Longer legs. My eyes feast upon other parts, so perhaps in the comments the leg men can explain the appeal of long legs.


i like long legz too. i recall a study from a few years ago which showed a correlation between health and femur length. you'd have to correct for race, some groups are stumpier than others....

in nancy etcoff's survival of the prettiest she implies that "supermodels" who are tall and curvy are genetic freaks. in contrast, a lot of catalog models are more "normal" in build and just "pretty." the point is that being very, very, tall (i.e., north of 5'10) for a woman tends to correlate with a particular physique (less curvy). the very small % of women who are built more like short women (curvy, busty, etc.) who have stretched out legs are at a high premium because they combine the necessity of being tall in fashion with hetero male appeal (consider the difference in look between runway models who would never be in the SI swimsuit issue vs. those that would). in contrast, many catalog models who aren't too tall tend to simply be far better looking versions of normal sized women.

Lack of height is a bigger penalty to men than the opposite is for women, so one would assume that men would biologically be attracted to tall women since it increases the likelihood of their sons being tall.
But men do have to be realistic and go for the best they can get, which could explain their online choices.

Perhaps this relates to your previous post that male stars are shorter than average. Is there a force in showbizness equalizing heights of men and women? For instance maybe screen kisses look better when men and women have their lips at approx. the same level.

Screen chemistry is plausibly worse with awkward height differences.

so one would assume that men would biologically be attracted to tall women since it increases the likelihood of their sons being tall.

unless very tall women are less fecund (which might be true because such a big deviation from the norm for females might indicate hormonal issues). but, in mother nature sarah blaffer hrdy reports that larger than average size women tend to have fewer problems with miscarriages, etc.

p.s. don't neglect frequency dependence and mixed-strategies within a population.

Perhaps this relates to your previous post that male stars are shorter than average.

Wait till tomorrow -- there is another one on male height. Still for show-offs, but not in the movies.

so one would assume that men would biologically be attracted to tall women since it increases the likelihood of their sons being tall.

That's a pretty risky strategy for a shortie to play. Just look at online personals ads!

Sexual dimorphism in H. sapiens is reported at 94% (female height/male height), so maybe that could be presumed to be the optimal ratio in sexual selection.

I must be missing something - that online dating study says "the ideal height for women is in the 5'3" - 5'8" range". I don't see any disagreement between that and the celebrity data.

The really scary part is it says the optimal BMI for women is 17.

Do women always tell the truth about their height, or is it like their age?

One other complication: height varies with social class. I don't have US figures, but in the UK the middle classes would be at least an inch taller than the working classes. If 'celebrities' tend to be on average from slightly higher class backgrounds, this could explain the data.

I'm aware that celebrities can be trailer trash (Britney?) but I'm talking about averages.

If online dating attracts men who are themselves a bit on the short-arsed side, and they wish to be taller than their dates, then it follows that they'll prefer titchy women. No?

LOL!

Yes - I see one female commenter on the Tierney blog noted that on average men who go in for online dating tend to be a bit elevation-challenged.

David B - Maria Sharapova (highest paid sportswoman in history) routinely refuses to answer questions from journalists about her height, except to comment that she is 'too tall'. She is something in excess of 6'2", and possibly still growing.

I once watched a mixed doubles match, live courtside in the third row, between Max Mirnyi (the Beast from Belarusse)/Venus Williams and Juan Carlos Ferrero/Maria Sharapova. Venus was noticeably the shortest player on the court, and she is 6'1".

For the record, Mirnyi/Williams absolutely creamed Ferrero/Sharapova.

I agree with Sandgroper, bioIgnoramus & Alexis. Men go to these sites for one reason - to score. Odds are you've a better chance scoring a short chick than a tall one, even if you are not 'elevation challenged'. Less work in the end.

I dunno about anyone else but really tall girls scare me.
I went for a job interview once and the woman interrogating me was like 6'2 (I'm 6'1), really hot, and I felt weird in her company, completely intimidated. Beauty + height, a terrifying combination, I just wouldn't bother with them, a waste of time.

It was that terrible but mercifully brief early teen period when girls are taller than boys all over again. But maybe it's just me? I am oversensitive after all.

Nope - one day I accidentally got tangled up with the national Chinese women's volleyball team who were out on a training run. I was suddenly surrounded by a lot of extremely tall and sweaty women in track suits.

I enjoyed every single second of it. Boy did they smell good.

