Another societal woe brought on by the Internet. I am a straight man, but unlike most straight men I know, I work in a female-dominated field and my friend group has always consisted of many...
Exemplary
Another societal woe brought on by the Internet.
I am a straight man, but unlike most straight men I know, I work in a female-dominated field and my friend group has always consisted of many women. In fact, it's probably majority women these days. It's crystal clear to me when I talk to my guy friends that I see women as normal people while they view women as an alien species. This is a huge disconnect that allows these types of toxic beauty standards to thrive (in magazines previously, on the internet today).
Women aren't meeting men regularly at the nail salon and men aren't meeting women regularly on construction sites. They only encounter the opposite gender online - and unfortunately the internet exposes us to many people who are instagram-addicted, mentally-unsound, attention-seekers with crazy beliefs.
Normal people are out there dating other normal people. My colleagues and friends are married to men of all shapes and sizes. A lot of the happiest marriages I've ever seen are between people who are outwardly "mismatched."
Men, get a job and a hobby. Keep yourself and your living space clean. Be willing to go to a Taylor Swift concert because it makes your date happy. Be willing to have female friends (the absolute best wingmen on Earth). Put yourself in situations where you will meet real women in the real world. Most importantly, don't be fucking creepy.
This is the secret sauce to meeting a ton of women without having to break your legs. Ladies, you don't have to do crazy shit either. Plenty of decent guys out there.
People who are happily meeting other people are rarely overthinking it. They're out there living their life. You gotta do some extrovert stuff but just relax.
I am tall. I have worked in female environments. I know short men. Being short is a real issue. I understand that "be interesting, get a hobby" is overall sound advice. But I think this comment...
I am tall. I have worked in female environments. I know short men. Being short is a real issue. I understand that "be interesting, get a hobby" is overall sound advice. But I think this comment sounds dismissive, and that is not good. It is actually harder to date if you are short.
This whole conversation sounds very detached from reality.
Imagine the same comment but talking about poor people and rich people, instead of single people and people with a girlfriend/wife.
Imagine the same comment but talking about poor people and rich people, instead of single people and people with a girlfriend/wife.
Look, I hang out with a bunch of rich people, I know all sorts of them who came from poor backgrounds. Just because the majority of people who are poor can't get out of it doesn't mean it's not their own fault, they just need to work harder.
Money and attractiveness are wildly different things. You can make a super quick surface comparison but it falls apart very quickly. When I walk into a Toyota dealership, I have no expectation...
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Money and attractiveness are wildly different things. You can make a super quick surface comparison but it falls apart very quickly.
When I walk into a Toyota dealership, I have no expectation that they're going to be giving me a vehicle for anything other than a pretty well-defined amount of money. Nobody is trading me a car in exchange for love, laughs, loyalty, charm, intelligence, companionship, shared interests, conversation, looks, future expectations (this list is essentially endless so I'll stop here).
I am 5' 9" with a weak chin, receding hairline, and I'm skinny but not fit. I have a big nose and I look like a nerd. My father was an alcoholic drug addict, I myself am a recovering drug addict. I was born in a house my parents bought at auction before they split and I moved into an apartment with my mom. I can sit here all day and talk about my disadvantages. Everybody has them.
The percent of people who are born straight, white, wealthy, intelligent, healthy, neurotypical, tall, attractive, and male is very low on a global scale. It's even lower if you want to dig into "true" beauty and assume this hypothetical person has proportional features and whatever else the incels hyper focus on. And yet, plenty of people get out there and bump uglies and get married.
The world is extremely unfair. There are a lot of hot people out there who are going to be approaching the dating world with an advantage. If you acknowledge this and your reaction is to sit it out and give up, well, you miss 100% of the shots you never take.
Ask me how I know. My mom and brother crack jokes all the time that I must have tricked these women because I always dated and slept "out of my league."
Nope. I just honestly never thought about it. I made friends with people and respectfully "shot my shot" when I felt there might be an opportunity. And just to be extra clear, I have never in my life felt like a woman was instantly attracted to me. Never. I am not an immediate "looker" by any stretch. I am someone that some women find attractive after getting to know me.
I'm happily married now with zero desire to change that, but it's clear to me that dating gets even easier for men as they get older. The sheer number of women who immediately give me the eyes when they see me simply caring for my son is astounding. The number of female friends who say to me, "I wish my boyfriend/husband did that" when I describe something as basic as fixing something at the house or taking my wife to a stupid movie that I had no interest in.
Men are struggling and there are a lot of really legitimate reasons for that. Having some disadvantage in the looks department is not one of them. Obviously this may be a different conversation if you are dealing with something extremely atypical that truly and severely limits your dating options but this does not apply to 99.5% of people.
To take an extreme example - you will notice one commonality in the incel shooters who make the news and it's not their looks. Half of them are more "traditionally attractive" than I will ever be. The thing they have in common is that they have shitty outlooks on life and women. I have a ton of empathy for them despite their horrific crimes. I didn't become a recovering drug addict by being a mentally healthy person my whole life. I know what it's like to curl inward and isolate. I know what it's like to become bitter and sad/angry. I also know it never solved a single problem I had.
I apologize that this comes off as dismissive. I know. But it's tough love. It helped me once upon a time.
Assuming you read a comment by someone who claimed to have been born poor but made it rich anyway, would you take it seriously? Obviously natural looks are not the only thing that matters, and you...
Assuming you read a comment by someone who claimed to have been born poor but made it rich anyway, would you take it seriously?
