Limb lengthening surgery is becoming more popular
buzzfeednews.com
buzzfeednews.com
The problem is that it's still socially acceptable to see short stature as some objective faux-pas. There's really no difference between a person proudly declaring they only like "white" people and a person declaring they only like "tall" people. If the guy said "Don't be so sure of yourself, black man" maybe it would have been acceptable in the 1920s, but it surely isn't now, and the fact that we can't see that calling someone "short" derogatorily is the same form of prejudicial discrimination shows that we as a society still don't understand the root of racism and prejudice. It's wrong to deride a person based on skin color not because it hurts their feelings, but because our preconceived notions on their inferiority hold no objective basis in reality except those derived from our flawed social perceptions.
Maybe at one time short stature was a decent signal for childhood malnutrition, but in our modern society short stature is mostly a matter of genetics, and there aren't really downsides to short stature in modern life except socially derived ones. It used to be sexy to be fat, but as social perceptions caught up with the reality that calorie dense foods was actually abundant, we shifted our social preferences to fit bodies.
Different from skin colour, there's an evolutionary trait to height preference. Studies have shown that heterosexual women prefer partners taller than them. It's understandable this subconscious bias. And what seems like discrimination, it's just a natural product.
Similarly, men have always shown preference to larger breasts and hips, signs of fertility. We can't, even shouldn't, shut down our instincts due to politically correctness.
Of course we should. Relying on reasons that would have been acceptable to a caveman 10,000 years ago is no basis for modern society. We've beaten evolution. Modern science, medicine, and society means evolutionary pressures can be ignored - women with bigger breasts and hips aren't any more likely to have successful offspring now because women without those traits can go to Walmart for baby formula and a GP if their baby gets ill. Evolution has no bearing any more. Why keep using it as a reason?
No we haven't, and that's a good thing because a society made up of completely dysgenic people who need countless supplements and medical products just to stay alive would not be the utopia you're trying to paint it as.
You brought up oxygen reliance as a silly point but you're actually right. Humans relying on oxygen actually isn't that great, we can't go into space or underwater (without external support) and we get out of breath when exercising. A group of humans that evolved to not need oxygen at all would be a great genetic improvement.
I believe the main evolutionary advantage of your anaerobic humans is that they're imaginary, so they don't have tradeoffs, which definitely helps if you want to add features.
I think I'd prefer to be able to detect low O2 instead of instantly passing out; that'd probably be good enough.
It's an impossibility. Evolution is by definition something we can't escape.
> Modern science, medicine, and society means evolutionary pressures can be ignored
No. It means evolutionary pressure will increase and accelerate. Modern science will allow couples to genetically alter/select for best embryos. It will be a genetic arms race to produce the taller, faster, smarter, healthier, etc children.
The advances of modern science will do the exact opposite of what you are claiming. Take down syndrome. Genetic screening has all but eliminated the down syndrome trait from much of the advanced world.
People choosing which traits to optimize for isn't evolutionary pressure. Evolution is a very specific mechanism that optimizes through random mutation. Choosing what to optimize for, using science to continue 'undesirable' genetic traits, making people choose who to reproduce with by manipulating what's considered attractive through Pornhub and Instagram, etc are all ways humans are now a poat-evolution species.
The fact we happen to still pick the traits that evolution optimized for in the past is because this is something that's only happened very recently. We're only just starting to move past evolutionary pressure. We could select for anything through science and tech. The fact we'd probably go for things like height, intelligence, etc just means we're not being very imaginative. One day we might decide to push for smaller offspring so we can fit more of them on spaceships, or for children who can survive with less water because the climate is screwed, etc.
The outcome will be the same as evolution, eg optimizing for the survival of the species, but the mechanism that causes it will be very different and absolutely not evolution.
If anything, what you describe is intelligent design, just by humans instead of a god.
It sure is. Look up selection or selection pressure ( another name for evolutionary pressure ).
> Evolution is a very specific mechanism that optimizes through random mutation.
Random mutations are meaningless without selection pressure. It's the selection that drives evolution not random mutations. You could have evolution without any mutations - the environment could change which selects for certain existing traits.
> We could select for anything through science and tech.
Which is called evolution. You seem to have a misunderstanding of what evolution is. Evolution isn't only "natural selection". Artifical selection exists. For example, dogs evolved from wolves by human/artificial selection, not "natural" selection. Regardless, it is still evolution.
Obviously taller men are naturally superior to shorter men and so it's just natural that they make more money. /sarcasm
And saying men have always shown a preference for larger breasts is begging the question. There are plenty of studies out there showing that breast size preference is complicated -- bigger is not always better.
Some cultures prefer medium sized breasts (actually, most studies I found this is the preference).[1] Poorer men might prefer larger breasts and richer men might prefer smaller breasts [2][3] Or maybe sexist men prefer larger breasts [4]
I don't think we know why women have the breasts they have or if breast size actually is a meaningful signifier of reproductive fitness. Seems like evidence points that women get breast implants because of their own opinions of their body image and not because it's an actual reproductive advantage.[5]
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20862533/
[4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23412650/
[5] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-we-do-it/202001/...
Also I would like to add that not even all cultures like big asses. Some even find the practice of injecting cement into buttocks (to enlarge them) to be repulsive. Different cultures have different preferences. Heck, different cultures can even be sensitive to different colors in their eyes[1].
Once people open their eyes and broaden their minds they'll see that perceptions are extremely malleable.
Height didn't work out for the dinosaurs, and being small works great for the cockroach. There is no objective short == bad in reality.
[1] https://gondwana-collection.com/blog/how-do-namibian-himbas-...
Isn't this something we're watching evolve in real time? like right now? Cultures that didn't appreciate them now seem to be viewing them in a positive light.
Does this difference exist? I recall studies that showed that babies are afraid of people who look very different from them and their family members. As such I was under the impression that there was a genetic basis for discrimination of people based on some outward difference in appearance like skin colour that was due to people having an inherent distrust in the 'other.'
If that's the case it's not unreasonable to desire that society progress in a way that mitigate these biases against short people in the same way that we desire that society progresses in a way that mitigate biases against people of colour.
> Similarly, men have always shown preference to larger breasts and hips, signs of fertility. We can't, even shouldn't, shut down our instincts due to politically correctness.
What kinds of things that you feel are due to an instinctual bias to discriminate against short people, and why should we not attempt to shut down this discrimination? If your children were short and they felt like they were discriminated against for being that way, what sort of advice would you give them?
I get where you're coming from -- criticizing people for what they are, rather than for what they do, is exceedingly unfair -- but I can think of at least three important differences, chief among which are:
1. The shortness of men (barring outright dwarfism) has never been the object of widespread theories about their fundamental inferiority, nor have such theories been enshrined into widespread law.
2. Social institutions have never explicitly conspired to marginalize short men.
3. Redlining, lynching, the selling of persons into slavery, ghettos, etc. have no equivalent in the realm of height.
And to be frank, it's rather shocking that you would suggest otherwise. I don't doubt that you've been treated unfairly, and you are perfectly entitled to complain about it, but that doesn't require you to twist reality.
I understand your objection to drawing an equivalence between racial discrimination, but even if it isn’t as “bad” can’t it still recognized as a lesser form of bigotry?
Yes. In fact, that's exactly what I said.
It's also worth calling out the sheer madness of equating height discrimination to racism, and pretending not to see the problem.
Again, this is exactly what I am saying.
I am also saying that you go further, and engage in an intellectual slight-of-hand. This happens precisely when you say "there's really no difference [...]".
Yes there is. There are several, important differences that render irrelevant their belonging to the same category. Abraham Lincoln and Pol Pot both belong to the category of "heads of state", but it is laughably incorrect to claim that there are no differences between them. So too with your example.
That's the difference between anti-short and anti-Black, not the anti-ness itself.
I'd ask in what way the point you're trying to make is useful, either analytically or rhetorically. I don't see how it is offhand.
See Japan: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/12/national/scienc...
There's an increase in low birth rate babies (not due to malnutrition), probably due to increased survivability of smaller more frail babies. The fact that they grow up and lead healthy lives means that their society is indeed selecting for the survivability of smaller people.
Also, ruling out that kind of confounding -is- hard… as mostly practiced any measurement error in confounders reduces our ability to ‘control for’ them… but most epidemiology and all nutrition research just glosses over this.
you are forcing additional context where there is none.
You are arguing in bad faith, just like the OP.
In exactly the same way: Abraham Lincoln and Pol Pot are both heads of state, but it is incorrect to say there are no differences between them.
And on a related question, what is the essence of sexiness, and is attraction to the sexy wrong?
Can we keep discussion civil? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - "Assume good faith."
> There are several important differences,
Historically. But if the historical context of slavery did not exist, it would still be just as unacceptable to treat Black individuals differently.
In essence, historical context is largely irrelevant to whether an action is right or wrong. An action is right or wrong in itself (with respect to the contemporary common moral framework, (which may itself be influenced by history) etc.)
As such, treating Black individuals differently is not more or less wrong than treating short individuals differently.
>As such, treating Black individuals differently is not more or less wrong than treating short individuals differently.
Again, as I have mentioned repeatedly, we agree on this point. Where we disagree is in the assertion that there is "no difference" in effect, precisely because of the historical context.
It's amazing how circular the responses in this comment thread are getting. There appears to be disagreement on the surface, but in reality almost everyone is presenting a view which is at least compatible with each other's -- if not in direct agreement.
This is in essence why MLK said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, because injustice is all the same.
We don’t fight racism just because we owe black people. We fight it because it’s fundamentally wrong, and not because black people just happened to have suffered a lot.
EDIT: Also I should add that people are reading my comments automatically into the context of sexual preference, but I was talking more specifically about the general attitude that it's ok to deride people based on their genetic shortness. That being said, even if OK Cupid (Which is just a proxy for dating preference due to the specific nature of how it operates) showed that black woman were the least likely to get matched on OK Cupid doesn't mean it's ok to now make fun of them based on their skin color / cultural / racial background. Our perceptions about short people, black women, etc, are the results of social conditioning. Conditioned behavior will always lag the current reality. It is my belief that short stature does not hold the negative associations it once had, just as whatever was the reason for our preferences against black woman probably do not hold anymore.
We don't go around forcing people to start liking short people or black woman if they have not conditioned themselves to do so yet, but we also shouldn't be accepting adding fuel to the prejudicial fire.
Like you said though, that's less necessary in this day and age.
Thor could be 8ft tall and able to lift to a house. It won't save him from a drone swarm designed by a nerd at Lockheed.
I find women of a certain size and shape attractive. That doesn't mean I can't find other kinds of women attractive, but you're doing the argument a disservice if you don't think at least some of our preferences are innate.
See this article about an isolated tribe that has developed an ability to see shades of green other humans cannot: https://gondwana-collection.com/blog/how-do-namibian-himbas-...
Even if part of it is genetics, it shows even that is easily malleable therefore manipulatable for long term goals.
Your comment shows your hand on your prejudice, because you're still somewhat commenting from the viewpoint that tallness is still an inherent positive trait. That clearly didn't work out for the dinosaurs. I'm not saying the opposite is true (that shortness is an inherent positive trait), but I do believe we need to dispel our preconceived notions because they are very short-sighted.