[sex symbols on the average 1.5 inches taller than the average American woman]

A function of age?

I keep saying this, but I think that personal sexual fantasies (and the group sexual fantasies manifest in media) are very poor data for much of anything. You might as well use anime girls as data.

Some of the stereotypical attributes of supermodels are signs of biological health (though hair and complexion are all completely engineered by now). But large breasts, even if natural, really aren't -- breast size has little or no correlation with ability to breastfeed. (They could be classified as "costly signalling" I suppose, like a peacock's tail).

From a biological point of view, the tall slender women we fantasize about are not well designed for childbirth or childbearing. Wide hips are for a reason. And model slenderness approaches toxicity.

Finally, the women who photograph best are taller and slenderer than the ones who look best in the flesh. (It's an artifact of the process.) This is actually something that is testable, and I'd like to see the test -- random groups of horny guys, some f them rating photos and some of them rating actual women.

And then, many fashion photographers are gay. And fashion photos need to appeal to women, so they also represent the woman that women wish they were.

What John sez. And a few others of you too.

One thing to add: I used to work in a building that also housed a modeling agency, so the lobby was often full of models. They're a much stranger bunch in the flesh than people often imagine -- much more physically peculiar, much less immediately hawt. They're mannerist, oddball, extreme, and often (physically speaking) a little hard-edged.

That's all because that's what the fashion mags like, and what the fashion-photography camera likes too. It's like modernist architecture -- looks great on the page, but seldom plays out all that well in the flesh.

If they're intimidating, it isn't because of what they are. (They were often losers at school because they looked so peculiar, like Borzois amidst a lot of beagles and spaniels.) It's because, well, you've seen them and creatures like them in magazines, so it's confounding and impressive to encounter them in the flesh. You react more to the fact that they've been in fashion ads than the fact of what they are.

By the time they succeed they've usually learned how to put themselves together in public. But most of them didn't start out that way. Like I say, often beautiful as objets d'art but not conventionally hawt in person.

re: short vs. tall women. jenny mccarthy did playboy cuz she was too short to be a 'regular' model from what i recall her saying. i think tall chix are relatively attractive so long as they're not mannish, but i do think there is a preference for most males to prefer women non-trivially smaller than them, just as women ideally prefer a man larger than them (the old number i saw was that women ideally want a 6 inch differential).

Well, remember that the Maxim Hot 100 isn't a list of models -- I googled around and found that the minimum that fashion model agencies set is 5'8, and most are 5'9 - 5'10. The list I used is mostly singers and actresses, most of whom a regular guy would have no problem "thinking of," unlike the girls in Vogue.

that men would biologically be attracted to tall women since it increases the likelihood of their sons being tall.

I suspect that this was one of the reasons my husband married me, really. His both parents were about 1-2 inches smaller than he was.

The result:
M(5'8) x F(5'10) = offspring M (6'3.6)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ spo...16517440232.jpg

http://www.bvbinfo.com/images/ph...photos/ 7238.jpg

Chen Xue is 6'3", BMI=19. Native of Fujian Province.

Razib:

You're right. Most of 'em want a differential of at least six inches. (I just never heard it called a "differential" before. Live and learn!)

Short guys rule tall guys droll give me a short guy anyday.Short woman and tall guys do not look cool it looks like a dad taking his girl out.

I know this is old, but I figured I'd offer my 2 cents and good sense anyway.

Believe it or not, I went two decades without ever having been conscious of height whatsoever. I didn't even realize it was a "thing" to so many people. In fact, I didn't even know how tall I was! (I am a 5'3" caucasian female.) Had I ever needed to report a criminal's approximate height, I could have just as easily said 5'6" as 6'6". I never paid attention to the supermodels in the media spotlight, because the only salient features to me were that they were attractive, but manly and very sick looking. I never even noticed height was a major part of it.

My height consciousness was finally raised in college by a guy who obsessed over height, a female friend who was obsessed with her own tallness, and studies that began cropping up for the first time in the MSM reporting that men suffer all kinds of costs for not being exceptionally tall.