Obviously natural looks are not the only thing that matters, and you can fail while having them, or succeed without them. In the same way that people born poor can become rich, while people born rich can become poor.
There are a lot of just-world believers and answers that happen to be the most convenient answer to the question in this thread. People don't necessarily deserve the life they live.
There are a lot of just-world believers and answers that happen to be the most convenient answer to the question in this thread. People don't necessarily deserve the life they live.
You have a great comment, and it's right in line with my experience with absolutely everything from start to finish. The only quibble I would raise, is that it's not brought on by the internet....
You have a great comment, and it's right in line with my experience with absolutely everything from start to finish. The only quibble I would raise, is that it's not brought on by the internet. Because it happened long before the internet, and will continue to exist even after the internet becomes so regulated that it has completely changed into something else. It was happening when I was an 8 year old boy watching Married with Children, it was happening when women did the "how to please a man" quiz in Cosmopolitan magazine. It is happening when men gather at gentlemen's clubs (yes they still exist) and engage in "locker room talk" about women, and when women gather at the nail salon and talk about their boyfriend's penis size (which my wife assures me she has done in her life). I have vivid memories of being a teenager, being in locker rooms or in men's clubs, and being disgusted with the things they would say about women. It kept me from joining, it kept me from going back when I had a choice, but I fear I am the minority there. Call it what you will, but each name will alienate someone who is reading this: toxic masculinity, patriarchy, gender identity, the social construct of gender, etc.
Personally, I think it's going to keep on happening until we somehow all come to think of men and women as just other humans. That is what I see as the main difference in my own thought process from others. I truly believe that as a man it's no different to understand a women than it is a man, because our brains really do function the same. The moment we write off a person's thoughts or feelings as a factor of their sex, gender, race, etc. that is a moment we find our prejudice.
This is important insight, but also just a side effect of a few major important differences between the sexes - notably how they are treated and separated in society (including what they are...
Exemplary
This is important insight, but also just a side effect of a few major important differences between the sexes - notably how they are treated and separated in society (including what they are taught to value and what skills are reinforced) and biological realities that tend to lead sexes towards particular kinds of behavior.
A minor quibble, however-
I truly believe that as a man it's no different to understand a women than it is a man, because our brains really do function the same.
As a gender-walker who has experienced life in many different presentations and social roles, I believe this statement is a bit misleading. The heart of the matter is true - we both have brains, and our brains are remarkably similar (very few sex-based differences and it's hard to say how much of it is brought on by hormones and by environment). However, it is important to note that the roles and skills which are reinforced by society absolutely shape how our brain interprets information. It's quite easy, I think, for people to imagine that the way someone raised in isolation or abuse thinks is going to be fundamentally different from the way someone raised in a healthier environment thinks. The same is true for people raised in male and female society - what society reinforces for them as skills they need to learn, what they are complimented for doing and not doing, and similarly what they are chastised for doing and not doing.
Ultimately these do shape how men and women approach and interact with each other, as well as how we interpret and assimilate information. Sometimes these things are difficult to de-internalize, or the people may have no interest in de-internalizing them. For example, some women may feel that men need to pursue them in order for them to feel desired, and that could be deeply-seated feelings which have been internalized from what society values, how it treats women, how it tells women they should feel, and ultimately how dating is "supposed" to work. Since dating is simultaneously a dance which is informed by these values as well as a way to check on alignment on particular issues and compatibility through these lenses, it's frankly a complicated mess of an issue. I would highly suggest making friends of all genders and especially with those outside the binary if you're trying to understand how other people raised in different settings think.
I don't disagree with your tips on how to meet women and it's true that normal people meet and date normal people and the internet distorts that reality to some degree, but the whole comment feels...
I don't disagree with your tips on how to meet women and it's true that normal people meet and date normal people and the internet distorts that reality to some degree, but the whole comment feels like you are not entirely aware of social bubbles you live in.
It reminds me of an observation/interpretation of the conflict between contemporary feminists and certain groups of redpill men. The gist is that their disagreements stem, among other things, from them living in quite different realities because the feminists are mostly middle class women with higher education whereas the redpill guys are often working class men. Saying that men only care about looks in women or that men cheat on their wives with their babysitter is a social norm among working class men (whether the person saying it actually does those things or not). The men are saying how they think the world works around them right now. The middle class educated women however see that obviously this is not how their world works, so they call the men bigoted or brainwashed.
I think that a similar thing must be happening here, because while in my social circles the world does mostly work this way, outside of them it's often a very different image. The world is full of shallow and stupid people, it always has been and it always will be. And they don't even have to be those things, average preferences imo obviously change in different groups of people to some degree. I'm a skinny nerdy young looking guy, I'm not effeminate in my looks or demeanor, but I'm obviously non-threatening. In my experience this seems to be much more of an attractiveness handicap in certain social groups than in others.
I'm just short of 180 cm, so I never had problems with height specifically, though I still remember the first look of a Tinder date who was 5 - 10 cm taller than me and neither of us realized in advance, and how she wasn't entirely successful in hiding her disappointment - fortunately I thought it was funny rather than disappointing. But dating certainly seemed visibly tougher for my short friends, even though most of them were eventually successful.
My best guy friend couldn't make it to my wedding (middle of COVID) so my best gal pal was my best woman at my wedding. She's part of our story anyway so it really worked out better anyway. I've...
Be willing to have female friends (the absolute best wingmen on Earth).
My best guy friend couldn't make it to my wedding (middle of COVID) so my best gal pal was my best woman at my wedding. She's part of our story anyway so it really worked out better anyway.