Take solace in the fact that if you find yourself on HN, you're likely at least a few SD above the mean in this trait, so you don't have much to worry about. Furthermore, you can use this trait to understand the fickle nature of sexual attraction, and how to obtain whatever it is you're looking for in an efficient manner.
Muscularity is the strongest predictor of mating success for men.
A study on males aged 18 to 59 found that muscularity is significantly positively associated with the number of total sexual partners and partners in the last year.
Handgrip strength is correlated with self-assessed happiness, health, social confidence, overall physical attractiveness, and overall number of sexual partners.
Researchers recorded short videos of 157 different men. Next, they had a group of male viewers watch videos of the men and asked, “How likely is it that this man would win a physical fight with another man?” Then the researchers had a group of female viewers watch the same videos and asked, “How sexually attractive is this man?” Eighteen months later, the men in the videos completed a questionnaire asking about their sexual history of the previous 18 months. How tough a guy looked to men was a much stronger predictor of mating success than how attractive he looked to women.
In this study, researchers asked two different groups of women to look at photos of different men and rate how strong the men looked. Results showed that the rated strength of a male body accounts for 70 percent of the variance in attractiveness (this is a massive effect size). From the paper: “None of the women produced a preference for weaker men…in both samples, the strongest men were the most attractive, the weakest men were the least attractive.”
See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
See also https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2017...
Assuming that it is some innate quality that women are attracted to people taller than them is also flawed. What about homosexual woman? If they both prefer someone taller how does that work?
Is there a citation? I've heard only the rich were 'plump' in ancient times, though not that it was ever sexually desirable.
> What about homosexual woman? If they both prefer someone taller how does that work?
Nature doesn't always fit our intuition or first hypothesis. IIRC, gay men strongly prefer very fit men, yet they cannot procreate. That struck me as counterintuitive, though if the cause is genetic there could be a variety of factors leading to such genes.
One hypothesis is that gayness is from an evolutionary point of view "too much bisexuality". Similar to how one sickle cell gene is beneficial, but two is deleterious. According to this theory, evolution favors bisexuals, and sometimes produces gays as a side effect of that.
It's really hard to consider these things as "fatter" probably meant larger dowry (!), better survivability, healthier and by extension better for child-rearing. Whilst fatter in Western society now (anorexia, etc., aside) is almost certainly healthier, fitter for child-rearing and such.
Populations were lower and people moved around less, there was far less choice for mates.
But then choosing, rather than falling in love seems strange from where I am.
Contrast to today where it is easy to be fat, so therefore not hip to be round anymore. That means we’d see more fatter people than in the past because it is easy now.
It even have several health benefits. Except that in dating, women overwhelmingly prefer men over 6', and very small differences like 5'7 vs 5'9 double or triple the matches in online dating sites. If we are talking about 5'6 vs 6'0 the difference is ridiculous, like over 200X more matches. Women even divorce short men at double the rate of tall men. Those sites have years of very precise statistics that support this fact.
Basically this means that in modern dating, if you are short, you are very likely to die alone and this trend will only get worse in the future.
[1] https://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf table 5.5
Women filter on height the same way that men filter on weight & age. If you don't pass that first filter, it doesn't matter what your advantages are.
I always was the one that got the phone numbers, always.
These things matter across the board, not just in the top tier management positions. Each inch of height adds $789 of average yearly salary, which makes a huge difference between a 5ft5 in person compared to someone who is 6ft tall. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/entertainment/naija-fashion/2...
Is this actually true?
> if you are short, you are very likely to die alone
This also seems like nonsense.
And remember the point I think is nonsense is specifically, “women overwhelmingly prefer men over 6’”, not that height is the biggest determining factor for attractiveness in men.
It isn't obvious. I've personally never considered height as a qualifier. I've known folks that prefer someone taller than themselves but they wouldn't turn down a shorter man. The preference isn't going to make someone pass, but more akin to preferring dark hair over light hair. You see, preferences don't always add up to action and most folks I've known wouldn't pass on someone because of height.
But if you are only using information from dating apps, your information is going to be seriously skewed for everyone. I might not always care about height, but if you are giving me a list of attributes and I'm looking for casual sex - I'm probably going to choose depending on my whims at the time. Height can make some positions better or worse, after all.
It is also possible that men think height is more important because they think height is important, much like overly muscled comic characters are overly muscled to appeal to men.
I've experienced the "filter" issue with online dating, but my conclusions are entirely different.
I really don't mind it, in fact I appreciate it.
Anyone who would filter me out over something as shallow as height would undoubtedly be an extraordinarily poor match for me.
I prefer quality over quantity.
As to the "die alone" thing - that seems a bit grim.
I'm 46, since age 14 when I actively started dating the longest I've been single was for about 3 months after a bad break-up, and that was by choice.
Sure, when you don't have a height advantage you have to make it up in other ways - personality, fitness level, professional success, etc...
In general, I think my relatively modest stature has been a benefit to me. It forced me to be a better person, and to focus on qualities that matter, rather than superficial things.
I acknowledge that there's a difference and that it needs to be made up for in other ways.
Everyone has challenges. Tall people, minorities, gay people, short people, poor people, rich people... the list is endless.
We all have challenges.
We shouldn't measure ourselves by our challenges. We should measure ourselves by the effort we put in to overcome.
When I see a handicapped person climb a mountain, the thing I find extraordinary isn't the handicap, it's the phenomenal effort to transcend.
I don't have anything close to those problems. I'm just a bit vertically challenged.
I'll be double damned if I'm going to let that hold me back, or bemoan how unlucky I am because of it.
For an individual short guy, the quantitative info out there is only detrimental. At best, it's useless. They need a qualitative focus.
I'm punishing women who are rejecting me?
I honestly don't even know how to parse or think about that.
Are they entitled to date me, even though they've communicated a clear preference not to, and I'm somehow punishing them by not convincing them that, no I'm a really great guy, really...?
Or is it that I'm such a valuable gem that these helpless women who, through no fault of their own are deeply attracted to tall, dark and handsome, must be rescued from that to date me, short, old and bald - because ... ?
Honestly, I really don't get it.
Everything isn't a societal problem. Some people value certain physical characteristics. Those people tend to be a terrible match for me.
I'm happier with people who value my humor, personality and the way I treat them.
It's not any more complicated than that.
I know multiple tall, classically good looking men who, while they can can get dates, can not maintain them because they have zero relationship skills, and I know just as many short men who have a relationship whenever they want.
While height might be an early filter, it is by no means the only source of attraction. Men would do well to build the rest of their personalities to stand themselves out rather than complain about something they have no control over.
This social disqualification is the reason the truth remains hidden. I'm only 5'9 and have a family, but this was way before social networks and online dating. The world is different now.
>I know
Yes I know many data points that fall outside the curve too. But I'm talking about the curve.
> Yes I know many data points that fall outside the curve too. But I'm talking about the curve.
you respond with a data sample of 1.
I have no idea who is right - assuming country=US in any case, since most of the data and experiences are from there - but come on.
This is his claim. I call bullshit.
Each inch of height corresponds to about $25k of yearly income on the attractiveness scale. Do the math, are you still below average? Note that income isn't just what you earn, but what you can be expected to earn in the future, so even if you met a woman as a bright computer science student you would still expect to earn a lot of money.
Once you get serious, it’s the bigger filters you need to worry about IME.
My then new girlfriend’s friend asked me out of nowhere: “what’s a derivative?” And my answer was “investing or calculus?” Apparently that was a filter for my wife when she dated. She wanted smart men who weren’t just faking it, wouldn’t just start talking about things because they knew something about it, etc. Her and her friend had that simple question. I was basically the first guy to pass it. Hell, I even had some basic filters, like going on a road trip together. Eventually, got married, made babies, and travel around the world. I got lucky — met her semi-randomly on the beach through mutual friends. Neither one of us were looking for a relationship at the time.
</anecdata>
What a keeper! My wife randomly invoked Coase theorem the other day while we were chatting on our commute home. Coming up on ten years now. :)
Are you saying that he's missing out on lots of opportunities for self-improvement in the two minutes or less it took to write that comment? It's not wrong for people to complain about things that negatively affect them, and it's not mutually exclusive with trying to fix the problem. There is really no justification for the insistence that short men must not complain at all.
This is a remarkably unhealthy attitude, and callous to boot.
I'm 5'6, and after almost 15 years of dating sites to modern dating apps, I have indeed accepted that yes, I will very likely die alone. My therapist has even half-seriously suggested I try lying about my height, and qualms aside, from the studies I've read, any plausible-in-person exaggeration would gain me a couple of percentile points at most.
I would say be patient. I think as you grow older it becomes less important. And even if 80% of women have fairly strong height preferences I think a solid 20% have close to no preference or would care but are very short themselves.
But if you're still looking for things to try, I would recommend you get some activities (sports, hobbies) and meet people outside of a purely dating context. People's guards will be down and they'll be evaluating you on your other qualities rather than height in these contexts, and the extra time you spend with them is exactly what you need for them to overcome their prejudices.
But when I was in the dating market I wouldn't have been willing to date a racist anyway, so the question is moot.
How did that go for Rachel Dolezal?
You might have some luck over there :)
It's not a stretch for me to imagine that widespread lying by men about their hight has actually collectively made the problem worse for men, e.g. women insisting on 6 feet because they've dating 5'10" guys claiming to be 6" and decided that was the minimum.
And you know what, he was a bit weird looking. He had bad posture. But he was a good guy. A smart, hard working guy with a big heart.
This height thing is annoying. Id gladly trade inches of height in exchange for other inner character traits (courage, perseverance, conscientiousness). Intelligence I have to spare, but what good is it without character?
Even if someone asks me my height I probably just say 6'4' and leave it at that.
This is distinct from the practice teaching me a more upright posture, which it also did, this isn't subjective height, it's the kind you can measure at some gyms on the weight station in bare feet.
Edit: occurs to me this raises... certain questions! Nothing more biochemically interesting than creatine.
When I consider all the cheaters in online video games who do it solely to "subtly" pad their stats, it's not really that astonishing that widespread height cheating would be a thing too.
So…you are 6’1”?
Im a quarter inch shy of 6’2’’. So, indeed, 6’1’’.
My old man is 6’4’’ and when I was young he’d rib on me that I never got past 190 (we’re metric background). Now I don’t care much about height. At 70, he’s shrunk to my eye level and of all his traits height is the one Id rather not have inherited and gotten his monastic character instead.
You’ve discovered a new unit of measurement - the “dating inch”. Applicable not just to height.
That said it doesn't come up that often in my circle.
...should stick to dating insects, surely.
Being at the age where you shrink is also the age where many of the women you meet were formerly married. It is amazing how many of them have said that their former spouses were shorter to just taller than them and it bothered them the entire marriage. They say they will never make that compromise again.
Not surprising to see this sentiment from a group whose marriages all failed. I expect the biggest prediction of long term marriage success is the willingness to compromise on much bigger things than this.
But that means the local western women would get increased competition, so that will of course needs to be shamed and frowned upon, I don't understand how it's any less romantic than the shallow greedy american women and their 6 foot 6 figures standard.
Just stop using apps like Tinder, they attract the worst of the worst, by what I see, especially in the US. Even if you were above 6', you wouldn't want to date a woman obsessed with height.
In my group of friends, the shorter ones (around 1,73m) are the most successful ones.
