October 20, 2011

Height! What is it good for?

Over at GNXP Discover, Razib Khan asks about selection for height genes.

I’m a little over 6’4″, and I find being tall pretty useless other than for seeing over other spectators at golf tournaments.  Personally, I think genes for height exist in part to fool other people into thinking you are from a wealthy family. We’re used to people using nurture to try to fool other people about their nature, but I think this is the mirror image: this is genes trying to fool others into assuming you have rich relations. The main advantage to being tall was that other people figured you must come from a well-to-do family, which has many Darwinian benefits. 

Height used to be a good clue to how well fed you were as a child. For example, the Tory cabinet that Prime Minister Salisbury formed in 1895 averaged six feet in height, maybe five inches higher than the British national male average at the time. This difference of a couple of standard deviations reflected in part how much better fed and how much healthier aristocrats were than the masses, but fortunately that indicator is becoming less meaningful.

63 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll bet if you were 5'4, your wife would not have married you.

DCThrowback said...

Gladwell mentioned in Blink that 33% of Fortune 500 CEOs are taller than 6'2" even though only 6% of the population (or something like that) is that tall. Of course, height doesn't correlate to IQ at all, so I guess the idea that being tall confers some type of status on people.

While getting my MBA, were forced to read Carly Fiorina's autobiography. Early in her career, she came up in the managerial culture of Lucent. She had a term for the empty suits that looked like great managers but were completely devoid of talent - she called them 42 Longs. That's the only thing memorable thing I took away from her book.

Anonymous said...

Steve, Write a letter to the editor. They'll never print it but it'll make a great blog post:

LA Times-- Obama says his gray hair is from genes, not pressure

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-nightline-20111019,0,5311988.story

Steve Sailer said...

"42 Longs"

That's a good one.

Another County said...

DCThrowback, there is a slight correlation between height and intelligence. From the wikipedia entry on height and intelligence:

...Correlation coefficients in developing children are typically about 0.2, meaning that variation in height explains about 4% of the variation in IQ. [9][10] A large study conducted on Norwegian soldiers the correlation between height and general ability was .15,[11] (meaning it predicts 2.25% of intelligence). The effect appears to hold into the extremes of stature,[12] but may decrease with age.[13]

The correlation between the two factors is therefore weak, although statistically significant....


... As brain size correlates 0.40 with IQ,[17] height/IQ correlation could be merely a side product of taller people having larger heads and thus larger brains..

Anonymous said...

Girls like taller guys. That was simple!

Anonymous said...

1901-1911: 27 presidential elections were held in the USA.

21: Taller candidate received more popular votes
4:Shorter candidate received more popular votes
2: Candidates of same height.

Thus, the shorter candidate only receives more votes ~15% of the time. Two of the four instances of this involved only the marginally-taller winning (e.g., a 6'0-er beating a 5'11-er). The two appreciably-shorter candidates to win the popular-vote were Carter (5'9) over Ford (6'0); and Bush-Jr. (5'11) over Kerry (6'4). [Src].

Anonymous said...

How tall's John Thain? He seems dwarfed a bit by Paulson who is, admittedly, tall (6'1" at least)

as said...

I am girl, and you are dead wrong about the uselessness of height.

Height is very attractive in a man. I love men with that rangy physique. Long legs are also attractive in a man.

Anonymous said...

I did not expect Morgan Freeman to record at 6 ft 2 which would land him squarely between Will Smith and Muhammad Ali; many of his roles downplayed such physical stature... Still well upward of AA male avg but not commensurate with frequent depiction as God. I think Larry "Laurence" Fishburne punches above his weight for a black authority figure

rob said...

The main advantage of height is that women really really like it. Why do women like it, who knows. Certainly its pretty hard to fake. Must be said, men are impressed by tall more often than not. Someone promoted the 42 Longs, and by and large it wasn't women back then.

