough to have too high a p-value.

The study analysed 6,815 unrelated people and found some relationship between height and intelligence, although this relationship was not very strong.

"What we found was a small association between height and intelligence such that people who are taller tend to be smarter.”

Oh yea; this kind of correlation has been found in fat people too.

It is bad for your blood pressure, knocks years off your life and is a strain on your heart. Now scientists have discovered that gaining weight lowers your intelligence.
The findings follow last week’s government figures that show Britain as the “fat man” of Europe, with nearly a quarter of adults and more than 14 per cent of children under 16 classified as obese.

The new five-year study of more than 2,200 adults claims to have found a link between obesity and the decline in a person’s cognitive function. The research, conducted by French scientists, which is published in this month’s Neurology journal, involved men and women aged between 32 and 62 taking four mental ability tests that were then repeated five years later.

Gee, I wonder what would happen if you did this kind of “study” on another group of people with a trait they can’t change (except Michael Jackson) or control…hmmmm. Or the ones who were once non-white, but for Ivy League admissions, are considered more “white” than whites (and who aren’t very tall either). How about the NBA too?

[kaylasdad99]

@RivkahChaya

By the way he spelled “honoured,” I see he’s not American.

@Frank

He claims to be American; he’s all over the political threads. British spelling does pop up from time to time in his posts, but not consistently.

Nah, he’s just a huge admirer of Qin Shi Huangdi, and wants to emulate him in as many ways as possible…

[panache45]

@kaylasdad99

Nah, he’s just a huge admirer of Qin Shi Huangdi, and wants to emulate him in as many ways as possible…

Yeah, I’ve noticed that “emulation” as well.

[kaylasdad99]

Really? Huh.

I thought I was being a smartass.

[gigi]

@Senegoid

So much anger and hate in this thread.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19428575&postcount=57

Maybe you’re in the wrong threads.

[Senegoid]

@gigi

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19428575&postcount=57

Maybe you’re in the wrong threads.

So much hate and anger in both of these threads.

[Sunny_Daze]

Really? I took it as bitterness from the OP, and snark by the audience. Where’s the hate?

[iiandyiiii]

@ddsun

Really? I took it as bitterness from the OP, and snark by the audience. Where’s the hate?

The way the OP speaks about fat women seems hateful to me.

[Senegoid]

@ddsun

Really? I took it as bitterness from the OP, and snark by the audience. Where’s the hate?

Lots of hate in all that snark too.

[YogSothoth]

@DerekMichaels00

Is that heavier woman can “look down” on a short guy a great example of sexual affirmative action brought about the “feminism,” which clearly looks for easy targets, and short men are?

Short men are not easy targets. They’re much smaller and harder to hit

[Ukulele_Ike]

@Tithonus

A short guy can’t do anything about being short.

He can wear platform shoes on his nasty little feet.

[joyfool]

@Senegoid

Lots of hate in all that snark too.

I doubt many snarkers can separate the OP from his hateful attitude expressed here and previously all over the boards, hence really biting sarcasm in turn.

[Colibri]

@Senegoid

So much hate and anger in both of these threads.

Are you having the vapors?

[gigi]

@YogSothoth

Short men are not easy targets. They’re much smaller and harder to hit

Right, they can bob around like those old Bozo dolls.

[Hector_St_Clare]

@DerekMichaels00

except women are the protected class from criticism, including fat women. “Protected classes” is a common feature of cultural marxism.

Cultural Marxism is a nonsense term, since one of the basic tenets of Marxism is that culture is epiphenomenon of economics.

You can be a Marxist and care about cultural issues (a lot of Marxists have had various things to say about sex, the family, gender, etc.), but when they do so, they aren’t doing “Marxism” per se.

[QuickSilver]

@faithfool

I doubt many snarkers can separate the OP from his hateful attitude expressed here and previously all over the boards, hence really biting sarcasm in turn.

We’ve tried. He seems impervious to facts, reason and logic.

[joyfool]

@Colibri

Are you having the vapors?

He seems to. He’s all over multiple threads, posting the same things about how awful men are treated. Or something. It seems he has a right bee in his bonnet over the ladies. Poor lad.

@QuickSilver

We’ve tried. He seems impervious to facts, reason and logic.

True, but I doubt anyone lets that detract from their fun.

[Jragon]

@DerekMichaels00

cultural marxism.

Ah, I see

[Velocity]

@ddsun

This would seem to indicate that you might also subscribe to a system of “sexual affirmative action” in relationships, although you are using “equality”. Interesting. Kind of makes me queasy, but interesting. The way the world is set up, what is preventing those people from approaching the person they desire to have coffee with, say, and asking for that time. If the dating scene is the rough equivalent of the interview process, aren’t most interested parties out there all of the time interacting with equal opportunity, if they choose to do so?

How would a more affirmative dating environment work? Do all women/men/people have to say yes to all men/women/people? (See, this is where the queasiness was creeping in.)

How exactly would you align politics with dating? Actually, I’m not entirely sure that I see your inconsistencies at all, but curious to how you think the system ought to work.

Yeah, it’s hard to say because dating and relationships is a very contradictory topic…it is just odd, sometimes.

Society often has this tendency to perpetuate a certain form of Social Darwinism in dating. Essentially, people who are attractive, gain confidence, which makes them even more attractive and successful in dating. And conversely, people who are unattractive, lose more confidence, which gets them rejected even more, and then sends them on a downward spiral.

It would be nice to see society stop doing that, as far as the *negative *spiral is concerned. If attractive people gain confidence, all the better for them. But the constant rejection of unattractive people has a tendency to destroy their confidence and set them up for a repeated cycle of failure, eventually making them all the more bitter and un-datable and makes it even harder for them.

Many people speak at length about a similar cycle of failure in poverty, education, social equality, etc. - for instance, that minorities may suffer prejudice, which makes them fail in school, which them makes it hard to get a job, which then sets them and their children up for more failure, and a downward spiral of failure and continued failure feeding on itself. A similar thing happens in dating and relationships - failure begets failure and success begets success.

What I was trying to say in my post was - many people flip-flop on their political philosophy when it comes to dating. People who get outraged over economic or societal or educational “have” and “have-nots” are somehow perfectly OK with a “have” vs. “have-nots” dynamic when it comes to dating and relationships, even though I would say that having a romantic partner and a good love life is for many people actually a basic human need. Conversely, some people who would argue for meritocracy anywhere else in politics or society and “let the best rise to the top on their merits” may be dismayed upon finding out that a meritocratic romance/dating system leaves *them *at the bottom.

I do think that it would be better for society to focus less on looks and more on character. But eventually some people who have been rejected repeatedly may begin to have a poisoned, bitter personality as well.

TL;DR; it’s complicated.