Why am I commenting? This onus on men for feeling badly about their height is ridiculous! When I looked back at my life post-height awareness, I realized I had been attracted to males of all heights, but there were some around whom I felt a vague discomfort that I was "too bulky"--usually handsome Asian guys, who I now recognize were actually just short! Lacking this cultural indoctrination that shames men for being "too short," I was the one who felt the onus was on me for having the improperly dimorphic body. I remember when I liked those guys, I felt too big and wished to be tiny and even Asian. I don't like how the media hurts both men and women in this regard by constructing damaging cultural memes from the minds of the dumbest among us (one of the downsides of America's free speech is that the idiots get to have a voice--a loud one that manages to run the culture). I know I'm probably not the only petite girl who remembers wanting an even smaller frame around certain guys before being height conscious. It seems as though women who would think the way I do now feel it's culturally acceptable to demean men for this one characteristic instead, and I don't think it's as biologically inevitable as the studies purport them to be.

However, I can vouch for females' preference for prominent, fat, muscular butts. Those studies were just preaching to the choir. Stop obsessing over height, money, and penis size, and learn to be funny, faithful, and do lots of squats.

hi there

Sorry there,now i am a below average height kind of guy.I am 22 yrs old and 4'10 dont laugh but my height is actually from my mum which sometimes happens she is 4'11 so i didnt quite make her height anyway.I have a brother 5'11 and sister 5'4 both younger.Yes it is a pain that no one believes i am older but later on in life it evens out i suppose.Off course my height bothers alot of people mainly guys who try to have a dig this inturn results in them being surprised has a few karate moves come out.Yes i do have kids saying how old i am especially my younger siblings friends.I can still drive a car and do what i want though.I am with a woman at the moment who is 25 yrs old and surprise surprise she is taller than myself.She is 5'0 tall so when we are barefooted she is just right for me i can nearly look into her eyes if i look up slightly.She tells me that she is lucky only in that she can wear heels and get noticed abit more.Now when we go out she can be about 5ins taller which is quite alot.I cant moan though has i had been with taller woman it seems i am abit of a magnet for taller woman.I did used to try to meet short woman i never ever lied about my height but when i met one woman she turned up and was quite rude she said i just wanted to see what a short guy looked like she was 5'7.The shortest woman i was with was exactly the same height we looked like bookends it was quite funny but rather nice has well.We were togeth for a short time and i soon lost out to a tall guy never mind.Now everything is great and we are getting married in 2 years.Her dad was rather disappointed with my height and thought she should be with someone taller buy she stood her ground which i am proud about.She tells me on our wedding day she may not wear very high heels has she already has a couple of inches on me anyway.She wants to wear shoes with 2ins which she likes has she feels better for wearing them.Height doesnt really bother me yes i would have loved to have been taller but then again it is also nice to have my shorter relatives around be.My only problem is my best man to be is gonna be my brother and he is a good foot taller.I may have stand on a chair for our pictures ha ha ha.The tall people will definetly ournumber the short ones that will be there.Even my best friend is quite tall has well he is 6'0.So it could come to the land of the giants when i get married but it should still be a good one

I am a 4'11 woman and the shortest out of my siblings.They are between 5'4 and 5'9.My mum is 5'8 and my dad is abit on the wee side,he is 5'0 tall.Now my dad has struggled all his life with his height yes he did marry quite a tall woman but that is what he wanted all the time.I am the youngest out of my siblings.I used to say all the rest of the took the height tonic and none was lefy for me.I get on just great with dad he likes it that he is taller than someone in our family.My dad used to be in the r.a.f and surprised everyone with his strength and passion for flying.He was the shortest in his parade that took place many years ago.He has also met the queen and always says dont underestimate yourself.I tend to get alot of tall guys after me but i feel short guys are much more sensitive and can handle situations better.I do have my eye on someone at the moment.Has long has guys are honest about their height there should not be a problem with a woman.If the woman wants a taller guy then they should let you know before building up peoples hopes.GOOD LUCK

I like beig a short guy has when i meet a woman 9/10 she will have her breast level with my eyeline which is just the way i like it.Now i am 5'2 tall and i love woman around 5'7 with high heels on.Dont get me wrong a short woman is good for the height to make out but walking with a tall woman and everyone staring is smashing.I just love my height i talk to people on the internet tell me all about me and thats it.I know some woman can be very rude and obnoxious.Try look at it like this opposites do attract.Short men tall woman the taller the better.My tallest was 5'10 she loved it and still wore heels.The shortest was 4'10 not too bad but i didnt like being the tallest in the relationship.Hey guys try it.It is no good waiting around for it to happen i know short woman want a tall man.But with all the tall men wainting short woman that leaves all the tall woman for us short guys