On that, I'm interested in the consequences of women taking over HR. We know women discriminate against pretty women and in favor of attractive men, but does it have any real impact.

Anonymous said...

Height is very attractive in a man.

Well, I want you to know then that I'm fully 6' -1". Which means that not only am I plenty tall enough, I'm also good at math.

Catperson said...

Height is extremely important. Look at Neanderthals. They were bigger, stronger, more muscular and arguably smarter than modern humans, but arguably because we were taller, we completely obliterated them. Evolution is progressive (trial and error) and over time things get better and better. I think there was a tradeoff between the short muscular apemen of old and the tall skinny nerds that killed them off. Tall skinny men are superior to short muscular men because being tall is much less metabolically expensive than being muscular yet more advantageous because height gives reach in fighting and speed and durability in walking and running away from or after opponents. Muscular men have more power but skinny men have more speed which creates more power and when combined with reach, which makes tall skinny men especially superior.

Because tall men are so superior, women have evolved to prefer tall men. Indeed studies show a man can be muscular, gorgeous, high status and brilliant, and women will dump for him the fat, ugly bald low status old guy because the latter is taller. Height is everything. Sperm banks won't even accept your sperm if you lack height.

Mark said...

You can always tell the short guys on the internet by the lengths to which they pontificate on the centrality of height in the female eye. Serious inferiority complexes. Kinda funny. I'd love to think it's true, given I'm pretty tall myself, but damn.

jaded said...

Height. It's all relative. 6'4 is freakish to some of us.

Also Sailer seems to have found the ONE woman in all the world who'd put up with him. We should be making donations to her!

Anonymous said...

I'm just a little taller than Steve (i.e. just a smidge under 6' 5"), and I've got mixed feelings about it. On the whole, I like it, and I'd never trade being this far above the mean for being and equal amount below it -- or even a bit below it, frankly, but height does have drawbacks once you pass a certain point.

The term '42 longs' is hilarious ; I'd not heard it before, but I think it's perfect. Men who are lean and about 6'2"-6'3" wear that size; to me, that's the perfect height for social impact. Tall enough to gain the obvious advantages, but not so tall as to attract undue attention, or to see physical skills suffer from lack of coordination.

Anonymous said...

It's my contention that height distribution amongst European is largely the legacy of distinct ethno-groups and its posession indicative of descent from these ethnogroups.
Germanic ancestry, in its strictest meaning, is one pole of origin of great height.You see the tallest nations are the Netherlands, Germany itself and the Scandinavian nations.
Another center of tallness, but with a different ethnic origin is around the former Yugoslavia, or ancient 'Illyria'. The Serbs are mostly big, and the Montenegrins the tallest people on Earth.

chris said...

Pros: A larger frame can hold more muscle, therefore stronger.

Heavier, therefore harder to lift/push around.

Reach advantage in fighting.

Harder for others to land knockout blows on you.

Cons: Larger energy/food requirements. (I'm told in the battle of Stalingrad, all the tall German soldiers died off as the soldiers were only given enough rations to sustain a 140 pound man.)

Loss of agility.

Slower acceleration due to longer limbs.

Higher centre of gravity.

Anonymous said...

Where do you sit in the movie theatre?

John Mansfield said...

At 5'11" I'm right around median for American men, which is a convenient place to be. For a couple years in Argentina, though, I got to be tall. I seemed to stand somewhere around 90% percentile for Argentine men. I liked it, but I also hit my head several times the first year before I adjusted to a nation built around a different median.

There was a 6'10" American I dealt with a bit in Argentina who later played three seasons with the NBA. That's a height that involves a lot of working around a world that wasn't built with you in mind, and even more so in Argentina.

DYork said...

Mark said...

You can always tell the short guys on the internet by the lengths to which they pontificate on the centrality of height in the female eye.


Or you could actually listen to what the women say. Granted that's difficult for most guys to do but women on average show a clear dating/mating preference for males who are taller than them.