I've always had close female friends so I consider myself lucky to a) have them and b) to be married to somebody who doesn't mind and doesn't get jealous. I feel like too often social media and reality trash emphasize that jealousy is the default state and that just sucks for everybody involved. Lack of trust erodes reality faster than anything.
I think people are missing the point as to the why: sure. Insecurities are definitely a part of it, body acceptance is another, and general body dysphoria, things that impact people of all...
I think people are missing the point as to the why: sure. Insecurities are definitely a part of it, body acceptance is another, and general body dysphoria, things that impact people of all morphologies shapes and sizes.
There are actual, real costs for not meeting societies ideals of attractive, or normal, and I don't think that they can be handwaved. If you are a short man, or a fat anybody, or an ugly anybody, it impacts romantic prospects, job prospects, how seriously people take you. There are definitely observed differences, that said I don't think limb lengthening is the way forward just due to how insanely disruptive it is, but I can at least understand it. I'm lucky enough that despite being a short man 5'5, I'm still more or less the same height or taller than most women, but given how common preferences are for not just "6ft+" but especially "taller than me" for cishet women that if you were say 5ft even, I could easily see it adversely affecting both your mental health and your romantic and professional success, that's unfortunately how it goes. I think perspective and mindfulness can help but it's easy for me to say as I got married before the influx of dating apps and egregious standards. Not that I necessarily but the exact numbers, but iirc it's something like every additional centimeter of height gets you ~1.3% more income, all other things being equal. I've noticed the shift to remote work (as I've mentioned before on Tildes) seriously helped my career as my height was no longer obvious. And I could see how that would hurt others who may have a stutter or speech impediment, too, humans are just brutal at judging based on observed behaviors, and rarely in the positive direction.
I'm not sure this will change anytime soon, so I guess I hope the technology improves and the people who feel they need this can go through it with less pain and complications.
This is the only take in this thread I can agree with the most, as I feel every other thing I've read on here missing that important point. Yes, there are plenty of psychological/mental reasons to...
This is the only take in this thread I can agree with the most, as I feel every other thing I've read on here missing that important point. Yes, there are plenty of psychological/mental reasons to decide to do this surgery; yes, this is in a way a gender-affirming surgery for cis men - but there are lots of other reasons factoring in into that decision (such as what you said), and reducing people to "brainwashed", "mentally ill", and/or "chronically online" people is a bad thing. Looking at it from the distance, is this really any different to the type of tropes used against trans people by some?
As a trans woman, I have insecurities about my body, beauty standards I cannot meet, and physical dysphoria about my body. These are further legitimised by the actual, real social costs of not looking "normal". They impact job prospects, how seriously people take me, how I have to (over-)plan my actions, and how safe it is for me to exist without being hate-crimed (or worse). Are there cis women with a random subset of those characteristics? Yes, of course, a lot of those elements are normal variations for cis women, and having a given number of those elements does not delegitimise a person, but the more you deviate from the expected societal "normal", the more you'll be discriminated, delegitimised, et cetera. Therefore, some of us - not all of us - may proceed with any given surgery that not only alleviates our insecurities but also makes it a lot more possible to live a better, "normal"-er life societally. We may surgically shave off or otherwise surgically reshape our head's bones and cartilage. We may surgically alter our vocal chords. We may surgically remove part of our collarbone to make our shoulders smaller. We may get our genitalia surgically removed and reshaped into our preferred configuration. Hell, perhaps some of us are getting leg shortening surgeries like the article mentions for women. Are we brainwashed, mentally ill, and/or chronically online? No, unless you ask a handful of people from a very loud minority. If we're going to apply one standard to trans women and trans men, and to some extent cis women, why not apply that same standard to cis men? Why is it that whenever it's about a cis man having gender-affirming medical care - not necessarily surgical, but even dermatological such as in the case of using 5α-reductase inhibitors to slow or reverse hair loss - disproportionately many people show up to call them vain and/or various other negative epithets?
Sure, the internet, the "manosphere", "toxic masculinity", and a lot more factors are somewhat responsible for these upticks (see also: a somewhat-recent tildes post about chin masculinisation surgeries in the manosphere), but we can't legitimately put all our eggs in one basket.
And, to be clear, no, I'm not trying to evangelise a very painful surgery with a lot of potential complications and put it on a pedestal, nor am I trying to evangelise a surgery that makes cis men look like "gigachads" rather unrealistically. If anything, I'm terrified of surgeries and wish to avoid them at most costs; yet, I recognise that, even in my own case, I'd rather perform one of the surgeries I previously listed than keep experiencing body horror, massive stress, and other problems for the rest of my life if I can have anything to do anything about that.
Like, yes, I understand that the "manosphere", incel groups, "toxic masculinity", unbridled capitalism, and various sources promoting unrealistic body standards are partly to blame about some of these surgeries, but let's please do these people some agency.
Absolutely. It is unfairly framing this activity as "black and white" when it's on a spectrum of grey (as most things are). If someone is altering their body, and it's something they truly want, I...
reducing people to "brainwashed", "mentally ill", and/or "chronically online" people is a bad thing.
Absolutely. It is unfairly framing this activity as "black and white" when it's on a spectrum of grey (as most things are).
If someone is altering their body, and it's something they truly want, I don't have any objection (as long as it isn't harming someone else).
However, I think it is fair to point out that many of these men are not doing it to be who they want to be, but instead who they think society says they should be. And I'm not suggesting if someone wants it for themselves they are brainwashed, I am saying anyone who explicitly says they are doing it because they think it's what women want, etc.
