Is concern about shorter men’s attractiveness mainly an online exaggeration? In my experience it is

[KJ311]

Have only quite recently found out about this, probably in about the last year or so, but after having a nose on other halfs mn account and seeing a few height related threads, nearly all featuring at least a few women being quite vocal about not finding shorter men attractive [definitely not all women but quite a few], as well as seeing a few other social media platforms featuring content relating to shorter men being undesirable, left me feeling very perplexed. For the record I am male, 33, 5'7'' [maybe hovering around 5'8'', haven't checked my height in a while but around 5 7/5 8]so not drastically short but definitely nowhere near what could be called tall, and have never once experienced "heightism" in my day to day life, I have been in 4 relationships over the years and have never struggled at all with dating, including during my teenage years when girls are usually at there most superficial, and no one has ever even mentioned my height. My current partner, soon to be mother of my first child is 5'3''.

Just recently when looking online I have seen literally tons of online articles and social media, as well as threads with comments [including on here!] basically painting the picture that if your a shorter man your pretty much going to struggle immensely with being found attractive, I'm sorry but this doesn't translate in any way to the real world, and is completely debunked by walking down any high street and witnessing literally millions of shorter men of all ages who are married or have girlfriends. To me it just seems to be one of those weird online things thats heavily exaggerated [not completely untrue but definitely exaggerated], just wondered if anyone else noticed the same?

I can't say I disagree with anything you said to be honest

My husband is shorter than me and I’m 5.9ish.

I would say I usually find a tall man attractive but I got to know my husband as a friend first and we ended up together- because he is decent sort and personality matched.

I still say I love a tall man with dark hair and blue eyes….ended up with a short arse brown eyes.

Im not the only one, at my daughters school year there was a few of us Mums with shorter husbands :) all of us though where tall women.

I don’t think it’s the preference as such, it’s often more the way it’s expressed.

preferring taller men is fine, obviously, but dismissing shorter men as less manly, less able, likely having an issue mean big they will be aggressive. I think that’s less fair.

it wouldn’t be fair to say that I don’t like fat women as they’re all likely to be grumpy from dieting and have chips on their shoulder about it. It would be fair to say I preferred slim women.

I'm 5.7 and would never date a man shorter than me. I just don't find it attractive. When I was doing OLD, several times I turned up to a date to find the man was my height or shorter despite having claimed to be 5 10 or above.

It annoyed me because it starts the relationship off with a lie.

My current partner is 6 foot. That's just right for me.

@KJ311 “the fact that I have managed to be so successful for a long time in being able to have relationships [having to make that sound like I'm blowing my trumpet there], has given me enough confidence to have self belief.”

In your first post, you did say “My current partner, soon to be mother of my first child is 5'3''.”

It sounds like you’re not planning on her being your final partner!

I also think taller/bigger women face parallel issues. Being seen as unfeminine and discounted for that

I would never admit in public but I do find ‘short’ men ‘less manly’ if they are shorter than me.

I'm only 5Ft7 myself and accept that people have personal preferences,I think the issue with online dating and wider dating is some men get hung up on being short,moan about not being able to find dates,to a lot of women self pity is going to be an instant no as will be issues with self confidence.

Personally my height doesn't bother me and I'm not going to upset by someone elses personal preferences,I've dated short women,tall women,blonde women,black haired women it comes down to each person's own preference if we all liked the same things the world would be a boring place.

Height in a man is one of those nice to have's. But it's a long list and it's one of many and I don't think we expect when we fall in love our partner will hit all of them.

I am 5ft 9 and my husband is 5ft 7 so as you can imagine I don't consider it to be vitally important. I would probably have preferred him to be taller to fulfil social expectations maybe, but my attraction to him and who he was was immediate and strong. I wouldn't change his height now either, after 15 years of marriage that would feel very weird!

Online dating is a bit like mail order shopping though!Its a list of ideals really .If you met someone at a party you would get a feel of attraction, personality ,and so on.Online you are just window shopping for an ideal.Many men are shorter 5ft 9 or less with only about 12 to 15 % coming in at 6ft or more .You are happy so dont worry about it!

I agree with you that it’s exaggerated.

I think it’s true that a large proportion of women would rather not be with a man who is shorter than them, and this is obviously trickier for taller women as the pool of men taller than them is smaller. I have a few very tall nieces- one of them is 6’ and she wouldn’t want a partner who is smaller than her so she is more picky about who she’ll date.

My OH is 5’8 ish which is fine- I’m 5’3. I have a friend who is 5’1 and her husband is the same height!

I suppose it’s a bit like the idea that all men want slim women with big boobs which doesn’t really appear to be the case as we can see that larger women and women with smaller boobs are easily able to attract partners.

Yes they are.
Short Man Syndrome.