Is there any doubt that most 5'8"+ women prefer men at least 5'8" tall.

So greater height in males could be a reproductive advantage.

Anonymous said...

Height in males is like a proxy measure of virility and health, which explains why women find tall guys more attractive than short guys.

I think Steve is kind of right. However, he kind of implies this preference for taller males is something recent and linked to wealth. It likely goes back millions of years and may have been sexually selected, just as less body hair was sexually selected for in females.

Let's face it: Height in males(and to a lesser extent in females) suggests dominance, assertiveness, masculinity and good genes; shortness suggests the opposite. This is why tall men are preferred, have more sexual partners on average and even have more children over their life time than short men. Large jaws in males suggests much the same thing as height(and which is why women with large jaws are usually not very feminine looking).

Height may be correlated to some degree with testosterone levels, with the study of the heights of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies mentioned above suggesting this. I remember another study done not too long ago in the U.S which showed that college graduates are on average 2 inches taller than those with only a high school education. I can't remember if they looked at both genders or if this was just comparing males.

Charlotte said...

I once worked with info from an archival project involving files from various U.S. coastal ports of entry, incl. Ellis Island. Dates: 1901-1915, and mostly for people who had been rejected. Fascinating. Stories of child molestors whose cases were still outstanding in Budapest; murders in Greek villages; frauds from China claiming they were the same person as entered a couple yrs earlier and then they had to answer questions about their home villages incl number of children in ea family. Physical details & oftn photos were in the files. Continental Europeans: 5'5" for the gents; ladies, esp . east/southern/Jewish) were in the 4'10', 150 lbs sort of range. A few had managed to struggle past the 5' mark. Still, they were short but they weren't so small. One doesn't get the impression that starvation was a big problem among immigrations since the Irish famine refugees of the 1840s.
Tallest: always Scandinavians & the British Isles, esp Scots. One would see a file where the man was 5'8" and think, "wow. He was tall." Six feet? Wow. A freak. Six ft two...after several hrs with those files, youd' think: circus tall man just stepped ashore.

Well, Some of the tallest though, were the French pimps. Yes, there was a whole section devoted to French ladies of the evening who settled in places like Butte, Montana (pictures not too pretty mostly; which I guess is why they went to such places. The Gigi types stayed put in Paris). The French pimps were uniformly towering at 5'11" or so. Their unusual height must have been part of the job description.

DYork said...

chris said...

Pros: A larger frame can hold more muscle, therefore stronger.


But larger frames require more protein/fats/carbs to build and maintain the muscle mass that can be more easily developed on a shorter more compact frame. Taller guys tend to be less "thick". At least excluding the mental definition of the term.

Heavier, therefore harder to lift/push around.

We're talking height. Short, thick stocky guys are generally harder to "push around".

Reach advantage in fighting.

It's not an advantage in fighting. Fast hands, strong grip and thicker arms and torso are often a greater advantage than longer arms.

Harder for others to land knockout blows on you.

No. It's easier to hit taller guys. More area to hit and more area they need to protect.

You are correct about the disadvantages. Which gets back to greater height being a reproductive advantage.

Anonymous said...

bitches love dat height

Jay said...

What would make you think there is "selection for height genes" any more than there is selection for shortness genes? Unless everyone is the same height, some will be taller than average and some will be shorter than average. That fact doesn't need an explanation.

Anonymous said...

I'm 6'4", and I've often wondered if height can lead to a certain complacency, because you don't have to hustle as much to get respect. It is like another version of being a rich kid -- rich in nutrients, that is.

Rainforest Giant said...

To paraphrase Chico Esquela, "Six, four has been bery, bery, good to me".

I looked like a young John Schneider in the seventies during the height of the Dukes of Hazzard. Life was good. Because I was tall and muscular and looked older, I got a lot of older women as well. Well, older as in twenties and thirties anyway when I was in my teens.

