Do women really rule out average height men, or is it online talk?

[Uravinalaugh]

My younger step brother who is 19 [I am male btw], told me that women only want to date much taller men, he's roughly the same height as me, 5'7 [5'9 in thicker soled trainers lol], and is very introvert and hasn't had any dating experience, he has a few friends and I have noticed girls in the past being nice to him/liking him when I have seen him socializing. I was aware of this height bias which shows up quite a lot online and on social media, even here on mumsnet I have seen dating related threads where many women appear to be very dismissive of dating shorter men [used to nose sometimes using my OHs old account ,she didn't mind ahaha]

Because of this, I have been noticing often when I am out in public the heights of men to see if this is true, and it very clearly isn't. Last weekend I went to a well known seaside town for the day, due to the weather it was packed so millions of people and I would say literally the amount of couples of all ages where the man was average/slightly shorter than average height was the majority, it very clearly isn't the case that most women are not attracted to men below 6ft, 5ft10 or whatever. I myself have also never had a huge issue dating in the past, I never even knew I was particularly short until seeing this height related stuff online, and where women are concerned my height has never been mentioned

Was curious if this is only me that's noticed this, I think it could be more of a gen z thing than millenial and above? I'm not sure, but it definitely doesn't seem to match up with what I have seen with my own eyes in real life, have tried to reassure step bro that his height is fine, I think his parents have too, but don't seem to be able to convince him

I don't think height is important to the women I know but confidence is in terms of attraction. There seems to be plenty of online 'advice' suggesting women only fancy rich/tall/muscular men but this cannot be true in the same way that whilst men are only supposed to fancy size 8 bikini model types, they seem to marry a very broad range of shapes and sizes.

This old trope makes me laugh. My husband is maybe 5’6/7 (granted his chest is a 44 I think 🙄) and confident/can hold his own. We’ve been in situations several times where there’s been a confrontation and taller partners of friends/relatives have just stood there like gormless beanpoles whilst my husband got the guy to back off or whatever.

In male on male situations, height is not really a major factor in who will “win”, it’s more about whether they’ve got the skill and gumption to overpower their opponent and whether they can sufficiently convey that.

I don't think most people care

I suspect it's online retaliation for having our appearances constantly judged

I have dated men from 5'5" to 6'6"

Lots of women do like taller men. But you don't have time to date all the women in the world, so you may as well start by ignoring those women and dating women who like shorter men.

I once worked with a woman who was radiantly beautiful. Everyone in the big office was drawn to her. ALL the men wanted to date her. I worked on her team and lost count of the number of men who would corner me to ask if I knew was she seeing someone and what sort of things did she like doing. But she literally didn't even notice men over 5'6. She just preferred shorter men. I'm not sure she was even aware of it, but if she ever pointed out how sexy a man was, he was always short. And the men she dated were short and she ended up marrying a short man. I told DS about her to point out that she could have had any man on the planet but she chose shorter men.

Lots of the world's sexiest men are or were short - from Prince to Bruno Mars, Al Pacino to Tom Cruise. A friend of mine has a massive crush on Peter Dinklage and he's 4'5!

What really matters is confidence. Feeling chippy or worse, bitter, about women not liking short men is an absolute turn off. Deciding it doesn't matter is a real turn on. The big mistake is to decide in advance that 'All women' do or think or want certain things. Your teenage stepbrother hasn't met or asked all women or listened to their answers, so how would he know? He's likely basing this 'knowledge' on stuff he's read on the internet. But irl, things are more flexible.

I recommend putting your height on OLD, so you weed out girls who say they are disappointed if a man is shorter than them. And say you are happy to date shorter women or taller ones who aren't hung up on height. But focus more on your interests and things you'd like to do. You will get some matches. My DS is short and has no problem finding dates. He just goes out with women who care about other things than height.