We're getting glimpses of this - albeit in a very polite way- from the OP calling women's sexual preferences 'ridiculous'. That's a value judgement.

What the f* is it to him?

Why is he even concerned with dating sites right now? His 'current' partner is pregnant.

Also, why would I as a woman know what other women are putting on their profile preferences?

Surely it would be better to ask a site that consists of mostly men.

I'm 5'10 and I've dated two men who were 5'5 at most. They were extremely funny and gorgeous.

Everyone has their own preferences, but I think this is one of those things that doesn’t matter if it’s the right person. I’m not that tall and my preference would be for a man to be taller than me (but not necessarily tall), but if he was the right one for me it wouldn’t bother me if he was the same height or shorter.

I agree with you!

I get the impression the OP is planning to trade in his ‘current’ partner at some point!

Yep.
Why bother to start a thread like this otherwise?

It's not that being on the shortish side is always a turn-off in a man but in my opinion asking and fussing about it most definitely is.

Yes, it’s weird that he has a partner and a baby on the way but he is posting about this!

Doesn’t bother me at all. It never crossed my mind in my dating days, though that was in the days before apps when we actually had to talk to people before going on a date with them. For context, only 15% of men are 6’+ and by the law of averages half of them will be arseholes, so it’s a very small pool for women who want a tall man, and the tall men probably won’t want most of those women. The average height of a man is 5’9” so 5’7” is pretty close and not something most women would think about much.

I guess it could be similar to men supposedly preferring big boobs. For most men it’s a ‘nice to have’ rather than essential. And the ones who consider it essential are a bit weird and creepy.

I’d take a man with solid mental health and a good sense of humour over an extra few inches any day of the year.

I’m sure some women are attracted to taller men and that’s fine. I think you’re referring to an issue with online dating. You don’t get to know anyone you get a photo and whatever information they put, height possibly being one of them. So it’s very easy to say no to someone if they don’t meet that requirement. You’d need to be very shallow indeed to get to know someone, think you’re a good match but be like yeah but I wanted a man at least 6 feet tall.

I think this is just that apps in particular have gamified dating.

Well yes if the other option was a humourless tall man with mental health issues who wouldn't?
Unfortunately a lot of short men (under 5ft 6 say) do have issues with it.
It's not all about being attractive to women, either, it's having other men tower over them.
They don't like it.

Obviously women have no issue with women who are taller than them.
Well I certainly don't. And most other women are taller than me but that's men for you.

My husband is 5 ft 7 and has never had issues. My son is 5 ft 5 and did get teased at school for being tiny but now has a gorgeous girlfriend. I think it’s an Instagram thing.

There is no filter for that and other female attributes on dating sites though. Probably because if there were (as well as female outrage) there would be barely any people matching each other !

I think the filters need to be more informative - so people actually understand the reduction in the dating pool they produce.

For example, I am sure if a lot of women realised that selecting 6ft and over only decreases their number of matches by such a huge amount, some might be tempted to lower the filter to something a couple of inches smaller.

I would implement a HTML slider that allows you to select the high and shows the total number of potential partners you will be matched with as a result of the selection. And for other parameters like distance as well. So people can really see the effect of their choices and the probability it will lead to them finding someone to have a successful relationship with, which is surely the whole point of going on a dating site.

The problem with filters are that they encourage people to enter what they want, as opposed to what they are prepared to accept.

Ah ok, @GasPanic, I somehow missed that you can actually filter for it on OLD- I had thought people were talking about folks just writing it in their bio or whatever. Luckily for me, I was coupled up long before OLD existed so had to navigate it. I assume men can also filter women for height in the same way? (I realise most probably aren’t too bothered, although shorter men might not want a taller girlfriend).

Your ideas re sliders on the websites sounds very sensible.

Probably also because men aren't that selective in who they message. They may talk to/treat women differently based on how desirable they find them but are more likely to treat initial contact as a numbers game. Whereas women don't want to be messaging 100 people. They would rather make initial contact with say 10.
As a result your "slider idea" isnt likely to work the way you think because it assumes women are operating like men and want to "bag" as many as possible in the early stages. But showing how efficiently different selections will reduce the choice is actually an incentive not a disincentive for lots of women. That's why women set quite high resteictions on their choices in th first place. It's not because they don't want to date men under 6 foot a lot of the time. It's because they don't want to message 1000 men and then have to sort through 700 dick picks. Better to narrow it down to 10 and only deal with 7 creepy responses.

That's before you factor in that most dating sites contain vastly more men than women precisely because most women don't see them as a valid way to find someone. So you get a pool of increasingly bitter men angry that no-one will give them a chance as the pool of "available" women shrinks and shrinks. I don't think there is an easy technical fix for dating apps. They are just crap in different ways for men and women.