It also worked really well when I was a police officer. The legs meant I could catch anyone and the twenty years of martial arts meant I could handle them when I could catch them.

My best friend was five foot nothing a hundred and nothing and he got whooped on pretty regularly. Size matters.

Default User said...

Height and bulk (a large frame) are advantageous in male-male status competitions. It even shows in the phrases we use such as "look up to" and "head and shoulders above." While many things go into social dominance, height is a very important one.

The ideal is probably +1 but nor more than +2 standard deviations. Today in the United States that would be a height of 6 feet to 6'4". Bulk also counts, a skinny 6'4" carries less impact than a bulky 6 feet. That bulk does not need to be muscle, Chris Christie – whose height I do not know – may be a bit much, but his bulk adds to his forcefulness).

I assume the link between height and status has, as others have stated, to do with assumed health, vitality, and access to resources.

Kylie said...

"Height! What is it good for?"

Apparently, this was Putin's exact response when asked his height by reporters. He then stripped off his shirt and posed with some weaponry or large animal, to the audible admiration of all the women present.






Actually, no, he didn't. But gosh I had fun imagining him doing it.

Anonymous said...

You think being over 6'4" is pretty useless Mr. Sailer? You take your height (and all the hidden benefits it brings you) for granted, like people take their health (their ability to see or walk) for granted. Try going through life at 5'3" Mr. Sailer. And like a blind man or a person in a wheelchair, you'll soon see how wrong you are.

Carol said...

Actually I used to like guys who were the same height as me. Don't know why, it just happened that way. Usually they had more energy, were brighter and funnier, whereas the tall guys were rather duhhhh...as if they hadn't really had to try hard in their lives.

Ended up marrying tall, though. People seem impressed by that but it's all rather stupid IMO.

Anonymous said...

"42 Longs"

That's a good one.


I just call them dumb jocks.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't your explanation beg the question a bit, though, Steve? Why would the organism invest more nutrition into growing taller, as opposed to fatter or thicker or perhaps in some outlandish peacock-tail type of flourish.

If tallness really is selected for (and I think it is), then we ought to expect it confers some kind of advantage. My guess is that it's as simple as physical dominance. Among white guys, super-tall and skinny (Shawn Bradley) is really rare. Most tall white guys also are just heavy and generally very intimidating for, say, a 5'5" guy to fight.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Sailer would have a fiercer personality if he were short. Tall people tend to feel more complacent about their status in society. Just by standing around, they feel more powerful than everyone.

But look at shorter guys like Napoleon, Ross Perot, Tony Montana, James Cagney, etc. They had something to prove to people looking down on them.

Anonymous said...

Taller guys usually win elections.

Anonymous said...

Also: Height is not a big advantage in wrestling, which begins by rule with the combatants already tangled up.

But look at American football, which is very much a combat-simulation kind of game. Height is a huge advantage at almost every single position except running back and maybe cornerback (though the Seattle Seahawks might be starting a new trend... they are starting a 6'4" corner this year). We think of O-linemen and D-linemen as thick, fat guys. But they are also very tall these days, 6'5" to 6'7" along the O-line is not uncommon. QB's, LB's, TE's, and most obviously WR's all get big advantages from being tall. There must be something more going on than just signaling rich families.

neil craig said...

It does at least give you the potential of being able to beat up smaller people. In the Bible the Jews ask Elija to appoint a king for them and he says "See those guys coming down the road, the tall - thats your new king".

Ancient Celts had something similar - there was a fotprint carved into rock and the new king had to have a foot able to fill it. Tintagel castle Cornwall, alleged birthplace of Arthur has one.

Paul Mendez said...

If you ever fenced or boxed, you'd know a long reach is very important.

I'm guessing women find tall guys attractive because tall guys are better fighters. That translates into more resources and higher social ranking for their children, not to mention less likelihood of being carried off by the tall guys from some other tribe.

