[Ciderpress]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This only really became a phenomenon with the rise of online dating as a norm. Sure, shortness was perceived as a negative quality but that influence was pretty small.

A man's desirability is an emergent property of all his qualities, positive and negative. Some of them are somewhat intangible but extremely powerful, more than capable of outweighing being short, like humor. With online dating, essentially, women are provided with 1,000's of resumes. On any given one, you have no clue what that emergent property is going to look like until you meet, so there's really no evident reason not to weed out the pile based on things like height, income. Being tall is no guarantee you'll have success in online dating but it does get your foot in the door.

Before online dating, when most courtships stemmed from your social network, your foot was already in the door, and you were appraised based on that emergent property I mentioned. I'd say it works similarly with women except what they look like is the extremely dominant variable when all their qualities come together, to a far greater degree than men.

Vertebrate species with two sexes are all designed so that virtually every female that isn't completely broken is supposed to reproduce, but only some of the males.

Yeah I agree with all of this, but I think there's still a biological inequity when it comes to attraction. In the year 1412 I'm sure the tall dudes still got laid more, and the fat ugly chicks still got laid by literally any man.