Naturally.
Yay. I'm 5'8
He's the shorter one and he had the most success of all of us.
Ahem, that's almost exactly the average height for a male in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_countr...
My point is, it doesn't matter that much. It matters, sadly, but not to the point where you can't find women that are attracted to you.
It shouldn't need to be said, but Tinder is not representative of all human relationships.
Mode maybe, but not the mean.
Yes, and plenty of men likes obese women over 50 year old. But its a relatively low percentage.
Scott's problem is he's on social media (particularly Tik Tok) and apparently works or worked in a toxic environment.
Hang out with people IRL.
My additional accecdata: it's really, really not. Even for an individual, stated preferences are often not that true in practice.
There's a lot to say about how the structure and dynamics. of a tool guide how we use it, and that's very much at play here.
These same people acted FAR different in the outside world. I think the notion of a complete lack of scarcity leads our brains in this unachievable quest for perfection (based on nothing but a picture).
I'd say get off the platform, but you also have to go where the people are! I'm just glad I'm not dating anymore.
I'm average height and was married to a 5' 11" woman for a while. It always felt weird. It's much more comfortable for me to be with a woman who is a similar height, or a touch smaller, just for ergonomic reasons like how it feels when you hold hands or put your arms around each other.
I don't understand hot short women demanding tall guys as a kind of trophy. I know they can get them, because they are hot, but they'd be more comfortable with someone closer to their height.
I haven't asked if the concept of needing an even taller guy has ever occurred to her, but the even stranger one of either of us caring if she's wearing heels sure hasn't come up.
Also, I'll observe that the median Hispanic man in America is a hair under 5' 7" (66.7"), yet Hispanic couples account for almost a quarter of births in America. Just a data point!
Stop thinking about it and grow a pair. It pays off. I had a lot of anxiety too when I started dating. Just act like its not a issue and the right girl will too.
My wife's cousin’s 5’6’’ but Ive seen women go up to him and strike a conversation by the way he walks. Ive been in parties where he’s nailed every girl (including sisters and wives) in the room. Me? Nothing much, and Im 6’2’’
Ps I am from south East Asian country
Social taboos get established to keep the winners winning. Go find yourself a gold digger. It is fine. Maybe go date women in cultures where 5.6 is not too short. Hell, I'd say that a mail order bride (more likely an economic refugee who appreciates your wealth) is still better than dying alone. It is a brutally objectifying system and you have to play to your strengths.
Sure, there are social taboos around this. But when the system fails you, you have to look at alternatives outside. If you are too insecure about being THAT guy, then lie about till you start believing the lie.
Every non-abusive individual deserves an honest chance at pursuing a relationship. If the thought of dying alone is painful, then cheat the system.
All is fair in love and war. Haters be damned.
P.S: get out of the bay area / seattle. These places are dating deserts.
P.P.S: it is obviously advice for the the edge case. Only refer use it within the context of traditional options having died out.
Also, gold diggers are shitty people. You can't have a real relationship with one.
I can't blame the desperate people that volunteer to become mail order brides for thinking that screwing over some poor sap from a 1st world country is a lesser evil than them having to remain in poverty, but you'd have to be insane to marry one.
There's no way to cheat the system, if a person isn't genuinely attracted to you, whether its physically or otherwise, you have no chance of building a life with them that's going to make the two of you happy.
95% of women are not American. And only a very small percentage of those are gold diggers or mail order brides. The vast majority are just normal people with normal dreams of having a modest family.
If someone is 5’6 and having trouble meeting someone, they should consider if their own criteria are irrational.
I wasn't saying that all women are gold diggers or mail order brides. I was responding to a person saying that a short man struggling to find a long term relationship should look into those two options.
>It’s not beating the odds though.
I was mostly joking by this, although I have beaten the odds in other ways by being married to the same person for almost 20 years (at least by US standards).
>If someone is 5’6 and having trouble meeting someone, they should consider if their own criteria are irrational.
I agree.
the "system" isn't failing you, because there is no such thing as a system, and even if there is, this system isn't there to benefit you or ensure you don't remain maidenless.
> Every non-abusive individual deserves an honest chance at pursuing a relationship.
Yes, but it's only the chance is given to you, not the result. It's not like there are regulations preventing you from seeking a fruitful relationship.
Meeting any partner who isn't currently a US Citizen if you are is abusive? Meeting any partner who was born of lower economic status than you is abusive?
I'm an American man engaged to a foreign woman and am familiar with all of this - including negative stereotypes of cross-border relationships that in any other area (race, gender, orientation) would long since be considered deeply bigoted and unacceptable.
Darwinian evolutionary theory dont's say 'Survival of non-abusive individuals', it says 'Survival of the fittest'. Not having a relationship is evolution's way to kill your genes because they are not fit for reproduction, and that's why its so painful, because you instinctively know you are dying. That's why people do crazy painful dangerous things as enlarging their legs bones.
There are billions of women out there and they can't all marry the 6'6" quarterback because there are only so many of them in the universe. I find that people who claim that the mating game is irretrievably broken often have the idea that they are of a certain caliber and wont consider anyone beneath them.
This attitude is usually combined with a complete failure to understand their actual grade in the opposite sex' eyes, a negative attitude, and or inability to function in this arena.
Basically usually 5s and 6s who are convinced they are 8s and 9s who disdain women who are also 5s and 6s while projecting a negative dejected attitude. This might not be you but its like 90% of the people who project the same attitude.
Most of those are in other countries though, so you'd have to be willing to date internationally ("mail order brides"?) to meet them. And if you're American, a large number of foreigners may pretend to love you only to divorce you the moment they get a green card out of you.
There are in your own locality as a young person just as many eligible females as their are males. Odds for the woman actually get progressively worse every year as the population of eligible males decreases faster because young men die more frequently and exit the effective marriage pool from her perspective in other ways whether it is because they have non intention of looking for permanent attachment or because they prefer young women regardless of their age.
I don't really have any advice, but I really don't think your height is limiting you. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely harder than if you were six inches taller, but it's not that bad.
It's one factor of many that affects your overall attractiveness and many people don't care about it at all.
This is by no means "fine" seeing (1) finding a romantic partner is one of the most important determiners of mental health (2) youth today is going through a huge social isolation crisis. If you're short you're seen (not explicitly, but through statistical regression to the mean) as a lesser person.
I think it's absolutely crucial to understand this is not "fine" and compansate accordingly. This seems like the responsible truth to me.
My wife also happens to be shorter than me and she has never been on any dating site.
I heard that in NYC in US it’s similar.
When lacking height, you need to compensate by boosting other markers, that women latch on. Things like managerial position, luxurious housing, car, dressing etc.
It's as if we all go into it like ordering at a Burger King, except Have it your way (tm) comes out tasting like crap because we realize we aren't chefs. Online dating is how a bureaucrat decides to choose their life partner. The boxes you tick in online dating aren't important and are there just to pander to users.
You're being overly dramatic and don't have any to support your claim. It is not really necessary to date dozens of women before getting married.
Dating many women in the first place is only the norm in a few western countries.
Also, I believe the dating apps are mostly used for casual sex, so the statistics there are not really relevant in the end.
So try to play the long game. You might meet your special someone later in life, who knows. Meanwhile in the short term, whoever doesn't appreciate you for what you are, look at it kind of like "well fuck 'em anyway," like they just self-selected out of your filter. Regardless, I'm 100% certain you won't be helping anything by trying to trick people into liking you. And I'm about 80% sure you won't even get anywhere by trying earnestly to be whatever stupid thing they want or think they want, or that some cost-free process of entering profile info on an app encourages them to blithely and carelessly say they want (because why not?). This goes not just for being short but for any human trait you do or don't possess. (And the only reason I allow 20% of hope there is because there's a possibility that through concerted effort you might actually manage to improve yourself in some way. But it should be something that came from you, something you yourself want to strive for, not something to please some fickle asshole and make them like and approve of you.)
It's not about what they want. It's about who you are, and whoever is the "audience" for that, is who you should be focusing on. What does Slayer care about Ariana Grande fans? Maybe on some level they wish they had as many fans as she does, but I'm pretty sure they aren't out there trying to impress them or win them over by being more Ariana-Grande-like. (I don't even know if Slayer is still a band; I might be dating myself.)
Editing to further bloviate: Who is going to mate with all the short women of the world? Tall guys? No, they're mostly looking for tall girlfriends. But short women need love too, and the ones who aren't so shallow and lacking in logistical foresight as to demand someone two full feet taller than themselves, are out there. Just a thought.
One detail stuck out to me in this piece: The fact that this guy continues to read anti-short-people hate online, and still reflexively feels slighted, but then "remembers" that he got this surgery, kind of speaks to the fact that a big part of this is in his own head. Hear me out. I'm not suggesting people aren't being total douches about those of diminutive stature, because I've witnessed it and I'm quite sure they are. If someone is saying a sentence where if you put "black" let's say, in place of "short," there would be hell to pay, well then... there should be hell to pay. It's not right. At the same time, there is always evil shit out there being hurled at someone. Even tall white rich males. (Maybe especially them, lately.) Do you let that inside your head and make it your own thought that follows you around, day and night, far outside the reach of the douche who said it? It's difficult to practice the level of mental & emotional discipline it takes to cast such thoughts out, but it is an area where you have some degree of control over the situation.
What? Tall guys date short girls all the time.
200X more matches
Jokes aside, percieved attractiveness privilege is by far the most prominent form of discrimination in society today. (After wealth) Watching good.looking people coast through hard things purely because doors mysteriously open for them, is one of those things that you'd never believe it unless you see it.
Height is obviously the most prominent of those features among men. Sadly, it is tied to the most fundamental of social phenomenon (mating), and no amount of moralizing around it is going to change anything unless women change change their dating preferences. (Goes both ways, but women are generally the ones with hangups over height)
Men start off mostly worthless by default from a dating perspective, and gain attractiveness as they gain money and status. So, make money and gain prestige. Pretty-boys who peak in high school are the exception.
Women peak in physical attractiveness to men as soon as they mature. Emotional maturity plays a role in attractiveness, and that generally improves over time, so peak overall attractiveness for your average woman is probably in her 20s. So, ignore women in your 20s and make lots of money, and then, when you're 30 and rich, marry a 20-year old.
Lastly, fitness is a red queen's race, kind of like aging; time works against you, and the worse your body gets the harder it is to get fit (fitness protects against a lot of chronic problems that make exercise harder) so there's never a better time to get/stay fit than now.
TL:DR; I agree that everything you mentioned is inherently valuable and will also help you get women, so long as we don't forget money and competence!
* what you want and what women want out of a relationship are in many ways very different
* On a related note, what women find attractive is very different from what men find attractive.
* Do not project your ideas of what you are attracted to onto women's likes, especially when it comes to physical characteristics
* Confidence, presence, and humor will get you past 90% of the crowd
* Spend some effort on style and clothing. If you don't want to be stylish, then at least be unique.
* Recognize that women are also horny and want sex as much as men. The difference is the approach and the ritual around getting there. You'll need to understand what turns a women off during this "dance", e.g. being too explicit about it at the wrong time.
* Do not get so easily dejected by rejection. Build up a thick skin and laugh it off.
* Regularly inject yourself into conversations with women, and when you find a common interest, don't hesitate to take advantage of that and deepen the conversation and eventually schedule something with them.