Anonymous said...

Razib Khan! What is he good for?

Anonymous said...

"I’m a little over 6’4″, and I find being tall pretty useless..."

People take everything they have for granted. I'm 5'6 1/2", and I've often wanted to be taller, especially when I was younger.

Whenever anyone makes a big deal out of being smart, he's usually not. Whenever anyone brags about his riches, he usually doesn't have them. If someone insists on boring others with long tales about his aristocratic ancestors, he most likely descends from a long line of bastards.

Everyone is bored with everything he has in the same way that Steve is bored with being tall.

Anonymous said...

What is interesting is that there is no correlation between height and leadership in the military, or height and success as an author, or height and success in the tech industry, or height and intelligence when you factor out the lowest heights (and so avoiding development issues). So if any industry has a correlation between height and success, it is a pretty sure bet that it is NOT meritocratic.

Sheila said...

The "average" height of the "American" man is considerably lower than before, but this has TPTB utterly perplexed (see various newspaper articles to which I'm too lazy to provide a link). Couldn't possibly be related to all the Asians and Mexicans who now call themselves Americans, or the "refrigerators" as my husband terms the Mexican mamas.

My husband is about average height (5'9" - had very tall father and very short mother), and so are our kids. This concerns me but not him. Since I'm fairly short myself, I only notice this when he's standing next to someone like Steve.

smead jolley said...

Steve, bordering my house is one of the few hyper-exclusive country clubs you haven't played on, The San Francisco Golf Club. This is old California money, as in Crocker-Huntington-Stanford. When I'm in my backyard I often notice that every golfer in a foursome is 6'3" or taller.

Fenris said...

Put succinctly height is good for combat at least the Dominance conflict Kind and therefore it is attractive to women. As former bouncer and long time martial artists this is simply obvious, as bouncer being big was huge advantage, I was one of the smaller bouncers at 6^2 200ish and more people chose to test me then the bigger bouncers it like lions mane it signals dominance. In martial arts weight and reach were huge advantages. You can also see this effect in team sports were the norm for size is almost allways well above the population norm, NFL players are 6^2 on average, nba 6^7, MLB 6^1, even soccer players are slightly taller then average at 5^11 with many of the best players over 6 feet. Sport is basically ritualized combat, a good big man bets a good small man inalmost any physical contest(except gymnastics). Women probably like height because of its association with combative ability.

Whiskey said...

Yes those tall skinny men from Spain just decimated the Filipinos under Lapu-Lapu. And of course the Romans were MUCH taller than the Gauls, and Britons, and Iberians, and Egyptians, and Greeks they conquered. Oh wait ...

Height is an advantage sometimes (nearly all women prefer a tall a guy as they can get) but not others (depending on the type of combat or work environment). Eskimo society was pretty violent, before European contact, and the men were not known for their height. The Philippines have always been ultra-violent, same as Indonesia, and the women there prefer tall men, yet height is not what they are known for. Mandarins are tall, fighting in Southern China has been compared to that in a phone booth, both are from the same basic genetic stock. Close in quarters fighting favors the small, as does horseback riding fighting (think about it) using the bow or lances in rapid motion. Nor were Neanderthals more intelligent -- their stone tools and the variety of them pale in comparison with modern humans.

The experience of the show on History Channel "Human Weapon" showed a big guy and a little guy. The Big guy did well in Pankration, Marine Corps Martial Arts, and particularly Savate, but had massive problems in Eskrima, Silat, and Muay Thai. There he was just a bigger target.

Where size and strength (generally not edged weapons) matter size is an advantage. Introduce edged weapons and it is a drawback, you're SLOWER (read: dead), lose energy quicker, are a bigger target. There was a demonstration on TV of medieval sword techniques, basically EVERYTHING in the sword (pommel, guard, hilt) was a weapon, a gloved hand could grab the unsharpened side and use it as a staff, even grab at the end and use the hilt to bonk guys on the helmet. A bigger guy has reach but can't move as fast, in the mud and muck and poor ground of Western Europe.

