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Comment by thangalin | Hacker News Reader

For folks in this thread making statements such as, "I don't see how one can dictate to others what they should find attractive," the negative social stigmas towards men of short stature go far beyond physical attraction. (There's absolutely nothing wrong with women finding taller men attractive.)

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.)

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> There's absolutely nothing wrong with women finding taller men attractive.

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.

Well that's an interesting response. Surveyed women of median height prefer men of above-median height. But a D cup bra size is below the median for American adult females (which is a 34DD). I have no idea why popular imagination believes the bra size scale goes from A to D.

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...

I only chose D because it's the one guys seem to be most familiar with. No clue why we seem to still think it stops at D. I guess I'm part of the problem there.

I think it’s not the absolute cup size that matters for men, if you know what I mean.

In case people don't know, there's actually two measurements. The first number is the band size (the circumference of your chest under the boob) and the letter signifies how many inches the circumference of your bust is above the first number. A = 1 inch, B = 2 inches, C = 3 inches, D = 4 inches, E/DD = 5 inches, etc. So, taking the median here is kind of confusing. Also, I imagine this distribution is bi-modal with healthy/fit people around 32C and overweight people at 36F.

I looked up these studies as these numbers didn't seem and I think there's some bias in the way they were done. These are based off of bra sizes sold, rather than actual breast size. There are a number of reasons why that would bias the numbers towards a larger size. Some studies that focus on self assessments rather than bras sold seems to target the average for the US at a C cup.

> But women do prefer as tall a man as they can get

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.

No. All women want a man 8ft+ tall

What’s the median among non-obese women?

Yeah ngl I wish people would move on from denigrating people on factors like appearance, poverty, disability, etc. and more on things like being inauthentic, unempathetic, manipulative, etc.

That would require the persons in question to self-reflect. It’s not often a process that people who denigrate others generally engage with.

And following that I think people need to think about if they really want a person that thinks that. I'm 5'10" and feel like I do fine in the market despite not being over 6 foot and not mentioning my job or any of the other stuff people don't want to be judged on. I'm sure plenty of girls pass on me, but I truly wouldn't want to be with them anyway.

...you're not short. facepalm

According to the article, if you're in the US, that's an inch above average.

I was bullied a lot for being short in high school and at home I was pressured to hang on the pull up bar "to get taller". I hope we stop doing this to people.

My experiences in high school deeply affected my mental health.

I also hope we stop doing this to people.

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.

No idea about dead hangs specifically, but good posture (which requires strengthening the right muscles) probably adds a fair bit of height over bad posture, and bone can stretch slightly in response to exercise.

That said, the benefits of good health, better confidence, etc. from strength training probably far outweigh any benefits from increased height.

> Swap "short guy" for "Jew" in the quotations from those twits that have nothing to do with attraction:

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.

Stop basing your entire worldview on what 20 women said on twitter.com in 2014

What a remarkably insensitive and dismissive take on someone providing primary sources to bolster their case.

Parent has a point. You can find any manner of horrible on twitter, especially if you reach back far enough. Twitter is not a "primary source" in the wikipedia sense.

Parent doesn’t have a point because they’re rejecting the reality of height discrimination and the language that perpetuates it. Pretending like this isn’t a thing isn’t constructive, and reinforces the original point that this wouldn’t be tolerated with respect to race.

>Pretending like this isn’t a thing isn’t constructive, and reinforces the original point that this wouldn’t be tolerated with respect to race.

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.

If I assert that many people like Justin Bieber and show you many tweets saying as much, do you infer that it was the tweets that made me form this opinion?

You're right: the quotes do a shit job of illustrating thangalin's point, because you can find anyone supporting anything on Twitter. Regardless, "Stop basing your entire worldview on what 20 women said on twitter.com in 2014" is still an unnecessarily rude way to make that point.

Cherry-picked "primary sources" are as worthless as no source at all. What some randos on Twitter say is not at all representative of the world at large.

And no one claimed this was representative of the world at large, although I must be cheeky and note there’s currently more evidence in favor than against since you haven’t provided anything to the contrary.

This kind of stuff is pretty widespread. One of the major dating sites published a stat showing woman ranked 80% of men as below average attractiveness while men ranked 50% of woman as bellow average. They had to pull the post because it was explosive. I assume no tech company will ever post stats on the data they have showing some kind of meaningful social observation again.

That was OKCupid, why they actually published it is beyond me.

Why wouldn't they?

They published a lot of very interesting anonymized stats back then.

Would you rather not know?

I think from their perspective, publishing it was a mistake. A lot of companies publish anonymized user stats but usually they don't say or mean a whole lot. I'm pretty sure OkCupid didn't intend to get in the middle of a hot political topic and prove that the incel movement might have a point.

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 think it was in times when OkCupid had a soul bacause original founder was still with them (or at least his spirit). And his goal was for people to better understand each other and themselves not just suck up cash from the hornies.