* Understand what the signs are of someone who is attracted to you, e.g. playing with hair, teasing, other body language. Once these are noticable you can go in for a kiss or an invitation back home.
* Recognize that there are effectively infinite women out there, and each one is going to have different history that shaped their preferences, either an earlier boyfriend or crush or favored celebrity or whatever, and some percentage of them will have preferences that overlap with you and give you an advantage. Even if it's something you think is unattractive, not everyone agrees. So don't give up.
I am naturally a bit shy and reserved with women. I am also not very witty and humorous (except when drunk) and I have a historical record of nerdiness and introversion. Coupled with a short stature, it makes me lack in confidence (I got some rejections due to height in the past, but in no way I think height is a limiting factor. I believe being fit and confident can make wonders). I am in mid-twenties and I realised that I need to change this and I need to seriously work on it to live a normal life and find a partner.
Obviously it’s better to be taller because that opens up more options. But the preference women have is for you to be taller than she is not that you have to hit some absolute value of 6’.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/link-between-mens-height-divo...
The part about 200x the matches is both obviously pulled out of the air and grossly exaggerated. It looks like on average women tend to prefer men who are taller but not hugely different in height from themselves.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
If you are 5'6" you are most apt to be most attractive to women who are 5'4" or shorter which is helpfully 43% of women in the US.
You say you are very likely to die alone based entirely on a malarkey stat you pulled from thin air. You don't need hundreds of matches in a dating app to find one person you want to spend your life with. You need to instead cultivate qualities that would inspire ONE of many potentially worthwhile mates out there to make time with you and then work on enriching your life and relationship.
The problem with this fatalistic attitude is twofold. Firstly it spoils all hope of success to believe in yourself not one whit and second it holds that somehow MEN or at least yourself are rational whole mental and emotional creatures while somehow women are irrational animals who somehow cannot even see you. It's degrading to you and to hypothetical mates.
In which fantasy world that study was done? lets see.
mmm 2012, the year Tinder was created, so it was basically in a different era, but let's continue.
I see 'questionnaire based data' so it's self reported data! Of course you are going to report that you love 5'6' men. But you really don't. People say politically correct things, and then do a different thing, and this is specially true in dating. Look for studies based on Tinder or other recent online dating sites to have more accurate and real data.
This study is based on data about actual pairings (parents of recently born children in the UK). Nothing to do with "reported preferences".
Maybe in America. Plenty of countries where the average height is lower than what the article mentions. Not to mention that most European countries are "ahead" regarding respect than America.
This is why you shouldn't put height in your dating profile, so you filter out a bunch of superficial people.
Why would it only get worse? How do you know this? I'm puzzled by the certainty.
That said, women being callous and cruel in groups about height, fitness, etc is more congruent to locker room talk. You probably won't hear it because it's behind your back and usually not by people you know. I say that as having been witness to this kind of private talk before.
That thick skin is, IMHO, a trait that I think has become vastly underappreciated in our society.
Being made fun of and the source of jokes is never going to be solved by having “thick skin”. Shorter men will still be seen as lesser even if they don’t let it effect them mentally. End of the day - your material being will be markedly different than those with greater height regardless of how you respond to it. For some - this will be so severe that they will likely die alone due to it even though they themselves are not troubled by their height or the jokes people make about them. And honestly - letting it get to you might actually help.
Sometimes I wish I had been more insecure growing up because then I would’ve treated my acne and not had all the facial scarring. I almost didn’t get braces because I didn’t see the issue with my extremely British teeth. I wasn’t concerned about my attire (but I should have been!) because I didn’t think it mattered and I wasn’t concerned. Again - thick skin can actually be quite detrimental to your outcomes!
I don't recall any red-lining against short men, separate water fountains or schools for short men, short-men not being allowed to get married, etc. Also, remind me the next time the NYPD sets up some extremely questionable surveillance of short-men at northeastern universities or a presidential candidate adopts banning foreign short-men from the country as part of his campaign platform.
I've seen hypocrisy and cruelty from people of all backgrounds. But anecdotally, among the "socially conscious women" I've spent time around, this, which is one of three top comments on the article, is a common sentiment:
> This is a reminder that the patriarchy hurts everyone and men should be just as invested in destroying it as women.
Just as women benefit when society learns to accept and appreciate a wider variety of body types, so do men.
Brilliant. We're all in this together struggling to be generous to each other. There will always be tension between men and women and divergent gender roles will always exist, but things can be better than they are today.
There can be less of people of one gender or another demeaning others for physical characteristics, and more celebration of variety. I hope that more people can find it in themselves to accept when an olive branch is held out to them. This huge thread with hundreds of comments is a catalog of anguish showing how much potential there is for us to do better and be better — in daenz's formulation, being less of a "mean piece of shit" — for each other.
Calling it patriarchy is just another in the long stream insults to maleness that has become common, in the worst sense of the word common.
Thinking about this more, I think the far simpler explanation is "being a mean piece of shit hurts everyone" and it applies to pretty much any belief system and doesn't require a complete restructuring of society on the hopes that it'll prevent people from being mean.
Let me get this straight, so women abusing and being hostile to short men, is the men's fault? lol you logic is incredible sometimes.
Mate selection is not and should not be institutionalized which means that you are within your rights to discriminate on...anything. Your criteria may be based on "taste", past experiences or downright prejudice. It is inevitable that as you pick a mate, you discriminate.
You can't stop that nor should you. We can however openly discuss criteria that are unhealthy, perverted, make no sense...in an attempt to open people's minds. Not to control whom they can date, rather to open up possibilities. People may be missing out a lot by being needlessly restrictive.
As old man I might provide a shortcut. Cliche as it is, character stands the test of time. What is somebody like? Select for that, the rest is a bonus.
Not being attracted to short men and not wanting to reproduce with them is a personal thing. But going on record ridiculing them, saying bad things about them, mocking their height, that's not okay, and it's true that if it was done about their race it would be frowned upon, but seems to be acceptable for height.
I think that's a fair issue to bring up.
It also seems there might be real measurable pay-gaps, and that might need addressing as well.
I fully agree, and you can extend that to men being bald, and many other bodily aspects. I think in particular contexts it's fine to make the occasional joke but that's entirely different from making it a widespread thing.
For example, it's ridiculous to ask for an exact height. Height is a spectrum. By demanding 6" or taller, you can't seriously justify how somebody that is 5"9 is an absolute deal breaker.
Similarly, if you're not attracted to fat people, you could still consider somebody a little overweight. Weight is not a static quality.
You may be attracted to brunettes, but I would opt to see that as a preference, not a hard requirement.
My point is that "attractive enough" is a better strategy as all of these things are ultimately unimportant if the personality doesn't match.
This is true for lots of things. Being fast is better than being slow. Being smart is better than people simple. Being attractive is better than being ugly. Being fit is better than being fat. This isn't a happy realization but it's true and it's healthy to accept it.
The dimension along which all people are equal is a metaphysical or religious dimension, not an empirical one.
People can like whoever they want to like. Some people may only like those of a certain height, weight, race, class, and any other attribute you may want to think of, but it is not necessarily wrong. It is up to each individual to have the freedom to date whoever they wish.
You might be conflating this with the societal denigration of certain races or classes, which is surely bad because there really is no reason to denigrate them, but that is not the same as saying everyone must be attracted to those of any combination of the above such factors.
That's not racists at all, that's just a person's personal preference for what they find attractive, and it often can't be helped.
We develop our models of what we find attractive early in our development by what we are exposed to.
It scares me a little that you don't know this, yet feel confident enough in your knowledge to type out these words.
Is it racist if I only like blonds? No, but that does rule out more than a few races of people that can't naturally grow blond hair. You're allowed to have physical preferences for certain traits. What you shouldn't do though is treat people differently because they don't have those traits that you value.
What would be racist is if I said I only hire [insert race], or I only let [insert race] people rent my condo.
so back to your example - if you only liked blonds, and exclusively date them, then are you not treating other potential dates "differently" (in the sense that you do not date them or even give them as chance)?
I'm shifting all the way back on that one. Fat is fit. So I was talking to a girl, a model in fact, I was a model too, met a lot of models. I said I am going to want exactly the sort of woman I want, and no other, without any other man's judgment being taken into consideration at all.
So it's actually about white fat versus brown fat cells, apparently. Saturated or unsaturated, based on diet, to a lesser extent fat but to a greater extent sugars and especially toxins[1]. So without it women look ripped and bony. All the models I saw like that looked great on TV but terrible in real life, the models who didn't get work had that...that baby fat I guess you could call it. I got her to come around on the subject she was like, "yeah, a thin but not too thin and even layer of fat, it looks good!"
[1] Many but not all psychiatric compounds. All of them alter body fat, I think. Fluoride, for lots of reasons. So hard to escape that F'ing F atom. Then what other toxins...pesticides and especially fire-retardant.
No... if that were true then it would be OK to deride someone who was born with a deformed limb, because in that case the "inferiority" would really have an "objective basis in reality". They would be objectively inferior at certain tasks then someone without it. Does that make it ok to insult them?
Suggesting racism (or prejudice) is wrong simply because it's not objectively inferior is missing the point.
The actual answer, which I think you would have come to eventually, is that deride someone for an attribute they had no control over, is the essence of prejudice.
People do not chose to be born in a poor country, in an abusive family, black, French, short or handicap, these are simply the hands they were dealt.
There are a reasonable number of women on dating sites that like saying pretty horrible things about shorter guys in there profiles.
I don't know that it does much but I've always treated it as a bit of a red flag and swiped left.
I don't think there's anything wrong with say, being attracted to someone taller than yourself, but I don't understand feeling the need to public ridicule someone about a physical trait you aren't attracted to.
Stop trying to sanitise the world, that's why no one can live in it.
I'm about 5"8, and am actually really happy with my height - it's perfect for the types of sports I do, I fit quite nicely on an airplane, and have no problem if I were to drive a smaller car.
I imagine for taller people those things could be a hassle, that flying would be a real pain, that they might look silly on a motorbike / skateboard, and coule develop back problems from bending down.
When it comes to dating, online dating apps suck in general, but honestly I've never felt like I've missed out. People don't even seem to truly know what they find attractive until they have someone placed in front of them. I've even had this experience myself where I've found a super tall girl attractive when I'd typically go for the shorties.
It's sad that people feel the need to do these operations. Honestly, I feel they could achieve a better outcome (feeling confident / adequate) by doing some martial arts and hitting the gym.
As others have mentioned it also depends where you live. The only time I truly felt short was in Amsterdam where it felt like the local bars were packed full of giants lol. I Thailand and India I've had the opposite experience.
https://twitter.com/heightismxposed
Swap "short guy" for "Jew" in the quotations from those twits that have nothing to do with attraction:
> I feel sorta bad, but when short guys talk to me all I can think is "wow, what is this miniature dude even saying?"
> cute short guys are waste of space and life tbh
> I don't take short guys serious at all.
> Ugly, short men kill yourselves!
> I can't respect short guys especially if we're the same eye level, I feel like I can beat you up lol
> Men under 5 feet 9 arent really men.
> There's too many short guys in the world
Hopefully the problem is apparent. (The first quote I listed is by a man, AFAICT.)
For example against Putin.
