Tall women dating shorter men? Tall men dating childsized women?

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Permalink Reply by Steve on November 18, 2009 at 10:57am

What??? You're not superficial about just physical attributes???
~How dare you~
;-)

I do agree physical appearance is only ONE thing in a sea of other possibilities.

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Permalink Reply by Steve on November 17, 2009 at 6:28pm

Personally, I'm attracted to both. It depends on what one considers short and/or tall. I'm 6ft 6, and dating a woman that is 5ft 9 (which is above average height) is doable for me. I've also dated a woman that is 5ft 2 on a good day. Like some others have said on this forum, everytime I've ever met a tall, attractive women, they scoff at me like I'm a freak. So my attraction to taller women has been quite diminished by the actions of these few. So, I guess my attraction to taller women has been decided by the women.

Of course, I do agree that you can't control who you fall for. But when it comes to "physical" attraction, opposites attract. Maybe a tall guy is insecure about his height and does NOT want to mate with someone like himself. Conversely, he is interested in something different. He finds himself tickled at people that can shop for clothes EVERYWHERE and can drive a small car and are super comfy on airline flights. Also, this same hypothesis could be applied to taller women that may be a bit insecure about being so tall.

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Permalink Reply by AJ on December 2, 2009 at 11:04pm

What's funny to me is that even many short women I've known still prefer guys much taller then the average, at least that's my experience being 5'8". I thought tall women in general might have a different perspective considering a lot of guys will turn them down for short chics... but after reading a lot of the responses here it seem insecurity is a two way street -- no offense ladies =)

Personally I find tall women very attractive. I didn't think that way growing up until I dated a girl that was my height, and after that long legs became a real turn on for me... but not the only thing of course, but a girl who lookx at you for you, rather than how you measure up vertically (no pun) haha...

So morale to the story? Give people a chance and you just might be surprised how things work out =)

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Permalink Reply by Jheri Olsen on December 3, 2009 at 8:53am

I became interested in height and height preference as a sexual dimorphism and noticed that most of the studies stopped at respondent heights around 2 standard deviations either way. This is no fault of the surveys as they were looking to get large and clean data samples, but I was curious about taller women as (a) I am one and (b) there was some anecdotal evidence of a change in preference.

I did a small survey a month ago. It was hardly scientific as getting data was difficult and I wasn't willing to pay people to take the survey. In inches I had female respondents who ranged from 68 to 81 inches in stature and I focused on those 70 inches and over.

Most of the studies show sexual dimorphism ratios (SDRs) for female height preference of about 1.08 for women. This SDR is defined as male height/female height. Shorter women tend to prefer larger SDRs. It is very rare for SDRs to approach 1.0 or to drop below.

I looked at the "ideal" SDR, lowest acceptable SDR and highest acceptable SDR where all other factors were considered identical. For 70 to 73 inch tall women the ideal SDR was about 1.08 and the lowest acceptable dropped to a bit below 1.0. For women 75 inches ideal was about 1.03 but shortest acceptable had fallen to about 0.93. The responses were very few in number above that, but ideal was actually a bit lower than 1.0 for very tall women and shortest acceptable had fallen to about 0.9. It was interesting that the ideal height for a guy for the range of women 70 inches and taller was about 75 inches..

There were a lot of written comments as to why someone shorter than the shortest or taller than the tallest would not be acceptable, but I really need more data to say anything definitive.

The large SDR height preference studies show a number that is consistent with the observed height difference across societies in the world ... 1.08 is close to the mean measured height difference anywhere you go. There is an interesting question where this comes from. Indications are that it is not cultural. Of course there are many other reasons for choosing a mate, but when you look at large numbers of people, height preference is very important.

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Permalink Reply by AJ on December 5, 2009 at 1:21pm

I take it you're interested in statistics? =)

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Permalink Reply by Jheri Olsen on December 5, 2009 at 6:35pm

It is just a tool for looking at the data. I didn't have enough data to do anything serious, but here is the link I put on this site:... http://api.ning.com/files/AeopYwo9BuO3R1dahvwhYYq-M*CTV5sD1k9pOIOWL0NxM7nA6O-HAgeqoIeS08mF200XEEft4Rf08C4-afliVF1JXzEyu4Ok/sdrpaper.pdf (it looks better if you download it then read it in a browser)__I think it raises some interesting questions.

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Permalink Reply by AJ on December 5, 2009 at 7:18pm

I read it, seems to explain what's going on.

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Permalink Reply by AJ on December 7, 2009 at 12:13pm

Also I got to thinking, you might want to consider weight or build in this study as that should contribute quite a bit to female preferences for a mate. Considering that a guy who's bigger built in my experience probably going to get a lot more attention regardless of how tall as long as he's not terribly over weight for his frame.

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Permalink Reply by Jheri Olsen on December 7, 2009 at 5:34pm

There are a lot of studies that look at these things and, of course, it gets complicated. Usually age, education level, height, weight, offered resources, body build and facial symmetry initially. Then there are many things associated with personality,

Women and men, for many of these, have a wide range of interests. There are some women who like very muscular guys and other who don't for example (I don't - I like thin guys who can run as well as I can, but that is just a person preference and other categories are more important).

What is interesting about height is that it appears to be very important to both sexes. Not universally important, but still very important. It is very rare for a women, certainly one who is within two standard deviations of the norm, to have a preference for a guy who is shorter. This can be out voted by other factors, but the primary preference still appears to be for a taller guy.

The fact that the SDR for the human population is about 1.08 and it is close to that in nearly all cultures may suggest that the preference is in our genes - like the male preference for a certain range of waist to hip ratios in women.

This can make life more difficult for very short men and very tall women. although many have other features that can attract a mate, overwhelming the SDR issue. But when you look at large populations it turns out to be a very important factor.

There are those for whom height doesn't matter as much. This is what I was looking into. My suspicion was that it is so difficult for tall women to find guys who are suitably taller who *also* had other attractive characteristics, that they would modify the height requirement more easily. This is basically what I found.

I haven't seen a study non-heterosexual populations, but they would be very interesting.

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Permalink Reply by AJ on December 11, 2009 at 3:03am

When I look at the title of this thread it makes me think that this was something men started. That women who have this preference for taller men, have it because males at some point ages ago began selecting females with neotenous traits for various reasons.

For me, a female can be bigger and taller than myself and still be just as attractive as one that is smaller, but she must still have those feminine traits no matter what her size.

So in modern times females that are most desired are still neotenous, but since there is such an admixture of races there is a greater variance in sizes to select from. So maybe it's not all about height after all.

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Permalink Reply by Jheri Olsen on December 11, 2009 at 3:45pm

Most of the literature shows height is very important statistically - so much that it may be part of our genetic makeup. Of the 5000 to 10000 cultures (depending on how you count) only a handful show no preference and those have very low populations and very very harsh living conditions. The SDR curve peak of about 1.08 holds across and within cultures.

There are certainly many other factors, but as a whole women want taller men and men want shorter women enough that SDR fairly stable (although it is increasing a tiny bit in the US). That was why I was interested in outlier populations where expediency may be a major driver.

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Permalink Reply by AJ on December 11, 2009 at 6:27pm

Well for modern times yes that seems to be it. But I suppose I used the wrong words. I imagine this was something that is a direct affect of neoteny in females. So if you want to start talking evolution it was already there when males became men and females became women so to speak.

Now that female gender is sexually dimorphic from the male gender they may still choose tall males as something instinctive in their make up of desire... but in this day and age it's no longer required.

So not disagreeing just looking at this from a historical view that says height is just one of the most noticeable, but expected results of neoteny, but gets a lot of attention because well, tall people are noticeable... haha.

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