When dating, being physically attracted to someone was important to me (among other qualities), and I don’t find short men attractive. I also don’t find fat men attractive, so I didn’t date them either. That doesn’t mean they weren’t great people, I just wasn’t interested in have a relationship with someone I wasn’t physically attracted to 🤷🏻‍♀️

On the flip side, there are plenty of men that don’t want to date tall women.

A wife of dh’s friend was telling us a story about when they were on safari in Kenya
They were in an open topped jeep . A lion came very close to the vehicle ( on her dh’s side) . He was terrified and scrambled over to his wife’s side leaving her at the ‘ mercy’ of the lion
The joke is that he is 6ft 3 , muscular and spends an inordinate amount of time in the gym .

I don't think anywhere near as many women filter for height as you seem to think, especially in the UK. The whole 'women filter out nice normal guys in favour of big alpha male types' thing is a bit of an incel trope, to be honest, and not really reflective of reality. None of the shorter men I know (which includes most of the men in my own family) have ever struggled to find women who want to date them.

However, women - and men - are perfectly entitled to choose what they think is attractive. I don't give a shit whether men are tall or not, personally, but there are certainly other things I would rule out because I simply don't find them attractive.

I agree, I think most people, men and women have a fairly inaccurate view of they're own height, I truly am 5'7 just, I checked this at my doctors last week on one of those height measurement tools, actually thought I was 5'6 so quite pleased to discover I was the sum total of one inch taller than I realised, that's the effect that height can have!

Same scenario as a few others.. At 5’2” I’m on the short side! My DP is a couple of inches taller than me, on paper not my type. I would have picked someone taller from an online profile but we met IRL and I absolutely find him attractive.

There was a thread recently asking with celeb you crushed on, judging by the eclectic mix on there it’s clear we all have very different taste

Also Tom Holland is engaged to Zendaya who is taller than him by a fair few inches

My DD is 5'7" and her new bf is about 5'10", I think. She has told me in confidence that she wishes he was slightly taller. But that's only because she's on the taller side.

I don't think it's ever held him back with dating though, because quite frankly, he's gorgeous looks-wise (I've only seen photos of him so far). DD is pretty choosy about whom she goes out with, and she wouldn't be bothering if he didn't have a great personality too. Surely most people would rather have an intelligent, good-looking man of average height than someone over 6 foot without the same positive qualities? You'd be setting yourself up for boredom and possible unhappiness.

Yes but being rich handsome and famous balance out the being shorter

I do think those considering being shorter now on a Mumsnet thread aren’t the people who have problems with their height. My nephew is 5 foot 4, he’s 21, and my daughter, aged 13, is 3 inches taller than him. It’s awful to be a shorter male; maybe the Mumsnet average age doesn’t consider it an issue, but it is a real thing! Especially for the younger generation. My husband is around 5 foot 8 and has had taller men take the mickey all his life!

5 foot 10 and he wishes he was taller says it all x

It’s not an either/or choice.

@mullers1977 It's DD who wishes he was a couple of inches taller, not him. It's only because she's 5' 7'' (she might be 5' 8", I'm not sure tbh!) though, so she's above average height for a woman.

I'm 5' 5'' and my DS is about 5' 10" now, he seems to tower over me :-). He's just started dating and seems to be doing OK.

I agree with you that being well below the average male height is a disadvantage, but so many other factors are important too.

@InterIgnis All I mean is that dating a 6' 2" crashing bore would be daft if you missed out on a wonderful relationship with someone else.

I know people do it though and then wonder why they're miserable a few years down the line.

Wuite surprised at the nearly or over 180cm number of women on here. Where are you all hiding irl! 😳

Men will always find something to take the piss out of though. My husband is short and has never had a problem getting a girlfriend including some real stunners (like myself of course 😘). I have two cousins over 6ft, one was relentlessly bullied in school for having buck teeth and the other is in his mid 30s and never had a girlfriend (not through want of trying).