It's a pipe dream at this point, but I wish society would just accept everyone for who they are, and not find more and more ways to create division. We're all human, we all want our basic needs met, and we all want to find a way to be happy.
I hope I’m not being offensive here, let me know if this is offensive because of the content or just the way that I express it This is such a weird take to me just coming from my reality where I...
I hope I’m not being offensive here, let me know if this is offensive because of the content or just the way that I express it
This is such a weird take to me just coming from my reality where I cant even change my personality enough to fit in, so changing my body just seems so pointless. I already look normal and as soon as I open my mouth I give myself away immediately, I am actually an alien in human skin and everyone knows as soon as I talk.
This inability to fit in has risen such resentment in me that sometimes I’m just purposely obtuse, I refuse to even try to change small parts about my personality cause I feel the effort is wasted, I learn all about small talk and all the tricks and memorize all the gotchas so people wont be offended by me so quickly and still eventually they reject me, they cant help it, I’m different and therefore not trustworthy.
I never in a million years would consider going through the pain of surgery just to fit in with all these assholes who wouldn’t like me soon as I open my mouth anyway. I honestly cant imagine what it would even be like to want to be normal.
I can see that people do this to themselves, women have been getting plastic surgery since long before I was born, but to me its horrific and they’re all fine just the way they are and changing themselves wont make people like them more anyway, not really, not in the way that matters.
To add to this, for the majority of cis women I've asked about the topic, height matters. It may be the most consistently important physical trait for women. They may not particularly appreciate...
To add to this, for the majority of cis women I've asked about the topic, height matters. It may be the most consistently important physical trait for women. They may not particularly appreciate that this superficial thing matters to them but they admit that it does.
I'm reasonably tall so it's not something I've had to deal with but from my 3rd party perspective, it's harder out there for short men.
No doubt much less so for those that don't fixate on it and turn it into an insecurity, plenty of people will look past physical details if there's a connection. But I don't think it's fair to short men to pretend that there aren't real challenges to being short.
I know there’s an issue with these MRA (is that even really a term anymore) talking point. But it does seem the conversation always goes to “oh you’re so vain, don’t worry about it, look inward”...
I know there’s an issue with these MRA (is that even really a term anymore) talking point. But it does seem the conversation always goes to “oh you’re so vain, don’t worry about it, look inward” when it comes to men talking about their physical insecurities. When women talk about their insecurities, they get a lot of “you’re beautiful either way” stuff too but it’s coated in sympathy as opposed to the way male insecurity is.
An example would be alopecia, a woman dealing with alopecia is sad it’s a tragedy, but a man dealing with it just needs to shave it off and hit the gym. It’s an odd thing. Even in this thread the immediate reaction is to label the guys getting this surgery as toxic.
Perhaps another dimension to think about, though, is that to many people, if a heterosexual woman is ugly, she has no chance of getting herself a man (like your alopecia example - she really is...
Perhaps another dimension to think about, though, is that to many people, if a heterosexual woman is ugly, she has no chance of getting herself a man (like your alopecia example - she really is screwed to a lot of people!), whereas for a man, he has other assets that might attract someone, like his money, or his career, or his muscles. It may be equally superficial, but there is an absolute plethora of examples of unattractive men picking up all kinds of attractive women, and the reverse just isn't really true. You're allowed to get old and saggy as a man, and baldness and beer guts are commonplace after a certain age, but God help you if you're an old saggy woman going out without a full face on and hair dye!
I think traditionally there has also been much more severe criticisms via entire industries policing women's looks, often enforced by women's culture. Early American dieting fads are linked back to imperious Protestant magazines, extolling the virtues of pale, thin women who are dutiful to their husbands, whereas there isn't really that same level of toxic policing of men's bodies (also linking back to their virtuousness). I think there's certainly growing industries and manosphere articles talking about the importance of men's bodies and status, but I think it still has a long way to go to catch up with the sheer hatred that many women are taught to feel about their bodies - too thin, too fat, too booby, too flat, too hairy, too dark, too light, too muscular...and on and on and on. All enforced by the beauty industry. When men can't buy pants without also thinking about the right accompanying accessories to store their keys and wallets, I'll know we're in the same ballpark!
I acknowledge that beauty standards have been harder on women, but the “men can just be rich” stuff is the exact dismissive comment about male insecurity that I’m talking about. As if it’s somehow...
I acknowledge that beauty standards have been harder on women, but the “men can just be rich” stuff is the exact dismissive comment about male insecurity that I’m talking about. As if it’s somehow easy to be rich and muscular. Or like there aren’t extensive art pieces of being an unattractive man (Notes From the Underground, The Elephant Man).
It’s also not that true. It suggests that women are somehow more virtuous than men in not prioritizing looks, but they do. We all do. It’s just how it goes. If you’re at a disadvantage looks wise (whether that’s weight, hair, wrinkles, or height) it puts you at a disadvantage in romance. Do we really want to believe that every man who has struggled to date for his height is some toxic person with a terrible personality? Would we say the same about every woman who struggles dating for being too big?
This is a grass is greener on the other side, because of your experiences you believe a looks-deficient man has an easier time dating than a looks-deficient woman. Whereas men think the other way, that it’s easier for women to get romantic attention even if they’re average or below average looking.
I don't disagree with you. I think if you're a short guy, life is measurably more difficult than if you're an average height or tall guy. The crazy thing to me about his surgery though is that...