Steve Sailer said...

"fencing"

I did that once in gym class at Rice. I was matched up against a 5'7" friend. I just reached out and poked him with my sword, or whatever you call it, anytime I wanted, while he flailed helplessly. I thought it was a great sport and we should play it for the rest of the semester, but nobody else in the class shared my enthusiasm.

Le Sigh/Future PR said...

I just reached out and poked him with my sword, or whatever you call it, anytime I wanted, while he flailed helplessly.

Dispatches from the disturbing college years of Mr. Steve Sailer.

Anonymous said...

I'm 6'6" (~200 lbs. -- i.e., pretty thin) and have often wished I was shorter by a few inches. I get tired of people asking me, "How tall are you?" Makes me feel like a freak. There's a type of woman (oddly enough, often very petite women) who are attracted to me, but there's also a large proportion of women who would never date me -- I'm too far beyond the pale. The only advantage, as far as I can tell, is being able to see over a crowd.

Anonymous said...

"Actually, no, he didn't. But gosh I had fun imagining him doing it."

Especially the mink coat.

Catperson said...

A lot of the commenters are confusing height with size. Height is part of size, and most big guys are tall, but it's misleading to ascribe the disadvantages of being big to being tall. Over the last several million years there's been an evolutionary tradeoff between muscle and height as evolution has favored tall gracile men over short muscular men. Being tall is simply a more efficient way of being big because It's metabolically less expensive to be tall than it is to be muscular, and height doesn't slow you down physically the way muscles do. So while it's true that big guys in general are slower, tall skinny guys are very fast. They have the best of both worlds because they enjoy the speed and metabolic cheapness of a small guy but the reach of a big guy, plus their head is out of reach to shorter opponents. Short muscular men have the worst of both worlds because they have the slowness and metabolic expense of a big guy and the limited reach and exposed head of a small guy. This is probably a major reason Neanderthals went extinct.

Anonymous said...

But look at shorter guys like Napoleon

Napoleon was not short. A mistranslation lead to some history books reporting that he was 5'2". In reality, he was 5'6", average for a Western European man of his day.

Peter

Anonymous said...

Anon at 3:09: I know just what you mean. I commented earlier in the thread (I'm the guy just a bit taller than Steve, i.e. right around 6'5"), and I also tip the scales at about 200 lbs, although I'm looking to drop 5 or so at the moment.

I live in Hong Kong, where being this height is a bit of burden socially. I stand out for two reasons, height and race, so the stares (usually just from kids) and the occasional questions get tiresome. What really irks me is when people talk in Chinese about my height while standing right next to me, assuming I don't understand.

My wife is 5'3", and our height difference is sometimes the cause of looks and remarks, although less so now than when we started dating 20 years ago. We've learned to live with it, but again it gets on one's nerves at times.

One thing that's odd is that at my height and weight most Americans/other westerners consider me slim, even a bit skinny. But I get comments here from Chinese people suggesting that I'm 'big'; the preferred term is usually 'bulky'. This seems to be a function of the difference in common body shapes. People here really are much slimmer on average than in the USA.

Anonymous said...

One other comment (I'm Mr 6'5") about the effect of height on personality: I agree with several commenters that growing up tall can put the brakes on ambition. From sports (basketball) to social situations, to being constantly assumed by adults to be older than I really was, growing up tall frequently made me wish I could stand out less, fit in more, not always have to live up to expectations that seemed not to be put on my peers.

You can turn this around, of course, and say that I had lots of advantages conferred on me: fair enough. And now that I'm an adult, I agree the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

One lesson from this: the aggressive big man will really be prized, and for good reason, in sports especially, but also in other areas. If you listen to NBA commentators, for example, they're always harping on why this or that center or power forward isn't playing hard or mean enough. It's because they're so tall, stupid short commentators!