(Doesn't matter what you think of Putin - slurs based on personal appearance are always wrong against anyone full stop.)
Aside from that, he punches up, politicians, celebreties and sometimes just random people, but always in playful manner. Hes quite fond of absurdist rants and comments, I find it thoroughly entertaining.
But I'm not convinced punching upward in this manner to the obscenely rich and powerful should be considered universally wrong. If Putin did not want to be so judged, he wouldn't put out all those pictures of himself shirtless posing with horses and dolphins. I think he in particular is fair game.
But more than that - if for example you abuse Lindsay Graham by calling him 'gay' - 'punching up' in your mind - then that does that say about what you think about other gay people that you think it's a criticism to call him gay?
What if you used racial slurs, but exclusively on brown multimillionaires?
(admittedly it's phrased better that way because it's more indirect, but now we're analyzing glib four-word jokes)
I mean if we're going to take this to its logical extreme, why should personality be fair judgement? Some people have grating personalities and are annoying to be around, maybe they were born that way. Actions? Maybe Putin genuinely believes that Nazis are oppressing Russians in Ukraine. If he did, would that make it excusable?
How about we just be nice to each other? That doesn't seem a tall ask. Don't make mean jokes about short people! But that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that this social phenomenon in language or make jokes that aren't mean.
I don't think so. Just don't mock someone's height, sexual-orientation, size-of-hands, etc. That's completely achievable.
> I mean if we're going to take this to its logical extreme
Well then don't take it to an extreme - do the easy bit and just stop yourself each time you're criticising someone for something that they very clearly can't control at all without resorting to surgery.
Let's waaay overanalyze this: Courage makes you taller does not mock anyone. It does however acknowledge heightism. It's not mean to say, therefore it's fair game and not "fucked up" the way that the joke about the garden gnome in the OP is. We can make jokes about guys with huge pornstar cocks without that being an insult to those who are less-endowed.
[1] Overanalyzing further: Size-of-hands is fair game, because 1) Trump's hands aren't actually particularly small, and 2) because Trump seems to be sensitive to the subject, it's a comment on his thin-skinned personality not his physical self. Also 3) Trump is a public figure and isn't entitled to the same level of politeness that a private person can expect.
Strong disagree.
There's a saying in English when someone needs to show bravery: "chin up".
What do you think it means, other than "stand straight and tall"?
Probably because Zelensky is a comedian does TV skits people understand as jokes about having a big enough penis to play the piano with, while Putin's T.V. appeareances are the same bravado without the satire?
(To be clear, this question applies to certain kinds of public figures and not the shy kid in the schoolyard)
I don't think most folks are against that.
On balance though, I think I agree with you.
According to the article, if you're in the US, that's an inch above average.
It's another thing if it becomes more a cultural expectation than an actual attraction, and I think the reaction would be rather different if enough men decided not to date women who don't have at least D cups.
Edited with context: The point is that men don't just prefer larger and larger breasts; there is a peak in preference for medium breast sizes[1]. But women do prefer as tall a man as they can get; there is no peak in male partner height preference among females.[2]
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3210352/ 2: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...
That doesn't seem to be what the study says:
> women are most satisfied when their partner was 21 cm taller
Same as with breasts there's a drop off at some point, it's just that in the case of height it's relative. And from personal experience, I have been rejected repeatedly for being too tall, as in the difference between myself and the prospective partner was deemed too high (~30cm or more). Beyond a point that height difference just highlights the shortness of the woman and women already have it harder when it comes to expectation of looks.
I think it's reasonably obvious by now that women historically had (and still do) a far higher pressure put on them when it comes to looks in general, just not very focused on height. This is how as a society we ended up having women wearing makeup almost as standard, dying or removing their hair, wearing pushup bras, or high heels (less related to height but rather relative position of the pelvis). And that's before the more invasive procedures like breast implants, botox, face lifts, or other surgeries.
My experiences in high school deeply affected my mental health.
But on the topic of hanging, just out of curiosity, I'd like to mention: I've been reading about the benefits of dead hangs for shoulder health, and I've seen a few comments from people who claim that dead hangs actually did make them taller. I wonder whether it's true.
That said, the benefits of good health, better confidence, etc. from strength training probably far outweigh any benefits from increased height.
Incidentally, A. T. Great is maybe evidence that this is a modern fixation, not something that's always been with us. It's fairly clear that he was unusually short, but there's little indication that anyone thought much of it; by contrast, the idea that Napoleon (who wasn't even short!) was short was a propaganda point for the UK.
You could just as easily go and find 20 tweets from 2014 of women saying they refuse to date black men. If you build your worldview by cherry picking the opinions of 20 twitter users out of 300 million and treating them as gospel then you can create any bleak reality you want.
They published a lot of very interesting anonymized stats back then.
Would you rather not know?
I imagine a lot of tech companies are holding on to some extremely volatile truths about society that they do not want becoming public.
I completely agree with you that's completely insane decision from the point of view of soulless corp that just wants to suck people dry.
I feel like I need to point out that nobody ever genocided millions of short guys based on their height. :-/
It's just really weird to me that some people get angry about being short (understandably so) but instead of just admitting that, they turn to some kind of universalist morality as a way of shifting the burden to others
-Steven Wright
Though I believe what is said is (most usually) more important than who said what, I think even they will tell you, regarding statements like these, to consider the source. Also, rock stars, actors and fighter pilots always had insane game, and the tall ones are an anomaly (though, last 20 years or so, there has been a notable increase in average height due to a handful of extremely tall actors getting roles).
Yes, I can do that for any statement and it has the same impact replace “people who are mean to me” with “Jews” in the sentence “I hate people who are mean to me”.
I don’t actually disagree with your content though.
EDIT: It may also be relevant that she was also at least 4 inches shorter than me, so there was no risk of me looking shorter than her, even if she had heels on.
Speaking from personal experience relationships cause a kind of brain damage where it is hard to notice both the stop signs and the green lights.
This must have just been a cruel strategic denigration.
I guess I appreciate the brutal honesty. Wealth and height. And not to forget social status, as one woman in the linked article explained how she broke up with a short guy because of what others (might) think of it.
Not a word is wasted on actual love. The stereotype that women barely ever date "below" them, in wealth, height, status, remains true. Your character still matters, but only after checking the above boxes. Men are selected by utility, with disastrous consequences for those that get left behind, as there's no mercy for them.
You can't explain the harsh "be 6' or keep moving" requirement or the open ridiculing of short men on evolutionary selection alone. It's a US-dominant cultural trend. In many other countries no woman would have such exact and absolute demands. It might be a soft unspoken preference at best. Making it a "do or die" requirement is cultural.
Similarly, wealth is not an evolutionary selector for the simple reason that wealth didn't exist until 10K years ago. You could make the point though that wealth is a representation of security, in an indirect way.
In any case, I just find it disturbing how superficial the matchmaking is. When you use a criteria, it's supposed to increase your chance of success, meaning a "happily ever after" story. None of these criteria do that. Beauty fades and none of us are beautiful in the morning. Wealth doesn't buy love. Height does absolutely nothing for a relationship. And yet women insist on it.
The female version is equally disturbing but different. I've never met or talked to a man that finds fake boobs, duck lips, botox, fake bums, fake tans, an inch of makeup in any remote way attractive, or a "selector". So the depressing reality is that women largely do this in a competition towards other women, and this perverted rat race knows many victims.
For the cynics that may think that I'm coping, I'm not. I'm 6"4 and in a loving long term relationship. That doesn't stop me from caring about the perverted mate selection dynamics of today that are downright cruel and throws good people aside as if trash.
If it was this cut-and-dry, 80% of American women would just be single at any given point in time, or they'd all be in polyamorous relationships, or dating their own gender. Only 20% of American men are 6'0".
I'm assuming that it's not this cut-and-dry, and that most American women are willing to date the other 80% of men.
We could just accept that as "the way it is", but modern developments in this dynamic create horrendous imbalances. There was an excellent article about it a while ago, but I don't have the link, so I'll try to reproduce the gist of it.
Assume the behavior that women select "above" them. Now add the trend where women are rapidly rising in their economic status. The logical outcome is that a growing number of women are basically selecting for a "super man", that are in very short supply. They need to be even more economically successful than before, and of course easy on the eyes and able to do male chores. And emotionally mature/advanced. And....and.....and....and.
This dynamic is often confirmed by research on dating sites where the vast majority of female attention goes to the "top" 10% of men, whilst everybody else is pretty much ignored. This in turn creates a counter-reaction where the ignored men basically just use a drag net, posting many low effort messages (any love is good love) that confirm to the women that those men are of a poor quality.
For sure, a lot of settlement and compromises will happen to match more than just 10%, but the point of the article was that the elevated criteria leaves behind an enormous group of men, in the US running into the millions.
These men might be low wage workers with average looks, and not much else going for them. This used to be enough, but it isn't anymore. They get no match. Ever. Many run into depression, start drinking, end up on the streets, kill themselves.
The reason I'm mentioning this is because it's worthy to know this, it's a fairly new development that few talk about. And I say it to highlight how cruel our society is towards men at the bottom. If as a man you don't make it on your own, there's zero empathy.
I'll be hated for saying it, but women play a decisive role in this dynamic. Whilst for sure they can date whoever they want, the stubborn refusal to even consider vast groups of men based on their wealth or height is inhumane. I find it particularly hypocritical in light of modern feminism where it's often expressed how household and childcare tasks should be more equally divided.
These men would be an ideal fit. They'd have the less important job, thus more ability to do it. I'm sure that amidst millions of such men, one can find a nice guy with reasonable looks.
But no. They're not even considered. I guess the point wasn't equality after all. The patriarchy is powered by women.
I find everything on that list extremely unattractive, minus that last one: what's wrong with makeup? If it's not used excessively, it can look attractive. (I often tend to prefer how people look without makeup or with only light makeup, but some who are very good at makeup sometimes look better with it, in my opinion.)
I think this means (hyperbolically) "makeup an inch thick".
or the women knows what men are after - which is naturally good looks, and using any and all methods to achieve that look. They are so successful that the men don't notice it is artificial.
So can you argue that it is the fault of men for wanting "natural beauty"? Or the fault of the women for trying?
Similarly, I think women don't do it in order to mislead men but because men just prefer it that way.
I wouldn't call it a lie if it's clearly visible to other people who invested the time to figure it out, like most women and some men.
To each their own though. I do like elegant makeup, it can definitely amplify natural beauty.
As a 5'5" Asian man (statistically one of the lowest rate of matches in online dating), I find it personally demeaning that you feel like you need to be morally outraged for me, because trust me, I sure as shit don't need it.
People are attracted to attractive people. That fact has been true for all of history. Not only do attractive people get more dates, they're more likely to rise to higher positions in business and society, and earn more money. Height is only one factor in attractiveness. Are you going to be morally outraged about attractive people next? Are you going to shake your hand at the sky and ask "what about love?!?" next time you see two tall attractive people on a date?
Also, citation needed on your claim that height selection is US-only. My anecdotal experience is that foreign-born women also have height preferences.