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.

It looks like it's all 20 black women from 2014 as well. I'm not sure what to assume about the intention or circumstances behind the account owner choosing those samples, but it certainly doesn't accurately reflect majority opinion in 2022.

For some, this is merely the paper evidence of shit I'm being told to my face every day.

If women aren't morally compelled to find short men attractive, why are they morally compelled to not feel negatively about them in general? I don't see how anyone is morally obligated to feel any way about any other human.

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

What burden? Treating everyone with respect and giving everyone a fair chance isn't a burden.

Even people I respect use 'short' as some kind of slur against people they don't like.

For example against Putin.

(Doesn't matter what you think of Putin - slurs based on personal appearance are always wrong against anyone full stop.)

This is the one aspect of the show "Last Week Tonight" that always irked me. He makes fun of peoples appearances too much. It's just not good comedy or even a good insult in my opinion.

Yeah it's soured me on him over time. Jon Stewart held against people their behavior, but John goes all over the map and sometimes it just makes him less convincing IMO

I like them both but disappointingly, they both insult people based on superficial traits. Seems like every time Stewart talked about Mitch McConnell he would do the turtle thing where he made fun of the way McConnell looks and speaks.

The one person whose appearance John Oliver has made fun of more than any other is, John Oliver.

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.

What's your moral/ethical basis for that? Sure, don't do this to others in your personal life (or strangers). It's arbitrary cruelty and simply abusive.

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.

I think it's just fundamentally wrong to abuse human beings, whoever they are, whatever they've done, for things that they can't control. Full stop. No exceptions.

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?

plenty of legit things to say about lindsay graham without bringing any of that up indeed.

Putin is evil for reasons completely unrelated to his height.

When you insult someone powerful and evil for some immutable characteristic, everyone else who shares that characteristic also feels it.

> But I'm not convinced punching upward in this manner to the obscenely rich and powerful should be considered universally wrong.

What if you used racial slurs, but exclusively on brown multimillionaires?

Which is kind of a fascinating thing if you note that Zelensky is clearly shorter than him by about an inch (~5'5"), and I have yet to see anyone make a comment about his height.

Courage makes you taller.

But that's still a fucked-up thing to say - as if being taller is some kind of better thing and his courage makes him taller?

Would it be better if I said: Courage makes you bigger

(admittedly it's phrased better that way because it's more indirect, but now we're analyzing glib four-word jokes)

That's just referring to another physical property that people can't control and may be sensitive about. How about just don't comment on anyone's physical appearance, and stick to their actions and personality?

To be honest... no, we can't. You're asking too much.

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.

> To be honest... no, we can't. You're asking too much.

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.

So I think we're on the same page? Be nice, don't mock people.[1]

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.

> a public figure and isn't entitled to the same level of politeness that a private person can expect

Strong disagree.

"Courage makes you whiter" -- can we just not use physical traits as proxies for human value?

This line of thinking ends badly for the 6'4" muscular guy [particularly with a dark complexion] when he ends up in a jury trial. Size jokes seem to have a negative impact on all men.

Thing is though that people present as shorter or taller than they are based on posture, and it's not just people, all mammals do it.

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"?

> Zelensky is clearly shorter than him by about an inch (~5'5"), and I have yet to see anyone make a comment about his height.

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?

But isn't it okay to make fun of Trump's penchance for the orange makeup appearance? So long as it is firmly in the realm of choice and not hiding a medical skin condition or other immutable characteristic, isn't it fair game?

(To be clear, this question applies to certain kinds of public figures and not the shy kid in the schoolyard)

> So long as it is firmly in the realm of choice

I don't think most folks are against that.

I think in the case of Putin, there may be some justification on the basis that he and his supporters (including in the West) portray him as super macho, etc.

On balance though, I think I agree with you.

I never really believe what women tell me.

-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).

“Glory crowns the deeds of those who expose themselves to toils and dangers.” ― Alexander the Great

Well, yes, but he was short, so who cares what he says? (/s, obviously)

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.

He was Alexander. That is why no one cared.

Caesar was Caesar, but he was supposedly pretty sensitive about his (lack of) hair, and contemporary historians (ancient Roman historians were a bit closer to gossip columnists than modern historians) went on about it a lot. You don't really seem to get the same thing for Alexander.

I very much doubt Caesar was sensitive about his hair or worried what low rent individuals think of him.

It's entirely possible that anti-short stigma in Anglo-American culture is actually born out of this propaganda, and not the other way around. The campaign was so effective that you used to hear people say ambitious shorter men had a "Napoleon Complex" -- and there's no way they would have thought that if propaganda hadn't first cemented the idea that Napoleon was short.

> Swap "short guy" for "Jew" in the quotations

I feel like I need to point out that nobody ever genocided millions of short guys based on their height. :-/

s/Jew/woman; s/Jew/black man; s/Jew/elderly; etc.

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