I don't disagree with you. I think if you're a short guy, life is measurably more difficult than if you're an average height or tall guy. The crazy thing to me about his surgery though is that some of the guys getting it aren't short. It's common for 5'9 guys to get it just so they can be 6'. Guys over 6' have gotten it.
Hell, the guy in the article is 5'6, which isn't even very short. It's slightly shorter than the male average, and still taller than the female average. It seems insane to have an excrutiating, permanently debilitating, extremely risky surgery to get a few inches taller when you're only 6% shorter than average.
Everyone has things they don't like about the way they look. If we could snap a finger and fix those things, everyone would in a heartbeat. This is about as far from snapping your fingers as physically possible though.
Not that I would think any height really makes this type of procedure worthwhile, but if there actually is a scenario, this height seems to be closer to that than many other heights. What's the...
Hell, the guy in the article is 5'6, which isn't even very short. It's slightly shorter than the male average, and still taller than the female average. It seems insane to have an excrutiating, permanently debilitating, extremely risky surgery to get a few inches taller when you're only 6% shorter than average.
Not that I would think any height really makes this type of procedure worthwhile, but if there actually is a scenario, this height seems to be closer to that than many other heights. What's the point of going from 5' to 5'3"? I can possibly see it in the sense that some women want a guy taller than them and those 3 inches might open up some opportunities, but beyond that, that height is still short. The extra 3 inches makes virtually no difference to how you're perceived, which is much shorter than average. At least going from 5'6" to 5'9" does very minorly adjust the circumstances. If 5'9" is the average for guys, then you may lose the perception of being short.
I'd personally never find this surgery to be worthwhile at any height if the only goal is to be a few inches taller. I suspect that if I were 5' tall and felt insecure about my height, I'd still feel insecure at 5'3" tall. Maybe I could convince myself by statistics that going from 5'6" to 5'9" means I'm not short anymore, but I also question if that would be enough, if I wouldn't still feel short anyhow. At a certain point, what you think about yourself can become divorced from reality. I could think I'm ugly as fuck and someone, or multiple people could tell me that I'm not, and it won't make a bit of difference, I'd still think I'm as ugly as fuck because what I'm comparing myself to and what other people are comparing me to can be very different things. That ties into what you mentioned about guys over 6' getting that procedure.
I'd be really curious to know if height itself will compensate for the disadvantages people feel they have if their height is not correlated with how they feel about themselves. If being 6' tall statistically means I'm more likely to get paid more and get laid more, but inside I still think and feel as insecure as I did when I was 5'9", does the increased height even do anything?
When I was a little kid, we had a toy poodle who spent many of her early years hanging out with two gigantic saint bernards that lived down the street. As a result, she spent her whole life...
When I was a little kid, we had a toy poodle who spent many of her early years hanging out with two gigantic saint bernards that lived down the street. As a result, she spent her whole life thinking she was a big dog. She lumbered around like she was 100lbs and she fearlessly tried to intimidate every visitor that came to the house. Unrelated, but she also learned to urinate like a male dog, which was hilarious.
I didn't realize this until my 30s, but I had a similar experience. My best friends from middle school and highschool were all huge - 6'4", 6'3", 6'6". I never thought I was short at 5'8", I just thought I was normal and they were really big. There were some minor drawbacks, like how I spent most of my time at parties passed out on some couch because I didn't realize I can't keep pace drinking with people who outweigh me by 100 pounds, but my height never crossed my mind.
Then sometime around 2020, the terms 'manlet' and 'short king' started to get thrown around all over the place, and there was a huge shift in how people discussed men's height, especially online. Tall, dark, and handsome had been around my whole life, but it felt like "tall" suddenly became the most important of the three. I began to notice how I was shorter than most of the men I interacted with, even if it was only by a few inches. It was so weird, it felt like I shrunk overnight.
I'm so grateful that this obsession with height wasn't a thing in my teens and 20s. I got to spend those years free of any insecurity about my height, and my potential dates didn't have a social bullhorn telling them to aim for 6ft.
I'm the same height, and never Thought of myself as short, and Didn't even know that being tall was even considered an attractive thing in a man until I was in my 20s. I remember a friend of mine...
I'm the same height, and never
Thought of myself as short, and
Didn't even know that being tall was even considered an attractive thing in a man until I was in my 20s.
I remember a friend of mine talking about how someone we know gets lots of girls because he's tall, and saying "why would being tall help him get any girls".
I'm not even neurodivergent or anything, it's just something I never picked up on or noticed. I never had much of a problem meeting women, and none of them ever commented on liking tall guys or me being short.
It's not until recently that I've seen tons of discourse about anything under 6' being short, or women only dating tall guys, and it makes me feel like these people live in a different reality.
I don't know where you are, but I'm in the US, and about half the men I see when I walk around are my height or shorter. 5'8 is a roughly average height (I think technically 5'9 is dead average, but realistically it's hard to visually judge an inch out of 68 of them)
I've still never been called short by a woman I've persued, and while I'm sure that there are a lot of women who would prefer a guy taller than me, they'd also probably prefer a guy richer, funnier, less awkward in social situations, with a more interesting job and better in bed too, so why develop an insecurity on that shortcoming when there are so many others to choose from?
I get the idea that all of this stems from a lack of touching grass; ie, way too much time online and way too little interacting with real people instead of online influencers who are literally paid to say the most infuriating and controversial things they can.
I think you're exactly right. My experience being around chronically online people who are obsessed with "cosmopolitan" culture makes them feel like they need to adhere to global popular beauty...