I remember reading once that Michael Jordan had one of the those classic late adolescent growth spurts, taking him from normal height to 6'6", or whatever he actually is. Growing up normal sized then shooting up late would be an advantage for most athletes: you'd be learning small player skills and developing an aggressive attitude, then be handed the height and size when you're more ready to take advantage of it.

Charlotte said...

I get tired of people asking me, "How tall are you?" Makes me feel like a freak. There's a type of woman (oddly enough, often very petite women) who are attracted to me, but there's also a large proportion of women who would never date me --"

Oh dear, you don't need feel like that. I don't think most women people think that. Only perusing the vital stats of 19th c. peasants make 6 ft. seem strange to yours truly. It was a joke to me how easily one's sense of the normal could be deranged.
Speaking of petite persons liking v. tall, my cousin is 6'9" (or 6'7", doesn't matter) & his wife of twenty some years is a 5 ft. tall Japanese lady.

Anonymous said...

Try being 5'7 like me and having never kissed a girl even at age 28.

Anonymous said...

Meh. For a female what it mostly means is that clothes don't fit.

Based on the fact that everything is about 4" too short (in the sleeves, at the waist, at the hemline...) I'm guessing the average woman in this country is 5'4".

On the other hand, things like cars and countertops fit just fine.

Anonymous said...

Hello 5'7'', 28 and never kissed a girl; speaking as a women and being around many adolescent girls- you need to shift your focus from you to HER. Make it your job to learn some interpersonal skills from some of the masters ( Carnegie I mean not the "game" of pickup artists) and a fair seasoning of Sailer's socio- biology on what make women really tick ( skill up your job/wages for one thing).

Then get out there get a life for yourself and include some targets - e.g: 1 new woman befriended for coffee each month.

I do read that the USA is more brutal for dating and that the war between the sexes is raging? Your height is only ONE part of your package - in Australia- I know of 4 married guys in my legal floor with that are not much taller than me 5'2''. MM

not a fan of dept. store heiresses said...

Was just watching the (poorly acted btw) 1st season of "Mad Men" and in the scene where the new girl and the breast-augmented one get taken out for lunch n' smokes one of the WASP guidos deploys "42 Long" in a different context but he wasn't too far off from the same meaning. I'd be shocked if Weiner ever read "Tough Choices" but there ya go, pp. 43-44

Anonymous said...

Well, speaking as a woman who is 6'1", seems like it's extra difficult for a woman my size to catch the eye of a tall man.

It also seems like it's mostly short men who like me... in fact, the guy I live with is only about 5'6" if you put him on the rack.

I've also met some really tiny women who won't look at a guy under 6'6". What the heck is that all about?

Have spoken with some shorter men in the 5'7" to 5'8" range (back when I was dating off the internet--bleah). They get pissed because all the women shorter than they are looking for guys three times their own size.

Dating sucks. If my current guy and I ever split, I'm simply gonna collect cats! LOL.

Anonymous said...

Steve, your comment reminds me of a great episode of 30 Rock, where Jon Hamm portrays a character who has gotten by on his looks all his life, but is completely ignorant that he lives his life in a bubble.

I've had to work extra hard in life as a 5'5" guy. My alpha is strong but only if I can get past the interview. My wife (5'10") has told me a couple of times that if she wasn't forced to work with me and see the kind of guy I am, she never would have gone out with me just based on height.

On this issue, you are mistaken. Love the blog; keep it up.

Anonymous said...

Well, lots of us Amazons wish that the petite women would pick on men closer to their own size. We'd like to feel "small" and protected too, at least once in a while!

Anonymous said...

"Well, lots of us Amazons wish that the petite women would pick on men closer to their own size. "

As luck would have it, guys our own size want leggy Amazons. Not to worry, any guy over a foot taller than me who wants to date me I call the FBI and report him as a potential pedophile. ;0)