Loads and loads of people have one or more traits that some people or typical beauty standards think are undesirable. Bald, too hairy, spotty, too fat, too thin etc etc very few people are perfect. There’s a foot for every sock and all that.

I don't understand the exaggerated appeal of tall men. At 5 ft 3 I don't want to hold their hand like a child with my arm in the air. Or have to properly look up to talk to them. It kills off some of the chemistry as it blocks the ability to have non deliberate eye contact and to read their face as much. 6ft is too tall (for me).

Exactly. As I said in many areas the average height of a young man is now just under 6’, and the average height of a young woman is 5’7” or 5’8”, unless they are from an ethnic minority background with genetics for small heights or have a medical condition stunting growth or have had malnutrition as a child (because a poor diet in childhood cuts 2” from growth on average).

So it’s not a surprise that many women want to find a man who is 6’ because this is basically pretty close to average unless any of the above factors apply: they’re just setting their filters at the average height, which isn’t that much of an unreasonable expectation! And if they are 5’8” (and don’t forget that because of the bell curve that means a large proportion of them will be 5’10” or 5’11” for example - this would actually be far more common than being 5’2” or 5’3” (again unless there’s an underlying reason they are short to do with genetic heritage/ poverty/ medical issues) - so it’s quite easy to explain why the majority of younger women might select 6’ as a minimum height when filtering in online dating.

The data (and this thread!) shows that there are exceptions of course (e.g. very short women who happen to have a preference for tall men, just as some men have a preference for short or tall women), but in general the fact of the matter is just that people of northern European heritage who have good childhood nutrition are generally quite tall.

The genetics are also interesting. Children’s heights usually average out somewhere between their parents’ heights. So because people are far more likely to select mates who are of a similar background, heritage, and have similar physical characteristics to them (as well as selecting based on personal preference and personality) the effect of this over time is to concentrate genetic traits like height (and others! Such as intelligence), so tall people are more likely to procreate together, meaning heights gradually rise at a population level (although this is masked by smaller people also being more likely to procreate together as well, the exception cases where someone very short has children with someone very tall also add to average height rising overall because the resulting children will be most likely to have children of average of above height…).

Fascinating topic. But as I said yesterday, I think in terms of the problem about getting dates (if there is one) is an issue about how online dating works and the necessity to filter, and being asked to effectively describe all kinds of characteristics of the ideal person you would be looking for. We all know that chemistry and real life doesn’t work that way, but an artificial matching system can’t account for that or filter on that basis, and if it treats a “wish list” as absolute red lines then it will produce unfortunate results where what could be good matches don’t happen. I’m sure many people using it realise this, even if not immediately, and adjust their filters accordingly so they aren’t ruling out people on the basis of factors that are less essential to them, of which you’d expect height to be one for the vast majority of people are it’s not the most essential quality for a good relationship!

But I’m sure it does make many shorter men annoyed. Perhaps in time the systems will become more nuanced with people being able to rate how important different characteristics are to them and the algorithyms be a bit less rigid. Or, ideally, the cesspit of online dating will be abandoned (it seems many are already disillusioned with it, for understandable reasons!) and people will move back towards more of a norm of meeting people naturally, in person. I guess this particular issue is more of a problem between the disaparity between how someone might be perceived online/ via a list of criteria, and in person. However, as PPs have pointed out, it’s not like men do not filter women by “shallow” physical characteristics! And also, apparently, it’s very common for them to set their age preferences up to 20 years younger than they are and to exclude any women their own age, which is pretty gross.

Yes, I agree. My husband also had the piss taken out of him, and he ended up with me, a great career, and a good life. However, he’s delighted that my son is a bit taller than him (5 foot 10), and someone in the thread mentioned her daughter’s 5-foot 10 boyfriend would like to be taller. I think times have changed, and it’s now a big deal to be shorter; it’s seen as a masculinity trait. Meanwhile, buck teeth can be fixed quickly, easily, and relatively cheaply, and aren’t considered unmasculine!