Your assertion on female plastic surgery is equally ridiculous, and dare I say, downright ignorant. No, you haven't met a man who is attracted to plastic surgery, but you've definitely met men attracted to the results of plastic surgery. You've also probably met hundreds of women who have done some form of plastic surgery, you just haven't noticed because it's tastefully done. I'd dare claim the ridiculous plastic surgery is the exception, not the rule. Your idea that women do this to compete against other women in a broken society, and not because men are attracted to certain features, is laughable.
Yes people are attracted to attractive people, but people can also do things to make themselves more attractive. I personally go to the gym, try to wear fashionable clothes, and groom myself. Are you going to gasp in shock and "but you shouldn't have to do that because of love!!!" Note that this is not a cynical take. I would say "the world is going to hell because some women put '6 foot only' on Tinder and get plastic surgery" is more cynical.
Get off your high horse. You discredit us all.
I come from a country where 6 ft.+ is considered pretty tall so I totally believe that this type of metric is not universal. In fact, there is no real analogue there and I have never heard of a female mentioning a specific height as a preference.
It was a total culture shock to me how big of a deal your height as a number is in parts of the US culture which frankly I find vacuous and sickening.
I mainly blame this on the toxic culture on the "dating" apps. (Also perhaps the imperial measurement system? lol). I guess those who knowingly participate in it have accepted the terms of use.
"a 2006 study on online dating found that a man who is 5'6'' needs an additional $175,000 to be as desirable as a man who is approximately 6' tall and only makes $62,500 a year."
How exactly does this work in modern dating? See, when I was dating, I've not once had a woman ask me about my net worth or income. Never. You'll eventually find out, but not during the dating phase. A complete taboo and red flag to bring it up. One could only guess, or decipher it from somebody's job.
Is it now normalized to throw around these numbers in online dating? You fill it out on a profile and people filter for it? Please tell me that's not true. Culture shock indeed.
And those inches are quite expensive. A 175K extra for 4 inches. Takes a lot to build that wealth, after which you're supposed to hand it over to a woman that trades a lack of height for wealth. Quite a prize.
If you had bothered to read my post with care, you'd perhaps noticed the nuance where I said height can be a soft unspoken preference, which indeed is widespread.
I objected specifically against this preference becoming a rock hard criteria at some weird absolute point, say 6". That is a societal trend. It's culture, not biology. It's the hardening of a criteria that has led to the guy in the article being so desperate to do a ridiculously dangerous, painful and expensive surgery to "grow" a few inches. If you think it's normal that society sorts people into attractive or unattractive based on 4 inches, I don't know what to say to you.
As for the citation you requested, I come from the land featuring the tallest men in the world: the Netherlands. My 6"4 means absolutely nothing here. There's tons of people towering an additional head above me.
Even in this perfect shopping mall for women as it comes to height, I've never once heard a single woman turn it into a hard demand. There's plenty of short men here too, several of my friends are, they're all doing fine in dating. So no, it's not a thing here from my anecdotal experience. Preferences may still exist, but not in the sickening way where you completely filter out people based on such superficial and useless "quality".
I don't think I said that the world is falling apart, that escalation is on you. In all your rage you're missing the forest for the trees.
But do double down on your superficial attractiveness. You might get a foot in the door, after which true selection begins. Good luck, young one.
The grandparent poster clearly said "fake boobs, duck lips, botox, fake bums, fake tans, an inch of makeup", so they're clearly not talking about women who did any sort of "tasteful" (to use your word) surgery, natural tanning or regular makeup.
That's been true for eternity. Men are attracted by youth and beauty, women by height and wealth. Is everyone in this thread an orphan raised by disney/media. Nobody had mothers, sisters, aunts, female cousins, friends, etc?
> That doesn't stop me from caring about the perverted mate selection dynamics of today that are downright cruel and throws good people aside as if trash.
Nobody gets thrown aside. Women may prefer tall/wealthy and men may prefer young/beautiful, but at the end of the day, everyone settles. Most short and/or poor men marry as do older and/or ugly women. Everybody wants to date the hot cheerleader but everybody can't. So they just accept reality and date someone else instead.
Hang on homie. There are some boob jobs that are AMAZING. Not the California two oranges taped to a rake style, but that’s not everything out there.
Off the top of my head (with only the tiniest bit of shame because she is drop dead gorgeous), Kirara Asuka has an amazing/best boob job. And if you can look at her and not find her attractive, you’re probably lying almost certainly lying.
And while talking about plastic surgery and unwelcome societal preferences, look up the percentage of Asian people that get blepharoplasty in some form. It’s nuts. So imagine your eye lids being added to the list of things to fret over.
Tall women face exactly the same issue as short men. HN is overwhelmingly made, though, and has failed to make that connection.
i highly doubt so. Tall women might face _some_ discrimination from men who don't want a partner taller than him, but those men don't deride tall women at all. And i think a tall women stand a better chance at initiating a date with a shorter man, than the reverse.
That’s the problem. Online dating is a shitshow.
For every 1 match a man gets, the average women gets somewhere around 150 matches*. You simply can’t evaluate on anything but looks and basic surface-level traits (how each person responds to 3 random prompts).
How many short men interact with women regularly in-person and still have trouble getting dates?
* Seriously, google it. The ratio of accounts is around 10 men per woman, but lots of men swipe everyone and some men buy unlimited swipes, which is how it’s this bad. The average man gets something like 4 matches per week, while the average woman gets hundreds.
My cousin had this procedure done almost 30 years ago, but she was pathologically small, at a height which makes it hard to function.
At the end of the day, these are elective surgeries too frequently used as an attempt to mask a pathological low self esteem.
While I agree that it’s probably not worth it for the operation, multiple studies have shown that heigh is an important factor in mate selection (and I believe there’s a consensus on it), so using the word insecurity, which refers to a mental problem, diverts thinking of alternative solutions (like better fitness) to a bad direction.
Y’know what’s funny too? I’ve never once met someone who both admired big noses and chose to increase the size of their own. I guess that’s society for you…
What most commenters talk about here is a nuance in why person decides to have a surgery, though.
[1] - https://www.floridacosmeticsurgerycenter.com/services/plasti...
Perhaps some nose jobs end up closer to the hair dyes and teeth straightening end of the spectrum, but I can't help but see a clear distinction when you start cutting flesh and breaking bone.
Also, I've seen short (and bald!) people have amazing dating lives. The key is that they're confident, funny, and actually care about the people they interact with. It's so easy to blame something like height so one don't have to improve who they are on the inside.
It’s the one bit of advice I’ll make sure to pass on.
Are you just looking to be offended?
And no for what it’s worth… short people do not run, jump, or fight the same. We could play an anecdote game all day where you find the best historical examples, and i counter them, but let’s not. There are things that make us different, be ok with that, because you sure as hell can’t change it.
Several years ago, there was a guy on Twitter, "heightism" or something, who just re-tweeted crappy things women tweeted about "short guys," much of it in a vein like "ugh, why do they even exist?" I think he got banned but probably resurfaced.
It doesn't matter what people profess under duress, but with whom they go home.
I really don't understand people who deny that women have a very strong bias for height.
I also don't understand people who object to this surgery. There is nothing wrong with women who have an innate attraction for tall men, and there is nothing wrong with men who want to be attractive to those women.
That is just the reality of the world. Don't hate the players - hate the game.
I did a lot of personal development work over a period of 10+ years. At some point, dating got a lot easier. I went from being single most of the time to usually in a relationship. I got married at 41, which was a bit late, but we all move at our own pace.
My little sister is married to a guy who is maybe 5'5" (and I think that's generous). She is 5', and is nearly as tall as him in heels. He's nice and treats her well. She dated a bunch of guys over 6', and likes him the best by far.
This is not to say that tall guys don't have an advantage. I'm sure they do. But fortunately there are a lot of things other than height that also make a difference.
The problem most dudes could be having, but don't, because they let BS stop them. Instead we could all be messing up here :)
Not that working on oneself isn’t good for so many reasons.
Also, anybody making short jokes is a jerk and should be shamed. Anyone calling 5'7" short has some problems of their own to sort out.
This guy runs an OnlyFans where he gets paid to dominate other men. He psychologically wants to be taller because he doesn’t feel like his (completely unremarkable) height is appropriately dominating.
>Scott first heard about the procedure when he was in high school. He watched a few YouTube clips about it but dismissed it at the time. “I was like, ‘That’s sick, I would never do that.” But he kept researching, and about three years ago, he became convinced it was the solution he was looking for. “I felt miserable,” he said. “There were things throughout my day, every day, that would bother me. I felt attacked or unfairly criticized due to my height.” Then he had a revelation: “When I realized what was really holding me back was the obstacle of money, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just a game. If I can get $75,000, then I’m done feeling like this.’”
>The goal gave him clarity. “I was not waking up and crying every day in my mask, walking around the neighborhood. Instead, it became ‘OK, I just have to get on my grind and figure out how to get the money.’” So Scott, who is bi, got to work and, in February 2021, started an OnlyFans page. Within a few months on the platform, he zeroed in on a niche: financial domination, a form of humiliation kink where clients pay him to degrade them and take their money. By January 2022, by supplementing his OnlyFans earnings with some of his savings and a small loan, he had enough to pay for the procedure.
Ehhh... I think it's pretty clear we're dealing with kind of a complicated anecdote here where it's not clear which ways the causality is flowing. It's more like a karmic diffraction pattern than something so linear as cause and effect.
The biggest issue I have with limb lengthening surgery is that it's expensive and likely to lead to a lifetime of pain and, lets be real, if you DO become genetically successful you're going to have your son be in the same position of subjecting himself to a lifetime of pain to be sexually successful.
I guess my only advise is the controversial view that you should do nothing and shrug your shoulders at the arbitrary nature of the world. Maybe buy some heel lifts and wear them to your job interviews. Putin does it and it doesn't require you to experience a lifetime of pain. Lie about your height on the internet too.
That's my point. If you're 25th percentile in height, you don't have an actual height problem. Treat the depression.
I was insecure about balding in my 20's, but buzz cutting my hair solved that. I got teased about the buzz cut at work for a few days, but it was simply well intended humor due to folk noticing the change.
So, by "hundreds" they mean definitely less than a thousand people. Presumably much less, or else they'd have "almost a thousand". But in any case, they really have no idea how many people are undergoing this surgery, or how much it has changed over time, because nobody has any hard numbers. Not a strong basis for a headline.
I am not trying to trivialize the anxiety or social stigma short men face, but the phrase but "becoming more popular" in this headline is such a weak, almsost meaningless statement that I wish they would have crafted a less click-baity headline.
People like what they like. You can't force girls to like short men or ugly men or poor men or <insert whatever> here.
I'm speaking as 5'3" Asian man living in Western country where the majority are taller than me.
Hear me out, in my country there's this dude who's tall, relatively good looking. Married someone who's not only short, but lack of 4 limbs, and not good looking (actually people said she's ugly). They are living happily.
There's also a tall white girl who met this dude who's brown skinned, ugly, short, and only work as a poor fisherman. They got married, to the point that the white girl converted into his religion (Islam). Of course, the dude got mocked like crazy. They are living happily.
There are many fish in the sea. There are many examples of girls who date/marry shorter/uglier guys and not just for money. There are also things you can work on to compensate your height.
Or just don't think about height at all. You do you. Eventually you'll find someone with your charisma.
If you are worried about your height that much, even me as a man find it cringy and pathetic.
