The Bulletin
Tall, dork or handsome?
The resurgence of towering, high-heeled shoes, prompted by TV shows like Sex and the City, has had a side benefit for the height-advantaged male. Put simply, taller is – finally – better for men on the singles scene. With the height of women’s shoes on the rise, so are the fortunes of the lanky. Notes one dating agency source: “Women don’t want to be in heels and taller than the guy. Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo [8cm] heels mean we need really tall guys.”
There is unabashed self-interest at stake here. Statistics have always suggested that tall is good for career and monetary status: but at 196cm, your high-flying correspondent never found his many riches translated into dating heaven. Personal experience suggested women wanted smaller, more compact men with earrings in their left ear and salsa--dancing skills: not guys who bump their heads on doorways and sing Sinatra.
Bill von Hippel, evolutionary psychologist at the University of NSW, says there is no explanation for this lack of dating success. Across all cultures, he says, there has been an overall preference for taller men in private and public life. “Height conveys genetic fitness. It either means you are well fed and have good nutrition – a robust specimen – or it means you’re well designed: you can translate low nutrition into substantial stature or a big body,” he says. “Height is a very good predictor of all sorts of things in business, and in other domains.”
Could “other domains” include the dating scene? May Ng, PR manager for dating agency Fast Impressions, says yes: “We were constantly getting emails from women wanting to meet tall men, but we weren’t getting enough from tall men wanting to meet tall women.”
The agency has had no choice but to take drastic action: it has been holding “tall man’s” dating events since September, the latest in Melbourne last week. The only qualification for men attending is that they must be more than 183cm – women of any height can come. Ng says heel height is a factor: “Women’s shoes are now a huge issue when it comes to the height of guys. The average woman is 165cm, but she is going to be 173cm in glamorous designer heels.” Men taller than women in heels have an immediate advantage over those who are not, she says.
Recent scientific research backs her up. A 2002 Open University study of 10,000 people born in Britain in the same week in March 1958 found that the taller the man, the less likely they were to be single or childless. For example, a man of an above-average height of 183cm was more likely to have children than a man of an average 177cm height.
Von Hippel says the female preference for height-advantaged males is an international trend, although definitions vary. “Most women in the world prefer tall men,” he says. “In different cultures, tall means different things. It’s really about tall relative to the local norms.”
How does this writer’s 196cm height fit on an international level? “It would be too tall in Japan, but it’s not here.” What is the point, in Australia, at which men can be “too tall”? “You get to extremes where people, at 7 feet (2.13m) or so, are no longer desirable,” he says.
Von Hippel says the natural preference of women for taller men is accentuated in the modern use of dating agencies. “People can be more explicit about what they want,” he says. “It gets you to put your preferences on your sleeve, rather than just be coy about it.”
Emboldened, single and fancy-free, this writer embarked on some scientific research of his own, to test the “tall is good” theory on women, at a Fast Impressions speed-dating event last week. A natural handicap was imposed: each girl would have to be explicitly asked for a preference for either tall or short.
The ground rules were simple. The sexes were evenly matched at the dating event, held in a Sydney CBD bar: nine women, nine men. The women had a designated, numbered table; the men rotated around the tables to meet each. A “date” lasted for precisely eight minutes, with a one-minute gap in between for note-taking, apparently so each participant did not forget who they had just talked to.
The results of this coal-face research were unequivocal: of the nine women present, five had a clear preference for men taller than themselves. The other four said they were “neutral” or “indifferent”. But none said they preferred shorter men. Von Hippel says: “These things don’t operate at a conscious level.”
He says the embodiment of this subconscious preference can be seen even in events like televised political debates. “In the 2004 US presidential debates, [George W.] Bush didn’t want to be standing in the same picture as [Democratic candidate John] Kerry ... Bush is tall, but Kerry is a freak, like you!”
This freak walked out of the speed-dating event with the phone numbers of willing potential follow-up dates in hand, freshly reassured about the marketability of the height-advantaged man. But what of the tall woman?
According to von Hippel, it is a good indicator of success at a career level, but not necessarily at a relationship level. “Being a tall woman in dating is a bit like being a short guy,” he says. “Because, on average, men are taller than women, it fits the norm for women to want a man who’s taller than them, and men to want a woman who’s shorter than them.”
Olivia Pipitone, 185cm, says her biggest problem has been with men who are marginally below her in height. “The ones who are slightly shorter than me are the ones who make a comment about me being tall. The ones who are much shorter than me are OK with it, because they’re used to it.”
She prefers men who are “significantly” taller than her, but “just because they’re tall enough to play basketball, doesn’t mean I’ll find them attractive or interesting in other ways”.
Pipitone attended a Fast Impressions “tall men” speed-dating night last year and saw one of the attendees “three times, and another one three or four times”. She says she was impressed with the standard of men: “I wouldn’t have thought walking down the street that they were single and looking for someone,” she says.
For the height-advantaged male, finding a forum where the odds are, for once, in your favour is tempting all the same.