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Comment by rofo1 | Hacker News Reader

It's absolutely due to evolution, not social construction.

Same thing for women - they prefer physically strong, tall men. It's also due to evolution. It boils down to survival of the fittest - the fittest had the most resources, and a mother needs resources to reproduce (mother's can't hunt while breastfeeding, so that's out of the question). Yes, it's that simple.

Same thing for men - they prefer young, sexually attractive, fertile females.

Those are our instincts anyway. We can and we do influence them consciously.

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> It's absolutely due to evolution, not social construction.

You haven't presented any reason to think that, just as GP didn't present any reason to think it's purely socially constructed.

> absolutely due to evolution

No it’s not, there are some things we absolutely know and this is not one of them. This kind of stuff is extremely complex, and there aren’t good ways to test hypotheses.

Here's some questions we can ask to help answer the question:

- is this preference common to all known cultures?

- is this preference found in other mammals, including our closest relatives?

- if taller partners were selected for because they 'can offer greater protection to their partners and children from other men, and were likely to have been better providers of food and other resources throughout our evolutionary history' then are women with a higher fear of crime more likely to prefer physically formidable and dominant males? And do women who score lower on dominance show a stronger preference for taller men? https://m.phys.org/news/2018-06-women-sexual-tall-dominant-m...

Simply being tall requires a higher caloric intake, and thus puts tall people at a disadvantage. The genes for tall stature do not express themselves when that higher food intake is not present during developmental stages. Tall people are more a phenomena of advanced agriculture than natural selection. They are not necessarily more formitable, but are rather a larger target, or a clumsier hunter. Evolutionarily, being tall means a lifetime of above-average access to food, and while that's desireable in a mate, it's just as much about the environment one lives in as it is the genes one's born with.

> Simply being tall requires a higher caloric intake, and thus puts tall people at a disadvantage

This is assuming that food intake is the only factor contributing to fitness. There are other possibilities. E.g. taller (larger) males may have advantages in competing with other males for mates, and thus be better at spreading their genes. Females who preferred such males would thus be better at spreading their genes down the generations.

> Evolutionarily, being tall means a lifetime of above-average access to food, and while that's desireable in a mate, it's just as much about the environment one lives in as it is the genes one's born with.

Evolution doesn't only concern the genes, as if environmental factors were distinct from evolution. Fitness is always a function of both genes and the environment.

”The genes for tall stature do not express themselves when that higher food intake is not present during developmental stages.”

So, it seems tall ⇒ was well-fed in his youth ⇒ must be from a rich family ⇒ will provide for my children well ⇒ attractive.

I don’t claim it did, but I do not see a reason evolution couldn’t pick up such an indirect correlation.

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