This is the part where it often broke down during the fuss about "incels" a few years back. When the girls are there, suddenly the guy has a set of harsh standards that she doesn't meet. It's a supermodel at 5'11" in heels or no deal.
However, as someone who is barely 5'7", I have never found there to be a lot of joking or something about it or anything really in my face.
I know it has affected me. But I also don't really feel inferior in any way. Compared to human males overall I am fairly close to average in height.
But really my self-worth is based on things like integrity and problem solving ability. So if I don't trigger a mating instinct in a lot of females that's too bad, but I don't actually feel like a lesser person or something.
I actually believe that within a few hundred years unaugmented biological humans are going to be mainly irrelevant. Things will be run by AIs/robots with far superior intellects and capabilities, along with some cyborgs (maybe).
In fact, I believe that the human form will become passé among intelligent agents.
I remember in my teens/early 20s - before dating apps were a thing - having several much shorter friends than me that were much more popular with the ladies.
I have the impression that this is mostly a problem among younger people. The "only men over 6 inches" that people report seeing on Tinder feels almost like a meme that women are taking too seriously.
I remember women in old movies from the 1960s refer to "tall, dark, and handsome men".
The "external device that communicates with the nail" part should perk up hacker ears, with various motivations. o_O
Definitely no internal computers involved.
The article said the bone gets cut and it wasn't clear if it get cut through and then two halves are shifted away from each other or the cut is more on an incision into the bone and the the bone just gets stretched by this device.
The "extra" bone comes from the body's natural healing mechanism. If you pull the bone apart slowly enough, the body forms a continuous connection of new bone in the gap. I did 1mm a day, I think.
The rate of hardening and the rate of gap extension should be optimized to create the best bone quality. I wonder if then science to find the correct balance has been done.
But maybe an inch can make much more difference than I think. I am literally one inch taller than this guy and I cannot ever in my life remember someone calling me short or disparaging me for my height.
I do agree that being a little bit taller would be an advantage in many ways. But so would being born into wealth or being extremely attractive.
Isn't this true of any cosmetic surgery? They all carry some amount of expense, pain, and risk.
> I do agree that being a little bit taller would be an advantage in many ways.
I suspect that most people who get this surgery are thinking mostly about their ability to date women. That single issue can definitely be make-or-break for some people's happiness.
Most other cosmetic surgeries don't have the risk of making you unable to walk.
Of course I would have liked to have been 6' and looked more like a "commanding leader" when I march into a room. Maybe it would have given me a career boost... but I could also get that from hitting the gym and bulking up, or buying better-fitted clothes, or (heaven forbid) put more effort into my job and actually become a more commanding leader!
And what if you have done all that and are still mocked for your height?
My point is only that when height is a barrier, there are almost certainly other things that can be improved, with some effort.
(or, buy lifts, which is zero effort and effective for an inch or 1.5" boost)
I don't remember hearing people refer negatively to baldness... until I started losing my hair and it became (marginally) personal to me.
I have a friend who is short as well, probably 5'5" and he married a girl who is taller than him when she wears her heels. Neither of them care, which is great and I love both of them.
I have another friend who is around the same height or shorter and can't get past how short he is. I keep trying to help him find a girlfriend, but he resists all efforts and I think he's still a virgin at age 45. So the stigma is very real and can be extremely damaging.
In school people did call me short but in time I learned to ignore it and to just not hear it. Because there's really nothing that I can or even should do about it.
Do you have really long hair? This could be why
This all changed when my older brother-in-law voiced concerns about my height to my now-wife, saying I was too short for her.
Now, after 5 incredible years of being together, this mind virus has infected us, and we started seeing me as short, or otherwise "deficient". It's truly terrible. Thankfully I'm still incredibly confident, which is what made me attractive to my wife in the first place.
Sucks having family throw doubts into your wife's mind based on your height.
When I was attending Highland Park High School in Illinois around the early 2000s I knew a kid who used to drive different 100,000+ dollar sports cars to school every day. He got straight As, was popular, captain of the tennis team or whatever, handsome, etc. But I believe he wasn’t content being shorter than others because when he went to college, he decided to have surgery to make him taller. He was living in some multi million dollar house his parents bought for him to attend school and they hired the best doctors out there to do the procedure. Anyway, he had it and it failed, and now he is paralyzed.
A physically unattractive man with a good personality + social skills can do very well with women. Same cannot really be said of a physically unattractive woman.
You don't have a "random dice roll of DNA", you have a very specific lineage of DNA passed to you by your parents.
You are the sum of your parents, and a reflection of all of your ancestors before you. I don't see anything irrational with taking pride (or shame) in the ancestral line that resulted in your genetics.
You are the product of your ancestors. What you're saying is like a tree branch saying "I had nothing to do with picking my tree". A tree branch doesn't exist as an isolated individual from the tree and then get randomly assigned to a tree, it only exists because it was created by the tree.
If the tree hadn't created it, then it wouldn't randomly belong to another tree, it just wouldn't exist at all.
I think the biggest change is online dating. It has constrained the "selection function" to things that can be compressed into a picture and profile text. It may look like it is biased toward certain genes but at the same time it is also wholly incomplete in that regard. You don't even get to hear someone's voice which is purely derived from genetics!
This is not true, so you don’t have to worry about any conclusions you came to because of it. “Heritable traits” does not mean “genetic traits” and there are quite a lot of things that happen you after you stop being a zygote.
After college I was a prototypical nerd. Overweight, had acne, wore glasses, had a frizzy hair. And I was very unhappy. One day I had a breakthrough and I decided to turn my life around. I booked a laser eye surgery, started an acne treatment, signed up for the gym, and cut my hair very short. A few weeks later I didn't wear glasses anymore, after a few months I got rid of acne, and after a year I got significantly fitter.
And I was still unhappy. The reason is that I was still myself. I still had crippling anxiety. I still was socially inept. I still wasn't achieving what I wanted in life.
Don't get me wrong, it those changes weren't bad. The health benefits alone of exercising make it worthwhile. But it wasn't enough, not even necessary for happiness.
Some people need to go through this journey themselves, but just be aware that what you are looking for might lie elsewhere.
> a few months on the platform, he zeroed in on a niche: financial domination, a form of humiliation kink where clients pay him to degrade them and take their money
Stock character hubris from the surgeon. Very cliche:
> “The majority of my patients... have zero complications. The ones that do, it’s either because they didn’t listen to me, or didn’t do the proper therapy.”
Right. Because the only thing that can go wrong when inserting an expanding rod into bone is a lack of accountability by the patient... ~
Something sick is going on. I was just reading about the absurd mortality statistics from Brazilian Butt Lift surgery, the popularity of which must surely be driven by what kind of flesh influencers can get away with showing on social media. Rightfully or not, people are so deeply dissatisfied that they are literally being butchered out there.
I am here, though, to throw cold water on the ridiculous borderline-incel hot takes from men here who have drawn a blank on dating sites and thereby divined the true nature of women. As if women are a monolithic bloc conspiring against your genes. As if women are spherical horses acting out the simple laws of your evolutionary psychology. As if women don’t face their own challenges in finding meaningful relationships. As if “women” just means “attractive white 18-25 year old heterosexuals” and you don’t see the double standard.
I didn’t read all the comments but didn’t spot a single one from anyone female. My advice to y’all is to get out of the sausage factory and start meeting some people in real life.
It’s not women making you forever alone, it’s your monocausal mindset.
Certain cities/countries can be day and night!
Imagine SF is one of the worst places to be for single men
Look at the advice for dating profiles on Reddit. This is apparently the ideal for online dating. Remove any eccentricities, actual hobbies, and create some contrived person with staged pics and hobbies you don’t actually care for but are more socially presentable, etc…
But yes women aren't monotone, but that's not what these men are complaining about, it's the same complaint you may face as a female but instead it might be your butt, breasts or weight.
In other words that the dating game IS unfair because it's hyper fixated on one element of a person effectively objectifying them.
That said, dating online is always a handicap no matter how much of a precived 10/10 you are, since it'll never be able to make a stranger able to validate you as a whole and vice versa, in contrast to a reoccurring social meeting it gives you ample time to allow both you and the stranger to validate you.
The issue there of course is that at least in the west that you have a lot of old myths and norms taught to children that warps our perception on how we form social connections (i.e. We go on autopilot in school expecting friends to be handed to us).
> colleagues constantly made remarks about his stature. “I was not treated with respect,” Scott told me. “At every single workplace I’ve been in, there've been several situations where people commented on my height to discredit me entirely as a person.”
> For Scott, demeaning comments about height are everywhere — whether in his personal life or in pop culture. He singled out TikTok particularly, where jokes about men’s height are rampant.
> I asked Westrich to describe the most common experiences that patients shared with her. “One [complaint] I hear quite often is ‘I don’t get the same respect as others. I’ve accomplished so much and I’m still often treated like a child.’”
> ... “I would still go on the internet and see ‘Men below this height shouldn’t have rights.’”
People should of course be free to date who they want, but not to harass, mock, demean, or disrespect people for being short.
When you think about the food industry it is convenient as hell but it is also bad for you over the long term. Dating apps are just like that. If you are lucky and you find someone good for you. If you stick around too long you are discovering the terrible business model the hard way.
A lot of industries have been building their business model around creating artificial needs. Mobile games and dating apps are the most extreme. Pay to win games are intentionally designed to be terrible to get you to pay up. Dating apps make their money off the misery of unsuccessful men.
Unfortunately almost all my friends continue to use them. For some reasons it’s odd to find people irl within a few years of my own age, outside the online world. Meet plenty of people irl but the demographics are always very skewed offline.
If that's actually true then dating apps are just magnifying whats already there and aren't the cause of the phenomenon.
To be honest I only skimmed the article because there was so much pain and unkindness in it that I didn’t want to carefully read the whole thing.
More broadly, I tend to stay out of these threads. The first of its kind that I read on HN (about divorce, I think) shocked me a little. I left with a feeling that some people commenting both loathed women and really wanted female attention. It was strange and uncomfortable. It was also quite sad because I realised that someone behaving like that probably would struggle to get dates, because it would scare the women they want to date, and that would feed into the feeling of anger. So now I tend to avoid these threads.
Maybe it's because I was exposed to a lot of sexism in my CS undergrad (and even some jobs I've had), but it really does seem like some men think of women as inferior.
This is a borderline strawman. Such conclusions are based on population level trends. And yes, just like any other sexually dimorphic species, there quite literally is a "conspiracy" against undesirable genes, though it isn't necessarily conscious or absolute.
I think post feminism people generally are unwilling to acknowledge that femininity can be just toxic as masculinity in its own ways, so they deny the absolute cruelty that women can collectively and inadvertently impose on less desirable men. Perhaps norms which enforce monogamy are a compromise which optimizes for overall happiness and societal function, as an alternative to legions of demotivated and disaffected young men in a hypergamist society.
>My advice to y’all is to get out of the sausage factory and start meeting some people in real life.
Did it ever occur to you that these observations might be coming from short guys who have experienced this negative selection pressure in real life? It's not like it's limited to dating, we all know about the research into the correlation between stature and salary, position, and other metrics of success; are short guys just not trying hard enough in their professional lives too?
Think of it like microagressions, except there's no one to advocate for you, and your immutable trait is objectively, defensibly negative, unlike racial/sexual discrimination. I would bet that short guys in (especially multicultural?) societies with a wide height variance are severely underrepresented in social settings like bars, because the soft stigma is always there.
