Why Are You Still Rejecting Short Guys?

To be bigger than men is to worry that you’ll turn them off. Webb found that it isn’t just men lying about their height online, women do, too—to appear shorter. (With good cause: Women over six feet receive forty percent fewer messages on OkCupid than their 5’4” counterparts.) Ask any super-tall woman about her dateless teenage years and the number of times a well-meaning adult said to her, “The boys are just intimidated by you.” Taller is mannish. Taller is… weird.

It is regarded as weird to be a taller than average woman—I can attest. Growing up pale, “too thin” and taller (5’11) than most dudes in the short, tan, blonde hair, big tits worshipping South was not a cakewalk in the boyfriend getting department. Barring a couple exceptions, it wasn’t until I hit college that guys my own age even noticed me, much less approached me with any indication that being taller was actually part of the attraction.

I always equated being taller with being less feminine, although I never actually went the other way with it by insisting on boyfriends being taller than me; most of them were shorter because most men are shorter than me. Had I refused to date men who were shorter, I’d have hardly dated at all.

But this is where I get confused, because whenever we try to politicize attraction to certain physical traits rather than other physical traits, it gets tricky. When talking with someone about their preferences, particularly when they “happen” to be culturally condoned preferences, people tend to get defensive.

Hey, can’t people just be attracted to whatever they like, they argue. Is it really discrimination to prefer a man who is tall, dark, or handsome to a man who is short, pale, and just OK-looking? Alternately, is it really so wrong to want a woman with blonde hair and big tits versus one with brown hair and smaller ones? Is it even shallow, especially when physical attraction is a necessary component of any lasting romantic endeavor? You can’t help attraction! I just like what I like!

Furthermore, what—are we supposed to right social evils through dating more inclusively? Is that anyone’s job? And can you differentiate what you like from what society gives you, not by your own choice, but through chance and circumstance and pattern? Take me, for example: Am I attracted to shorter men because that’s just “what I like,” or is it possible that my so-called deviant height status guided me to consider personality or faces as much or more than heights? Is it possible that likewise, I attracted people who did the same—either liked me for my height or they liked me in spite of it, because they too felt outside conventional norms as well.

Maybe I just got lucky and happened to like shorter men and simultaneously needed to like shorter men. Had I been a shorter, tanner, bigger-titted blonde-haired version of myself, what might I “like” in men? Tall, dark, handsome athletic types? Wish I could find out, but I can’t.

Here’s the thing: On some level we are all shallow when it comes to dating, and that’s nothing to apologize for because it’s how it works. We all like what we like. Attraction is sometimes something that forms out of a lifetime of exposure to one thing or another, the familiar or the novel. Sometimes what you like is inexplicable even to you, but it has a pull on you regardless. It’s all so arbitrary, so specific to the situations and relationships that shape us, the images we all see and embrace or reject.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question it or even go against it on purpose. You can and perhaps should choose to consider another type outside what you like before you think about it. Awareness in most things is typically a good thing, if for no other reason than that it expands your options. Dating is no exception.

This has happened to me by virtue of moving out of the region I grew up in. I’m from an extremely homogenous place with that’s largely white people of European heritage. Moving to Los Angeles has opened my eyes to so much, but on the most shallow level, I have begun to find people attractive from an astonishing variety of cultures I’d never been exposed to before, whether it’s longhaired Filipino hesher dudes on skateboards or sun-baked surfer beefcakes. Before I lived here, I couldn’t have included these traits on any short list of what I “like,” because I’d never been exposed to them. I had a frankly generic idea of what was “hot” that I then revised, happily, with all the new examples of beauty I’d see.

So the answer here then is not to shame anyone’s preferences—most of us come by them honestly—and certainly not to enter them into an Olympics of egregiousness. No shame if your tastes run to the conventional. But in the same way some of us like to examine our privileges and biases, we could also consider why our attractions are what they are, and what forces have shaped them, and simply let ourselves open to other kinds of allure.

It’s kind of like falling in love with someone at work you might’ve never chosen from a lineup of potential dates, but whom you end up being drawn to because you got to know them, be around them, and weren’t so focused on the physical. When you’re willing to suspend your more reflexive assumptions, you can be opened up to so much more, short or tall, in any direction it takes you.

Image of Sally’s internal fears by Columbia Pictures, photoshop by Bobby Finger