I think you're exactly right. My experience being around chronically online people who are obsessed with "cosmopolitan" culture makes them feel like they need to adhere to global popular beauty standards. Living in a relatively small city with very small town vibes in Canada, all of that goes away - your choices just aren't that variable and unless you plan to move somewhere else, you need to pick from what you have available. I think it's yet another example of online-specific or big-city-culture overshadowing the lives of most "regular" folks.
I have met (and dated) a couple of people who were excessively fixated on looks, and it was annoying and exhausting dealing with them. One guy didn't believe me when I said I was attracted to him and that I liked his height of 5'10" (making him much closer to a comfortable smooching height), or saying I was weird and a real "high-value" woman wanted to be with someone 6' or taller. Barf. For me, at least, someone's attractiveness is reflective of them as a whole person - if you like someone and they are tall, you'll find things to like about their tallness, and if you like someone and they're short, you'll find things to like about their smallness. But if you're in it for the long haul your looks and body are going to change a lot, so becoming fixated on one physical feature seems like a recipe for disaster.
I've noticed this as well with very online (online) friends of mine. I have a few people I talk to every now and again that essentially don't go outside. They spend their entire lives on the...
I've noticed this as well with very online (online) friends of mine. I have a few people I talk to every now and again that essentially don't go outside. They spend their entire lives on the internet, and they're very catty and obsessed with whatever the latest trends are.
It was "thigh gaps" for a while, stuff like that. I've never heard anyone in real life talk about this stuff ever, but I live in a medium sized, non cosmopolitan, working class city. These people online talk like they're living in Paris and working in haute couture every day, and I always think to myself "you don't even talk to people in real life. Why do you care about this stuff"?
I think the internet gives people a window into an imagined ultra cool, ultra fashionable, ultra high end lifestyle that probably doesn't even exist in real life, and they somehow start molding their personality into that imagined lifestyle. It's really jarring when you notice it, and totally incongruent with their actual lifestyle. It becomes really frustrating to interact with.
My experience is the female equivalent to yours. I was way into my 20s when I first heard someone mention height as a factor of attractiveness, and I just thought that person was weird. Later I...
I'm the same height, and never
Thought of myself as short, and
Didn't even know that being tall was even considered an attractive thing in a man until I was in my 20s.
I remember a friend of mine talking about how someone we know gets lots of girls because he's tall, and saying "why would being tall help him get any girls".
I'm not even neurodivergent or anything, it's just something I never picked up on or noticed. I never had much of a problem meeting women, and none of them ever commented on liking tall guys or me being short.
My experience is the female equivalent to yours.
I was way into my 20s when I first heard someone mention height as a factor of attractiveness, and I just thought that person was weird. Later I did encounter some other people like this online, but never in real life. When I was almost 40 I made a new (male) friend who started educating me on what an immensely significant factor height actually is for "most women". Not sure which one of us is the better expert as we are both just one person. Granted, I've never dated women and he has, but on the other hand I'm a woman with life long exposure to how other women feel, and he has no female friends other than myself.
To this guy, who is tall himself, it's quite important that his dates be taller than X cm. To me, hearing someone say they wouldn't date a person shorter than X sounds approximately as baffling as "I wouldn't date someone whose first name begins with the letter J". Huh?
You'd think these people have a huge pool to choose dates from if it makes sense to be this picky, but for some reason, usually it's the other way around.
Hahaha amen to that. The way I worded my original post isn't very clear. What I meant to say is that I don't have that insecurity, but I feel like I would if I was coming of age now. Overall, our...
I've still never been called short by a woman I've persued, and while I'm sure that there are a lot of women who would prefer a guy taller than me, they'd also probably prefer a guy richer, funnier, less awkward in social situations, with a more interesting job and better in bed too, so why develop an insecurity on that shortcoming when there are so many others to choose from?
Hahaha amen to that. The way I worded my original post isn't very clear. What I meant to say is that I don't have that insecurity, but I feel like I would if I was coming of age now. Overall, our experiences seem very similar. The closest I've come to being called short is reading a tinder bio that excludes me from the field of candidates.
I get the idea that all of this stems from a lack of touching grass; ie, way too much time online and way too little interacting with real people instead of online influencers who are literally paid to say the most infuriating and controversial things they can.
That makes sense. My social dynamics are kinda weird in that half the people I know irl are normal people while the other half either have a job in the entertainment industry or are pursuing a job in the entertainment industry and therefore are more likely to be caught up on the the latest trends/discourse. The irl height comments I've heard have overwhelmingly come from the latter category.
I'm a 5'1" man and I cannot imagine being vain enough to go through with this insanity. I put a small plastic step stool in my kitchen and called it a day.
I'm a 5'1" man and I cannot imagine being vain enough to go through with this insanity. I put a small plastic step stool in my kitchen and called it a day.
Is it so bad to use technology to treat body dysmorphia by allowing people to have the bodies they desire? Physical stature is considered an essential masculine trait. Short men get perceived as...
Is it so bad to use technology to treat body dysmorphia by allowing people to have the bodies they desire?
Physical stature is considered an essential masculine trait. Short men get perceived as less masculine. They are approached and messaged much less by women. In the homosexual world, short men get viewed as submissive. To me, this surgery allows people (probably mostly men) to better align their physical traits with their innate gender and how their genderness will be read by society.
The risk of giving people with body dysmorphia the bodies they desire is that their desires are warped by a distorted perspective. People like Eugenia Cooney have gotten the bodies they desire,...
The risk of giving people with body dysmorphia the bodies they desire is that their desires are warped by a distorted perspective.
People like Eugenia Cooney have gotten the bodies they desire, but I dont know if I would say thats a good thing for their health.
I dont know the science, maybe its totally fine and healthy, but I cant help but wonder if there are long term negative side effects to snapping your legs in half and reconstructing them if you dont need to.
According to a review of 12 studies covering 760 patients who underwent "aesthetic limb lengthening" (ALL), patient satisfaction rates range between 88.8 to 98%. Those are very good numbers.
According to a review of 12 studies covering 760 patients who underwent "aesthetic limb lengthening" (ALL), patient satisfaction rates range between 88.8 to 98%. Those are very good numbers.
I’m pretty entrenched in Blackpill areas on the internet so I’ve known about this surgery for years prior to it hitting the mainstream. Celine Song included a plot point of a character having this...
I’m pretty entrenched in Blackpill areas on the internet so I’ve known about this surgery for years prior to it hitting the mainstream. Celine Song included a plot point of a character having this surgery in her film Materialists.
The last I heard of it you can’t walk for a year following the surgery to allow the healing process to complete. I’m sure as the tech advances that window will shrink.
Really goes to show how beauty standards also affect men if they’re willing to go to this brutal procedure to gain some inches. I’m 5’10, I was lucky enough to get my dads height but if I had inherited my mother’s height (5’2) or the height of her brothers (5’6) I can’t say I wouldn’t consider getting this.
It was also a plot point in GATTACA (1997): in order for Ethan Hawke to pretend to be Jude Law, he had to break his legs for the extra height difference.
It was also a plot point in GATTACA (1997): in order for Ethan Hawke to pretend to be Jude Law, he had to break his legs for the extra height difference.
It’s the old adage “money can’t unlame you.” Has there ever been a great time to be insecure as a young person though. Even before the invention of the internet, and definitely before the culture...
I mean look at fucking Zuck, dude went from looking like a boiled hotdog in a hoodie to some broccoli haired, chain wearing zoomer. Is he any cooler or better? Fuck no, he's arguably worse but I bet someone told him it would make him "cool" and being a decent human being is hard.
It’s the old adage “money can’t unlame you.”
Has there ever been a great time to be insecure as a young person though. Even before the invention of the internet, and definitely before the culture surrounding Instagram and TikTok, would most people not take a magic pill that made them prettier, thinner, and taller. Even going back to the 19th century when the snake oil salesman idea started, people would buy elixirs to grow back hair and whatnot.
It’s just now medical science has reached a point where you can just take a “magic pill.” Ozempic, hair loss medication, hair transplants, jaw implants, this surgery. Expensive perhaps but more available than they used to be, is it shocking that people would flock to it.
I have come to believe that the source of the whole issues between men and women in dating is the fact that men are almost always the pursuers and women are almost always being pursued. I've...
I have come to believe that the source of the whole issues between men and women in dating is the fact that men are almost always the pursuers and women are almost always being pursued. I've recently experienced what it's like to switch sides and oh my god being pursued is incredible in the way how in control you feel, like you cannot possibly do ANYTHING wrong that is going to turn off the one pursuing. It was liberating and awesome, but on the other hand it can also be annoying or scary, and I also realized I have absolutely no idea how to say no and especially how to say no without feeling bad about it.
On the other hand, it also gave me extremely valuable perspective of what it feels like on the other side. I genuinely think that if we all experienced both sides of this (that is, if both genders pursued each other evenly) we would all be better at understanding how the other person feels. Most of my female friends have experienced the whole "oh I didn't realize he was into me this whole time, we were just friends" which I think is because they don't know how does it look to pursue someone when you don't know if they're into it. And guys can be oblivious as to when they definitely should pursue or indeed when they absolutely should stop - because they don't know what it's like to be pursued and what signals come from it.
That being said, I don't believe this dynamic will ever significantly change. It feels so damn good to be on the passive/receiving end that I don't think anyone who's in that position would change that dynamic very much. Which is a shame, because I do think it's ultimately a mistake, but what can you do.
The UK's Channel 4 has a documentary episode called The Toxic World of Perfect Looks. It follows three different men, each taking actions to improve their looks, one of whom is undergoing leg...
The UK's Channel 4 has a documentary episode called The Toxic World of Perfect Looks. It follows three different men, each taking actions to improve their looks, one of whom is undergoing leg lengthening surgery. It's a good companion piece to this article.
Another societal woe brought on by the Internet.
I am a straight man, but unlike most straight men I know, I work in a female-dominated field and my friend group has always consisted of many women. In fact, it's probably majority women these days. It's crystal clear to me when I talk to my guy friends that I see women as normal people while they view women as an alien species. This is a huge disconnect that allows these types of toxic beauty standards to thrive (in magazines previously, on the internet today).
Women aren't meeting men regularly at the nail salon and men aren't meeting women regularly on construction sites. They only encounter the opposite gender online - and unfortunately the internet exposes us to many people who are instagram-addicted, mentally-unsound, attention-seekers with crazy beliefs.
Normal people are out there dating other normal people. My colleagues and friends are married to men of all shapes and sizes. A lot of the happiest marriages I've ever seen are between people who are outwardly "mismatched."
Men, get a job and a hobby. Keep yourself and your living space clean. Be willing to go to a Taylor Swift concert because it makes your date happy. Be willing to have female friends (the absolute best wingmen on Earth). Put yourself in situations where you will meet real women in the real world. Most importantly, don't be fucking creepy.
This is the secret sauce to meeting a ton of women without having to break your legs. Ladies, you don't have to do crazy shit either. Plenty of decent guys out there.
