I always hear women wanting to date men over 6 feet (that’s 1.8 meters, for the enlightened among us), so I’ve internalized that there is at least some kind of consensus or norm that men aren’t tall unless they’re over 6’ tall. But I don’t know whether men have a height preference for women, or that they would only date women who are X feet or shorter, for example.
I’m like you, average height for a man, but tall for a woman.
I moved somewhere that women are generally much taller and larger, so it has been nice being among “giants” like this - I feel like I just no longer exist in a social context where I am perceived as tall anymore 😄
but I still feel insecure about it - I wish I were much smaller all around
So obviously this is studying primarily cishet men/women, but broadly speaking, cishet women prefer taller men more strongly than cishet men prefer shorter women, by a factor of roughly 2.625x.
The ‘women prefer their men taller’ thing is not just… a thing people say, it is a pretty broadly and strongly held preference.
So thats means that a 5’ 10" average guy will tend to be well satisfied with a 5’ 7" woman’s height, but she will tend to not be well satisfied with the man’s height, with herself on average, ideally/maximally, looking for a 6’ 3" man.
Even if it was a 5’ 10" man and a somewhat shorter than average 5’ 3" woman, she’d still tend to ideally/maximally prefer a 5’ 11" man, on average.
The … magnitude of the strength of the preference for a taller man, held by a woman, probably does vary from place to place, because average heights vary from place to place, cultures are different, etc, but there is empirical backing to the idea that women very much prefer taller men.
I encourage you to actually read through the study and look at the figures, if you want more info, snd there may be other similar studies I’ve not yet found.
thank you for sharing this and summarizing the findings … as a taller woman, I just think it wouldn’t be realistic to require a man to be taller, I mean it would be nice (I want to feel like a woman, and I’ve been socialized to feel that being smaller than my partner helps me feel more like a woman, etc.).
That said, I think romantically I can find short guys attractive, and I don’t seem to have any real barrier in terms of feeling attracted to men who are shorter, even if theoretically a taller & larger guy than me would be nice.
In short, I find it easy to relate to the desire to have a taller guy, but I don’t relate well to the insistence that a man must be taller - I think I care a lot more about a man’s behavior than his salary or height.
Some of this might also be due to my lack of self-esteem, and tracks my willingness to settle in general. I also don’t think I’m considered particularly attractive - I get mixed feedback in public, but I know that I’m not particularly conventionally attractive based on how I’m treated (people don’t tend to pay attention to me, etc.).
Occasionally men will check me out, but I don’t think this means much.
I went on a bit of a random rabbit hole to end up in this thread, and well basically I am autistic and love data dumping lol.
My … second highest voted comment on lemmy is, oddly enough, a kind of similar data dump about a sinilar topic, I basically just copy pasted the relevant partss, editied it a bit.
It was… commentary on a pic of… a very tall, 6’9" woman… I think a Scandanavian Olympic athlete or something? Contrasted with a 5’4" dude… whom I dubbed ‘short king’.
Anyway, yeah, I get what you mean, that its… relatable, but isn’t something you hold to be super important, personally.
I tried to use a balance between … statistically precise language, to not say something that it technically untrue, or not actually present in the study, but… also be generally readable.
The stats deal with means, averages, trends… there will always be variance, and, probably just that you are on lemmy means you cared enough to find the platform, which probably means you are more thoughtful than most.
I of course completely agree that such things as a person’s actual personality and their financial situation are more important when considering a long term, monogamous partner… but, not everybody is actually looking for that.
… often people have absolutely no idea what they are looking for, lol.
It… does sound like you do have some self-esteem issues, which is… not fun.
I’ve been there, but in a different way, as well, I’m a guy, so… not the same set of social rules/guidelines for judgement, expectations.
I can tell you that if you just straight up said ‘You don’t need to be super tall, I’m just looking for a decent person’, on a profile or on a first date or something, well at this point, so many dudes are used to the 6 foot tall 6 figure salary thing just being ‘the bare minimum’, and most guys do tend to assume (for broadly statistically valid reasons), that tall women are just de facto out of their league… that you would seem immensely reasonable.
But… there’s of course more to self-esteem than… your ability to attract a mate, feel desired, etc.
Something that helps me with self-esteem is basically just trying to do something that will be good for myself in the long run, no matter how small, but try to do something like that every day… and then tell yourself that you are proud of yourseld for being responsible, defining yourself.
Maybe that’s a bit of regular excercise, maybe its developing some skill or working on a project, maybe its learning how to make some meal you normally buy… yourself, at home, maybe its just setting aside some savings or double checking your budget.
To a certain extent, its ‘fuck other people, actually’… most people these days are just lying to themselves or others about how awesome they are, in some way.
Thats not real self-esteem, thats projection to mask insecurity.
So you’re further along than that, if you actually just… know how you really feel about yourself, and can be honest with yourself about it.
I may be rambling at this point, but what I am trying to say is:
Be your own source of self confidence. Define your own sense of what being a good or accomplished person is, and take realistic, actionable, small steps toward that. Cut out of your life people who are constantly judging you and pressuring you for things that are ultimately superficial. Always remember that social media is usually, 99% of the time, people trying (and quite often lying) their hardest to convince you how awesome they are.
I can’t promise that that’ll all make you some kind of supermodel heartthrob, but I can say that it has a decent chance of resulting in you being able to just feel ok or even good about the person you are and body you have.
I always hear women wanting to date men over 6 feet (that’s 1.8 meters, for the enlightened among us), so I’ve internalized that there is at least some kind of consensus or norm that men aren’t tall unless they’re over 6’ tall. But I don’t know whether men have a height preference for women, or that they would only date women who are X feet or shorter, for example.