Reality is unfair. Have some compassion.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2016/03/09/short-m...
?
> It’s not women making you forever alone, it’s your monocausal mindset.
Agreed. Don't sell yourself short.
Sounds not very politically correct? It’s just how it is and this is how most people see these things and desire. Yes, most. And it goes both ways.
So, it’s really ingenuous to label all those comments with that incel-something buzzword. Something of a “not all women” comment?
This is real. How it ought to be or not is an entirely different story.
If a woman complained in the same way that men don't like her because her breasts aren't big, we'd be equally incredulous.
You are saying it's easier for short men to grow several inches than for a woman to change her desirability?
I feel like there is a lot of "the grass is always greener on the other side" fallacy happening here (at least in dating). I'm 199cm (just over 6'6") if that adds any weight to my experiences. I dont mean this to be a humble brag, I sympathize with anyone under stress over these issues.
Interims of dating: Being taller definitely had some advantage in terms of standing out, but from the wrong people. In university I feel like I was more of a novelty to most of the people I tried to have a relationship with, there was sometimes a lot of focus on height or size. Whenever this was apparent in someone, the value of the relationship plummets and we fall out. This made me extremely picky on who I hung out with and on top of being relatively socially awkward (I was homeschooled), this contributed to a major sense of loneliness. I only met my wife partly because she is also on the taller side (our friend set us up), and I prefer our proportionally to the average male/female ratio.
In terms of carrear: I'm early on (~4 years) in my carrear and I feel like my opinions get more recognition with less effort than others in similar positions. This is totally anecdotal however and there could by many other factors I am not aware of. One thing that did stand out tho, a I was in a small meeting with senior employees and one confronted me and said "you're much younger than you appear to be aren't you" in referring to my height. Again anecdotally, what the article states interims of business, numerous people I have met in higher power positions are generally not on the shorter side.
This is how I feel in most social relations nowadays, except it’s not my height that’s the eccentricity. It does get old feeling like no more than a side show.
In my personal opinion, it depends.
For some, like double eyelid surgery, absolutely yes. For others, like the V-line jaw surgery (aka mandibuloplasty, but the colloquial name is pretty self-descriptive), I would say no.
And some are just universal and are done by people of all kinds of cultures/races, like face-lift surgeries (aka rhytidectomy) or nose-jobs (aka rhinoplasty).
In Japan, it used to be a necessity for women to use extremely tight shoes in order to contain feet growth, as women with large feet were less desired or something.
In Brazil, the most common surgery for women is probably bum enlargement rather than breast.
In some parts of Myanmar, women need to have very long necks decorated with coils... I would guess they obsess over their appearance at least as much as any modern western woman does.
People are people everywhere and will obsess over things that are important to them, no matter how bizarre it may look to someone from a different culture.
You've confused Japan with China.
I think not: https://heianjapanweb.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/blog-post-tit...
Or even random spam that claims to have some evidence of the practice occurring in Japan?
I don’t think that’s the exact reason, and they’d probably get mad at you if you said they wanted to look like something Japanese.
Korea and China are developing an independent “anime-like aesthetic” based on MMOs and anime-like American PC games these days; eg Blue Archive and Genshin are a lot more technically advanced than what Japan’s famously poorly paid source of actual anime can produce.
Not at all, you just don't seem like someone who has much exposure to the world outside of "western cultures". Which is unfortunate, because the rest of your comment has a lot of pretty interesting points to ponder.
As others have mentioned in replies, plastic surgery in South Korea is so commonplace and integral to everyday life, it will blow a lot of people's minds. Plastic surgeries are common high school graduation gifts there (double eyelid surgery seems to be one of the most popular ones).
For a personal example, sister of one of my friends was graduating from a nursing school there, and ended up getting a surgery or two closer to the end of her program, despite resisting it for the longest time. Why? Because photos are required on resumes for pretty much any position there. And she felt like she was at a strong disadvantage compared to her classmates (who all had at least a couple of plastic surgeries done) when it came to job applications, and iirc her suspicion was strongly supported by her experiences.
And i also think braces makes for better teeth health, since straight teeth is less likely to accumulate plaque and cause gum issues in the future. It's not purely cosmetic.
Teeth whitening, on the other hand, is purely cosmetic and i suspect, entirely unnecessary. I dunno how dangerous it is either, but it can't be healthy to bleach your teeth!
There are two strategies of hypergamy play. First, male player may accent his other strong characteristics, like wealth, or physical strength, or education, or sports (not necessarily athletic) or other things society regards as prestigious.
The second strategy is to find and form a relationship with roles inverted. Meaning prioritize women who are wealthier, older, more dominant, better educated and so on. Those women are experiencing much more problems with traditional hypergamous relationship, because their selection of hypergamous partners is vanishingly small, so they may consider relationship with reversed roles.
What a dystopia we've built for ourselves.
I thought it was a meme on Tinder that incels blew out of proportion, but apparently it's bigger?
If it wasn’t height it would be something else just as capricious. If genetic engineering got to a point where we could pick the height of the kids after a while it would no longer be a rare coveted feature. The drawbacks of height would become more apparent and maybe there would be a reversal of trend. My back hurts and all the sports I can’t do anymore are best suited to men of 5’9” so that to me would probably be the ideal height for health and fitness.
People choose mates based on perceived genetic fitness using proxy metrics, such as symmetry, height, skin color and other traits (which may or may not be genetic, but is assumed to be, like intelligence).
the fact that today, women have become more selective of these traits than the past, due to their new found economic opportunities and freedoms, means that some subset of males who would've been selected in the past (when women's choices were much more limited) are now alienated (rightly or wrongly so).
But i dont believe there to be a solution to this lookism problem, while still maintaining freedom of choice in mates.
I do believe there's a solution to systemic racism, but not for "lookism".
I think that would be a more appropriate investment than this if it bothered you so much. I also think it gave him more confidence. I worry the individual in the article will end up despondent that they aren’t “over 6 feet”.
For what it means to dating, I think the requirement to be at least 6 feet tall for US women would disappear due to statistics (the mean male height in the USA is 5'9"). Heck, some guys who are 5'7" or 5'9" says to those women they are 6 feet and they believe it; It's more a psychological thing than a real preference as a have seen.
Men are just as bad but certainly my early 20s were dominated by getting rejected for having a nerdy job (SWE) or not being muscular enough/looking by a football player, whatever. When you're in your 20s and trying to date everyone is just superficial as anything. The fitness stuff was always funny cause I was more fit than 90% of people out on the dating market just I was an endurance type not a bodybuilder/muscle head/football player type which is obviously what is/was desirable for a lot of women. That gets even weirder as you get older as it's much easier as an endurance type to stay fit & healthy as you age.
Things have changed and maybe it's not as biased against tech jobs these days. However in the early 2000s it was literally my experience women would instantly say "I'm out" if they heard I had a tech job, except for the odd case where they were clearly gold diggers and had already figured out this field was lucrative.
In the end you just have to get through it.. by the time you start approaching 30 and everyone starts to grow up a lot of this stuff goes away. If you let stuff bother you there will always be something about yourself you can fixate on.
It does sound like the last 10 years of online dating only got worse though, and amplified everything superficial.
Hah we’re in the threshold where people occasionally question that number.
I don't but into the "why does culture make us do this" thing, these forces are primal and cross-cultural.
I really just get sad that there are people who are high enough in neuroticism (in the personality psych sense) that they will pay $75k to have their legs broken and hollowed out, to gain 3 inches in height.
Easy for me to say as I don't have this particular issue.
Instagram is a ticking time bomb of mental health problems related to self image issues, particularly in younger women.
That said, I think it's something people should be allowed to do (as long as it's safe enough), but we should be very careful with letting this be pushed on younger and more impressionable people.
I don't recall any of my friends mentioning height as a criteria. I guess I see women dating taller men almost exclusively, but in a sense that the man is the same height or taller, not over 185cm or whatever.
I can't even recollect how tall are like 80% (as in, taller, same or shorter than me) people I know unless I know them very well. It never crosses my mind.
I’m not willing to go through that surgery to get it back, but if I were still single I’d be tempted. I miss it. To put it plainly, I felt more on top of the world - more confident.
Online there is instead a huge focus on the big few. And they take on the role of dealbreakers.
He mentions in one of his videos that when people meet him in real life they're often surprised that he's actually fairly tall. In his videos he looks smaller than he really is, in part because the things he's being filmed next to are larger than standard size.
I saw an excellent educational video recently from a guy that was, how to put it, dressed almost like a hobo.
Ironically, online video has made things quite good for me as a greybeard. I invested in a good camera and good lighting early in Covid. I always look better than anybody else in the meeting and it gives me gravitas that I really haven't earned.
The downside is that I can't look like shit on calls or it shows. I generally make a point of exercising and then taking a shower directly before starting meetings for the day.
When I saw the title I expected to see Ilizarov apparatus (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilizarov_apparatus).
Asked him what had been his greatest night.
He looked into the corners of his mem'ry, (mem'ry)
Searching for a picture of the fight.
But he said he always had a feeling
That he lacked a little extra height. (could have used a little extra height)
- Paul McCartney, 'Average Person'
Go to any mens fashion site, check a small or medium size t-shirt, the model will be 6'1 to 6'2.
I could have dunked easily, instead of just that one golden time I jumped freakishly high.
OMG that's a thing? Can anyone shed light on the psychology of this?
Elon, is that you?
All that, and he's still under 6 feet.
forget dating even, i'd say that is a 2nd order effect of having more resources anyway
“Gosh, it’s tough being born outside the cultural norm. Why do all that coping when you could just pay this social media personality to make it all better? So get off those too-close-to-the-ground tooshes and work it, sweet cheeks! Some of us need to capitalise on your insecurities and people’s worst innate tendencies for a living.”
Not one remark to the effect that, “Hey, heightism is in the same class as racism, sexism, ableism and other unfashionable isms - so all the good folks who can’t afford the surgery, can enjoy the dignity of some cultural assurance that you are the victims of atavistic shitfuckery from people with this objectively bad belief.”
Indeed, why do the work of being a better person by giving folks shorter than ourselves the same dignity we’d demand of someone much taller… there’s a metaphor for some other contemporary macro issues… and, more generally, leaving behind this infantile judgment of others by heredity.
In a for-profit healthcare context with extreme built-in distributional inequities, I cannot see this usage as equivalent to evening up mismatched limb lengths.
Dating preference is one thing - our sexual attraction parameters are mostly out of hands - but to discredit an experienced adult human and treat them as a child on the basis of their height or weight or muscularity or whatever, then, god forbid, using that to score points on that person (e.g. by mocking them at work) is egregious and should earn you social, if not legal, censure.
It’s wrong to mock a woman for her figure, including her height, and the converse is true of a man. And it’s wrong to paywall cultural acceptability behind expensive surgeries - further interlinking height with the perceptions of health and wealth in the culture - rather than doing the collective emotional work of sincere introspection to change habitual heightism.
Sends chills down my spine thinking about ethan hawke's character cracking his leg bones to increase his height. Insane.
It’s very hard to buy a bicycle.
Nothing terrible, just annoyances. No big deal compared to dumb social prejudice against shorter men.