But the fact of the matter is that, for the most part, I go out with guys my height or taller. The shortest guy I ever went out with? 5’10”. The tallest? 6’6”. Lately, I’ve been wondering, does that make me a heightist?As if that wasn't depressing enough, read the comments, and all the women who say that they won't date anyone less than 6 feet (and especially the short women who won't date short men). I hate to disappoint those women who say that they'll only date 6' guys, but according to this chart, only about 25% of men are taller than 6 feet.
If I am, I’m not alone. A while back, I conducted a poll: “Would you go out with a guy who’s shorter than you?” Around 40 percent of the women who responded said: “Hell-to-the-no.” Another 32 percent or so indicated they’d date a guy the same height or a “teeny bit” shorter. How many women would go out with a significantly shorter man? Around 25 percent. In other words, most women are heightists.
I'm a 5'4" guy. I'm well below the 5th percentile--assuming a Gaussian distribution, I'm well below the 1st percentile. I'm also a reformed heightist. At one point, I preferred women who were shorter than I was. Unfortunately, most of those women were only interested in men taller than I. Eventually I realized that I was being silly--considering my height's the same as the average female height, I wasn't being fair to 50% of the female population. Granted, this wasn't a sudden change of heart--I just gradually expanded my ideal dating pool, to my height, and then to a little taller, etc. Fortunately, it was sometime after this that I met my 5'6" girlfriend, and height wasn't a deciding factor for her either.
One thing a lot of women in the comments to that article talk about is that being taller than the man is an issue for him. I can see that being the case when a guy's 5'9" and dating a 5'10" woman. Not that many women are taller than he is, and the few who are might seem intimidating. The thing is, that's a luxury a 5'4" guy doesn't have. If I were intimidated by taller women, I'd be intimidated by half of them.
So it doesn't depress me anymore--I just find it immature. I'm not about to say that there's something wrong with having a preference for taller men. But a preference and an absolute refusal to consider anyone the wrong height (and neither I nor my girlfriend ever stuck to absolutes in height considerations) is a recipe for heartache.