I’m like you, average height for a man, but tall for a woman.
I moved somewhere that women are generally much taller and larger, so it has been nice being among “giants” like this - I feel like I just no longer exist in a social context where I am perceived as tall anymore 😄
but I still feel insecure about it - I wish I were much smaller all around
Kind of a necropost, but:
https://www.gigacalculator.com/calculators/height-percentile-calculator.php
Average global male height ~= 178 cm / 5’ 10"
Average global female height ~= 165 cm / 5’ 5"
Also:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886913000020
So obviously this is studying primarily cishet men/women, but broadly speaking, cishet women prefer taller men more strongly than cishet men prefer shorter women, by a factor of roughly 2.625x.
The ‘women prefer their men taller’ thing is not just… a thing people say, it is a pretty broadly and strongly held preference.
So thats means that a 5’ 10" average guy will tend to be well satisfied with a 5’ 7" woman’s height, but she will tend to not be well satisfied with the man’s height, with herself on average, ideally/maximally, looking for a 6’ 3" man.
Even if it was a 5’ 10" man and a somewhat shorter than average 5’ 3" woman, she’d still tend to ideally/maximally prefer a 5’ 11" man, on average.
The … magnitude of the strength of the preference for a taller man, held by a woman, probably does vary from place to place, because average heights vary from place to place, cultures are different, etc, but there is empirical backing to the idea that women very much prefer taller men.
I encourage you to actually read through the study and look at the figures, if you want more info, snd there may be other similar studies I’ve not yet found.
thank you for sharing this and summarizing the findings … as a taller woman, I just think it wouldn’t be realistic to require a man to be taller, I mean it would be nice (I want to feel like a woman, and I’ve been socialized to feel that being smaller than my partner helps me feel more like a woman, etc.).
That said, I think romantically I can find short guys attractive, and I don’t seem to have any real barrier in terms of feeling attracted to men who are shorter, even if theoretically a taller & larger guy than me would be nice.
In short, I find it easy to relate to the desire to have a taller guy, but I don’t relate well to the insistence that a man must be taller - I think I care a lot more about a man’s behavior than his salary or height.
Some of this might also be due to my lack of self-esteem, and tracks my willingness to settle in general. I also don’t think I’m considered particularly attractive - I get mixed feedback in public, but I know that I’m not particularly conventionally attractive based on how I’m treated (people don’t tend to pay attention to me, etc.).
Occasionally men will check me out, but I don’t think this means much.
Hey no prob!
I went on a bit of a random rabbit hole to end up in this thread, and well basically I am autistic and love data dumping lol.
My … second highest voted comment on lemmy is, oddly enough, a kind of similar data dump about a sinilar topic, I basically just copy pasted the relevant partss, editied it a bit.
It was… commentary on a pic of… a very tall, 6’9" woman… I think a Scandanavian Olympic athlete or something? Contrasted with a 5’4" dude… whom I dubbed ‘short king’.
Anyway, yeah, I get what you mean, that its… relatable, but isn’t something you hold to be super important, personally.
I tried to use a balance between … statistically precise language, to not say something that it technically untrue, or not actually present in the study, but… also be generally readable.
The stats deal with means, averages, trends… there will always be variance, and, probably just that you are on lemmy means you cared enough to find the platform, which probably means you are more thoughtful than most.
I of course completely agree that such things as a person’s actual personality and their financial situation are more important when considering a long term, monogamous partner… but, not everybody is actually looking for that.
… often people have absolutely no idea what they are looking for, lol.
It… does sound like you do have some self-esteem issues, which is… not fun.
I’ve been there, but in a different way, as well, I’m a guy, so… not the same set of social rules/guidelines for judgement, expectations.
I can tell you that if you just straight up said ‘You don’t need to be super tall, I’m just looking for a decent person’, on a profile or on a first date or something, well at this point, so many dudes are used to the 6 foot tall 6 figure salary thing just being ‘the bare minimum’, and most guys do tend to assume (for broadly statistically valid reasons), that tall women are just de facto out of their league… that you would seem immensely reasonable.
But… there’s of course more to self-esteem than… your ability to attract a mate, feel desired, etc.
Something that helps me with self-esteem is basically just trying to do something that will be good for myself in the long run, no matter how small, but try to do something like that every day… and then tell yourself that you are proud of yourseld for being responsible, defining yourself.
Maybe that’s a bit of regular excercise, maybe its developing some skill or working on a project, maybe its learning how to make some meal you normally buy… yourself, at home, maybe its just setting aside some savings or double checking your budget.
To a certain extent, its ‘fuck other people, actually’… most people these days are just lying to themselves or others about how awesome they are, in some way.
Thats not real self-esteem, thats projection to mask insecurity.
So you’re further along than that, if you actually just… know how you really feel about yourself, and can be honest with yourself about it.
I may be rambling at this point, but what I am trying to say is:
Be your own source of self confidence. Define your own sense of what being a good or accomplished person is, and take realistic, actionable, small steps toward that. Cut out of your life people who are constantly judging you and pressuring you for things that are ultimately superficial. Always remember that social media is usually, 99% of the time, people trying (and quite often lying) their hardest to convince you how awesome they are.
I can’t promise that that’ll all make you some kind of supermodel heartthrob, but I can say that it has a decent chance of resulting in you being able to just feel ok or even good about the person you are and body you have.
Average height differs by country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_country
oh interesting - the average height of a male in the US is 5 foot, 9 inches (175.3 cm) … I wonder if they have this breakdown by state in the US 🤔
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm