It's easy to be picky and say 'I only date guys 4 or more inches taller than me' if 4 inches taller than you is still below the average male height (as would be the case for a 5'4' woman). If you're 5'9' and have the same preference, that means you're only dating guys over 6', which is pretty limiting.

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Height. Almost everyone wishes they could change their own, whether they think they are too short, too tall, or too average, it is almost never a satisfying statistic. Outside of day to day trade-offs like legroom on a plane vs. the availability of top-shelf treats, there is a large emphasis and advantage derived from height in today’s dating pool.

• One study found that for both men and women, a 1-inch increase in height is associated with a 1.4–2.9 percent increase in weekly earnings. Another study found that each inch of height is.
• This guy is married to a woman a couple of inches taller than him. 'My wife is 5'6' and I'm 5'4,' A.

Women’s online dating profiles are filled with examples like; “5’11” in three inch heels- please be taller”, or “Swipe left if under 6 feet”, or the more rare “I really like short guys”. Every girl seems to have a specific height preference. But why? Why is height so important and does it mean, as a man, you can’t date someone taller than you? In short, no, you can date whoever you damn well please, but there are some things you’ll need to consider if you are going to perch on your tiptoes for a smooch.

The reason why height seems to be so important in dating is based in genetics, with some influence from evolving social norms. In its basic form, women wanting a taller male partner is rooted in the basic need to feel protected and secure. This was ingrained in us from thousands of years of our shared hunter-gatherer culture. Back when a woman felt safest and had the most food security by partnering with the best hunter, who was typically the biggest. Over thousands of years of social evolution and the decline of hunting and gathering as a way of life, height has somehow maintained its symbolism of personal security and evolved into social power. Even now, studies1 show that a man’s height is correlated to his average salary and position at work; the taller the man (to a point) the higher his salary and/or position is likely to be. Naturally this plays into the attractiveness of someone on the surface, as the ability to provide and protect (both of which can be derived from money) are huge factors in a person’s selection in a mate, whether it is a conscious consideration or not.

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Beyond protection and providing, another big determining factor is the likely height of offspring. Regardless if the goal is to just “practice” making kids, the brain is trained to be attracted to those who will likely produce the best offspring. In the case of height, the best offspring are those measuring in just above average, which for men is 5’9” and women is 5’4” (in the US). Being socially dependent creatures, we want our kids to be accepted by the majority of society, and have the greatest advantage of survival. This is why you find that many men who are very tall are more attracted to women who are much shorter than they are, and vice versa. This causes a lot of headaches for the shorter men because the women who are 5’5” in 3-inch heels, tend to fall in the realm of being so short that they prefer much much taller men who are at least 5’11 in chucks.

Regardless of their own height, recent studies have shown that almost all women prefer their male partners to be taller but not too much taller, with 67% of women on average choosing a partner who is no more than 7 inches taller than themselves2. Meaning if a girl is 5’3, her likely preferred height for a guy is around or under 5’10”. While this is statistically significant, it doesn’t have to be the final rule. Inverse height relationships are more uncommon (1 out of 720 in the US and UK), but they do exist.

What is important in these relationships is self-confidence. Because people relate height to status, it is easy to have feelings of inferiority rather than equality to a taller female partner. This is a matter of self-confidence and self-knowledge. Knowing and embracing who you are, and acknowledging the height difference takes away the impact it can have on both your own psyche and that of your partner. Speaking it’s name gives it less weight. Think Voldemort, but the opposite. However, this only needs to be done once. If repeated, this can be seen as a point of sensitivity, not strength.

If you are short, your height doesn’t have to stop you. Using your height as a harping point for your own perceived unattractiveness is a cop out, and frankly, super self-defeating. If you think about it, there are two types of height, actual height and perceived height. Actual height is what’s on a person’s medical record, while perceived height is how tall they are thought to be in the minds and memories of those they meet. You most likely know a guy who is really of average height, but people look up to him; his influence, body language, and social presence, which make him seem bigger than he really is. The same is true of the opposite, someone who is quiet and shrinks into the corner of a party, is typically remembered as being smaller in the minds of those who saw them. Insecurities in your height and sense of self will be felt and given the amount of attention you allow it to. So, instead of trying to stuff the 5’4” “issue” under the rug, show it off and be proud of it. Owning who you are will make you larger than life, which in turn will make your height matter less, and the attributes that truly matter, like your sense of humor, charm, and manners show through more. You may not be responsible for your height, but you are absolutely responsible for how you let it affect your dating life.

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Many years ago, before I fell in love with a short guy, I was one of the many American women who only had eyes for the tall ones. I'm sure you're familiar with the situation — I salivated over any dude who was over six feet, even though, at 5' 2', being with a tall guy just meant that trying to kiss each other while standing up was not unlike trying to parallel park a compact car. But I believed the tall guy hype anyway.

And I was far from the only woman who found herself drawn to tall dudes for reasons she never quite thought through. A 2012 survey of college students found that 89 percent of women were only interested in partners taller than them (while 47 percent of men were open to dating a woman who was taller them). 48 percent of women dating online are only interested in men who are taller than them, and a study of online dating in the New York City area found that men who fell below the average American male height of 5'9' typically had a less than five percent chance of having women reach out to them. The man is the shorter partner in only four percent of heterosexual pairings.

Why? If you ask any height-obsessed woman — or me, a decade ago — they'll probably feed you some line about a tall man making them feel 'safe' or 'tiny.' But let's unpack that for a second. What are we saying when we say we want a big man to make us feel tiny? Are we saying that we believe that it's sexually ideal that women take up as little space as possible, that we're at our most attractive when we look itty bitty compared to our male partner? You don't need a women's studies degree to know that that's whack. Also, I have a women's studies degree and I say it's whack. Being obsessed with men's height — in a way that you'd never obsess about any other one of their qualities — is bad for women, bad for dating, and reinforces a society that says physical traits we can't control are more important than who we really are or what we achieve.

As someone who falls two inches short of the average female height, I never even thought that dating a guy my height was an option worth thinking about. But I'm glad I did. Today, I'm about to celebrate my fifth anniversary with a wonderful dude who is roughly my height, and I would like you to know that height ain't nothing but a number. But if you need more convincing, please read on for 11 reasons to consider letting a short dude into your life/heart/vagina.

(And yes, all of the GIFS below feature male celebrities who are 5'8' or shorter. Free your minds, people!)

1. Kissing is less awkward

You'll never again have to engage in that weird orchestrated moment of stretching and bending, where you can't really enjoy the kiss because you're on your tiptoes and your super-tall dude is hunched over at a weird angle, and everyone involved is about to develop a hernia. When you date a guy who's around the same height as you, a kiss can just be a kiss, no step stools or pulley systems required.

2. You run into fewer sexual positioning problems

I had a long relationship with a dude who was 6'2' — a whole foot taller than me. When we stood side-by-side, his penis was about even with my abdomen, which made sex exactly as awkward as you'd imagine. Trying to reconcile height disparities while boning involved a lot of crouching on unstable structures made out of stacked pillows and crawling around on tables, trying to use my D+ in high school Geometry to make all the angles line up. With a short dude, there's no problem — all your parts align, and you're free to get creative, instead of spending all your time just trying to get your genitals on the same visual plane.

3. There is no correlation between height and penis size

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Seriously. Trust me. Or don't! Trust this 1993 study, published in the way-too-entertaingly-titled Annals of Sex Research, which found that there was basically no connection between height and penis size. But also, seriously, trust me. No connection at all.

4. Short guys have more sex

A recent study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found that guys under 5'9' had sex more often than their taller counterparts. Who knows why? Are they all having sex with me? Is that it? (I'm not free to release that information, sorry)

5. If you're short, short guys can empathize with your small-person problems

I am a person with many hobbies and interests, but I will freely admit to you that the majority my life is about how I can't ever reach anything that's located on a top shelf at the grocery store. When I was dating around, I found the idea of dating a super-tall guy who had never had to ask a sales associate to help him get a box of Cap'n Crunch down exotic; but I'm glad that I settled down with someone who gets me on every level — including the level where I'm in a constant state of rage about how all jeans are too long for my legs.

6. You won't have to give up heels

When I met my boyfriend, I assumed that he'd be sensitive about the height thing, and resigned my extensive and expensive heel collection to the back of my closet, switching them out for Converse and flats. But soon after we got together, he asked why I had so many heels that I never wore. It turned out that he loved me in heels — and also, he had made his peace with his height and his body, and didn't need me to change the way I dressed or the things I liked to make him feel more like a man. Short guys know they are short, and very few of them will demand that you make concessions about it (the ones who do are jerks, obvi).

7. Short guys live longer than tall guys

Short men live two years longer than tall men, on average — good news for any of my fellow morbid straight women who spend an inordinate amount of time wondering if they or their partner will die first.

8. Short guys don't have a Napoleon complex

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Being short doesn't make you power-hungry, demanding, or give you something to prove. Jerks come in all shapes and sizes, yo.

9. You don't need to feel 'tiny' in order to feel sexy

I've encountered a lot of women who say that they only want to hook up with taller dudes because they want to feel 'tiny' and like they're being 'ravished' in bed. To which I can only reply: dude, have you ever actually been ravished? It has nothing to do with height, unless your main sexual fetish is being carried back and forth across a room, over and over again. Sexiness, virility, and even old-fashioned machismo are not outside the domain of shorter guys.

Plus, the idea that the only way you can feel like a 'real woman' in bed is to be smaller than your partner smells like anti-feminist propaganda to me, frankly. Why doesn't everyone just try to be whatever size they actually are, and just bang the hell out of each other that way?

10. Only dating guys who are above a certain height is pretty superficial

Listen, what turns you on is what turns you on, and if you can really only get a wide-on for dudes over six feet, that's a-okay. But if you're only into tall guys, I would urge you to think about why you'll only date tall guys. Imagine meeting a guy who said he'd only date girls with D cup boobs or larger. You'd think he was a total pig, right? You'd also think his priorities were all out of whack — having big boobs has nothing to do with being a good partner, or even being a good lover or physically attractive. Do you see where I'm going with this? It's worth looking inside yourself, and seeing if height is what actually turns you on, or just what society has taught you to prize in a partner.

11. Men who are into dating women who are taller than them can be pretty enlightened

Of course, this dating/height bias goes both ways. A lot of men want to date a woman who is physically smaller than them, for the same reasons that a lot of women want to hook up with tall guys: that's how society says it should go, and it physically replicates our social ideas of the roles men and women should play in heterosexual relationships — that men should be big and powerful, and that women should be less powerful.

That's why a guy who's game for dating a taller woman might have more progressive ideas about dating and women in general, too — a 2014 study suggested that men 5'7' and shorter did more housework, were less likely to get divorced, and were more open to dating older women. All facts that ring true to me — my dude pulls his weight around our house, and was game to date me even though I was 28 and he was 24 when we met. Though the paper didn't delve into why this disparity exists, I think we might be able to chalk it up to empathy. Short men have been considered 'less than' by a culture that still equates height with masculinity, and this has opened their eyes to what a crock traditional gender roles can be.

Obviously, not all short guys are male feminists, and not all tall guys are cavemen who think you should go make them a sandwich. But short men have a different cultural experience than tall men, and I believe that this can make them excellent lovers, amazing boyfriends, and sensitive partners.

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Or they're just better boyfriends because their faces are already located closer to your vagina. Either way, score!

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