Something strange I have found from looking at boards and forums on the internet is that the subject of the relative height of the standard heterosexual male-female couple is brought up quite a few times.
The google search term I used to search with was “Couple Height Difference” and the results were amusing and slightly interesting. Most of the results were to show me some of the crazy height differences between celebrities and other famous people from the website Frisky.com, CelebBuzz.com, and other media websites.
The pictures of some of the most extreme celebrity couples’ height differences include some common couples. They are
- Jessica Simpson and her football player husband
- Hayden Panetierre with old bf Wladimir Klitschko who was a professional boxer
- The very quick marriage of Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman
- The equally quick marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphreys
- Fergie and her husband (whose name I forgot)
- Shaq and his current gf who goes by the nickname Hoopz
- Kobe Bryant and his wife
- Eliza Dushku and bf Rick Fox
- Lamar Odom and the other Kardashian sister
- and a whole long list of other celebrities
Others like this forum question HERE posed on the dating website PlentyOfFish.com generated around 200 replies with everyone having their own opinions, personal baises and views being expressed. A lot of women wanted to throw their point of view in there.
Some common thoughts are…
- The man must be at least 4-5 inches taller than the girl.
- The ideal height difference is around 7-9 inches more for the man although the cut off is to be 5 inches taller.
- The man must be so much taller than the women that the girl can lean her entire head on his shoulders.
- The man should be taller than the girl
- The man must be taller then the girl in high heels by around 3-4 inches.
- The man must be at least 6 feet tall, the cut off point.
- The girl doesn’t care how tall he is
- The man doesn’t care how tall the girl is
- The man prefers the girl to be shorter than him
- The man prefers the girl to be around 2-3 inches shorter than him
- The man has a thing for tall girls
- The girl thinks tall men are sexier and give them more of a chance.
- Some joke about how the issue of height is negated when people get the horizontal position aka having sexual intercourse, sex, coitus.
From the forum called ENotAlone.com a poster writes about this issue and wonders whether the couple’s height difference can be too extreme. It seems that tall men are divided on their preferences. Some tall men prefer their female partners to be petite and others like someone closer to their height to avoid neck pain when bending down for the kiss.
On a more fun note HERE is a tumblr blog which features pictures of couples where the height difference is reversed from the standard where the girl is taller than the guy. A guy would comment there that at 6′ 0″ he was rejected by a girl who was 4′ 10″ for being too short. Really???
However let’s get back to the original question, “What is the optimal or perfect height difference or height proportions for a standard heterosexual male-female couple?”
The answer is deceptive since everyone has their own preferences, baises, and opinions. It seems that the majority of women would like their potential male romantic romantic partners to be at least taller than them, especially if they are more on the short side. For taller females, the opinion for the type of guy they are interested in results in a bipolar distribution.
Tall women either are really cool and okay with the idea of dating someone shorter than them due to the issue of the numbers game itself or they are very adamant that they must be with someone at least taller.
The majority of men seem to prefer at least intellectually the idea of a shorter female although I have found from reading more forums on dating websites like PlentyOfFish.com that there is a great number of men who might have some sort of fetish or “thing” for tall women. There is even a website on the internet dedicated specifically for men who are on the shorter side for women who are on the taller side. It is appropriately entitled TallWomen.Org. I have no opinions or issues with the website.
Many other forums would bring up this issue too like Soompi.com, Yahoo Questions, SimilarMinds.com, The Student Room, StraightDope.com, AsianFanatics.com, BPS Research Digest, AsianFanatics.com (again), and a few other sites. From only glancing at these new resources it seems the general opinion for some people is that the height difference should be around 4-5 inches.
Of course we should try to be more scientific. From PubMed study ”Variable preferences for sexual dimorphism inheight as a strategy for increasing the pool ofpotential partners in humans” the researchers state in the abstract that..
“In addition to absolute height, a possiblyimportant mate-choice criterion may be relative height, i.e. the extent of sexual dimorphism in stature(SDS = male height/female height) between oneself and a potential partner. Here, I demonstrate thatpeople adjust their preferences for SDS in relation to their own height in order to increase the potentialpool of partners….”
So it seems that maybe the relative height between the male and female could be more important than the absolute heights. The study found that from the group of subjects being measured, the average height of the women was around 5′ 5″ while the average height of the men was around 5′ 11″. The results showed that the people judging their potential partners chose the height of their partner due to the relative height of themselves. The results also showed that from comparing 3 types of relative height ratios/difference in pictures of couples, none of the selectors chose the have the couple where the female was taller than the male.
The researchers writes, “The meanheights for those who chose the pair representing the meanSDS in the population (180.4 cm for men and 167 cm forwomen) were almost equal to the mean heights for thetwo sexes in the studied group.”
This means that the summed and than averaged out numerical value for what statistical software has come out with is not that women who are 5′ 5″ would prefer men who are 5′ 11″ which would suggest a 6 inch height difference. The right concluded perspective is that the optimum height difference may not be a difference but a height ratio, or height proportion. 5′ 5″ is 65 inches. 5′ 11″ is 71 inches. 71 divided by 65 gives a value of 1.0923 or 1.09. It seems the “perfect” average SDS as the researchers call it is for the man to be around 9% taller in height than the girl. At least that is what the science says.
But as always, everyone is different in their taste and desires. To each his and her own.
