Height and SSH

Like it or not, height is an element of SSH status

A recent study of athletes indicates that women ideally prefer men who are ten inches taller than they are.

Determining the exact 'most attractive' height is not an easy task because there are lots of factors which affect height preferences. However, there are a few common factors that allow us to determine the heights that will be most attractive to the average person.

Professor Gert Stulp, a social scientist from the University of Groningen and expert on human height, told MailOnline: 'One's own height has a strong effect on one's preferred height.'

In a study of 5,782 speed daters, Professor Stulp found that women preferred men who were on average 9.8 inches (25cm) taller than themselves. Men, on the other hand, preferred women who were on average 3.1 inches (8cm) shorter than themselves.

The average female height in the USA is 5’ 3.5”, which means that for the average woman, the ideal male height is 6’ 1”. Unfortunately for women, the average height for men is only 5’9” and only 14.5 percent of the male population is 6’1” or taller.

Which, you might note, is suspiciously close to that magic 17 percent figure that represents the men that women find attractive, which is to say, the Alphas and Bravos as well as the occasional Sigma. Of course, there are tall men who are not attractive and there are short men who are, but as a general rule, the SSH odds tend to favor taller men, who quite literally look down on the rest of the population.

Of course, it’s much harder to fake being tall than being rich, which is probably why women put such a premium on height when selecting men through social media. Not that the difficulty doesn’t stop some short men from trying to exaggerate their height.

Dave Portnoy might be rich and influential, but he’ll never be tall.

Now, it’s important to remember that a woman’s ideal cannot be confused with what she is attracted to, much less what she is willing to settle for. It’s no different than the way some men consider a DD chest to be ideal, but are perfectly happy with a pretty woman who wears a C-cup. I’m only 5’9” and while I’ve dated a number of taller women, I’ve never, ever dated a woman nine inches shorter than me.

But it should help underline the way in which most men fall into the invisibility zone as well as explain why those men are invisible. And it also should make it clear that if a man who lacks the easiest attractive attribute, it is incumbent upon him to focus his efforts on other attributes that can help him make up for his deficiencies in that department.

Women have a right to their ideals. But men should not forget that they are only ideals, not expectations or requirements.