People who are happily meeting other people are rarely overthinking it. They're out there living their life. You gotta do some extrovert stuff but just relax.
I am tall. I have worked in female environments. I know short men. Being short is a real issue. I understand that "be interesting, get a hobby" is overall sound advice. But I think this comment sounds dismissive, and that is not good. It is actually harder to date if you are short.
This whole conversation sounds very detached from reality.
Imagine the same comment but talking about poor people and rich people, instead of single people and people with a girlfriend/wife.
Money and attractiveness are wildly different things. You can make a super quick surface comparison but it falls apart very quickly.
When I walk into a Toyota dealership, I have no expectation that they're going to be giving me a vehicle for anything other than a pretty well-defined amount of money. Nobody is trading me a car in exchange for love, laughs, loyalty, charm, intelligence, companionship, shared interests, conversation, looks, future expectations (this list is essentially endless so I'll stop here).
I am 5' 9" with a weak chin, receding hairline, and I'm skinny but not fit. I have a big nose and I look like a nerd. My father was an alcoholic drug addict, I myself am a recovering drug addict. I was born in a house my parents bought at auction before they split and I moved into an apartment with my mom. I can sit here all day and talk about my disadvantages. Everybody has them.
The percent of people who are born straight, white, wealthy, intelligent, healthy, neurotypical, tall, attractive, and male is very low on a global scale. It's even lower if you want to dig into "true" beauty and assume this hypothetical person has proportional features and whatever else the incels hyper focus on. And yet, plenty of people get out there and bump uglies and get married.
The world is extremely unfair. There are a lot of hot people out there who are going to be approaching the dating world with an advantage. If you acknowledge this and your reaction is to sit it out and give up, well, you miss 100% of the shots you never take.
Ask me how I know. My mom and brother crack jokes all the time that I must have tricked these women because I always dated and slept "out of my league."
Nope. I just honestly never thought about it. I made friends with people and respectfully "shot my shot" when I felt there might be an opportunity. And just to be extra clear, I have never in my life felt like a woman was instantly attracted to me. Never. I am not an immediate "looker" by any stretch. I am someone that some women find attractive after getting to know me.
I'm happily married now with zero desire to change that, but it's clear to me that dating gets even easier for men as they get older. The sheer number of women who immediately give me the eyes when they see me simply caring for my son is astounding. The number of female friends who say to me, "I wish my boyfriend/husband did that" when I describe something as basic as fixing something at the house or taking my wife to a stupid movie that I had no interest in.
Men are struggling and there are a lot of really legitimate reasons for that. Having some disadvantage in the looks department is not one of them. Obviously this may be a different conversation if you are dealing with something extremely atypical that truly and severely limits your dating options but this does not apply to 99.5% of people.
To take an extreme example - you will notice one commonality in the incel shooters who make the news and it's not their looks. Half of them are more "traditionally attractive" than I will ever be. The thing they have in common is that they have shitty outlooks on life and women. I have a ton of empathy for them despite their horrific crimes. I didn't become a recovering drug addict by being a mentally healthy person my whole life. I know what it's like to curl inward and isolate. I know what it's like to become bitter and sad/angry. I also know it never solved a single problem I had.
I apologize that this comes off as dismissive. I know. But it's tough love. It helped me once upon a time.
Assuming you read a comment by someone who claimed to have been born poor but made it rich anyway, would you take it seriously?
Obviously natural looks are not the only thing that matters, and you can fail while having them, or succeed without them. In the same way that people born poor can become rich, while people born rich can become poor.
I mean that's just something people actually say all the time lol
Not on this website
There are a lot of just-world believers and answers that happen to be the most convenient answer to the question in this thread. People don't necessarily deserve the life they live.
I wouldn't be so negative. But I do believe there is some well-meaning distortion going on here.
You have a great comment, and it's right in line with my experience with absolutely everything from start to finish. The only quibble I would raise, is that it's not brought on by the internet. Because it happened long before the internet, and will continue to exist even after the internet becomes so regulated that it has completely changed into something else. It was happening when I was an 8 year old boy watching Married with Children, it was happening when women did the "how to please a man" quiz in Cosmopolitan magazine. It is happening when men gather at gentlemen's clubs (yes they still exist) and engage in "locker room talk" about women, and when women gather at the nail salon and talk about their boyfriend's penis size (which my wife assures me she has done in her life). I have vivid memories of being a teenager, being in locker rooms or in men's clubs, and being disgusted with the things they would say about women. It kept me from joining, it kept me from going back when I had a choice, but I fear I am the minority there. Call it what you will, but each name will alienate someone who is reading this: toxic masculinity, patriarchy, gender identity, the social construct of gender, etc.
Personally, I think it's going to keep on happening until we somehow all come to think of men and women as just other humans. That is what I see as the main difference in my own thought process from others. I truly believe that as a man it's no different to understand a women than it is a man, because our brains really do function the same. The moment we write off a person's thoughts or feelings as a factor of their sex, gender, race, etc. that is a moment we find our prejudice.
This is important insight, but also just a side effect of a few major important differences between the sexes - notably how they are treated and separated in society (including what they are taught to value and what skills are reinforced) and biological realities that tend to lead sexes towards particular kinds of behavior.
A minor quibble, however-
As a gender-walker who has experienced life in many different presentations and social roles, I believe this statement is a bit misleading. The heart of the matter is true - we both have brains, and our brains are remarkably similar (very few sex-based differences and it's hard to say how much of it is brought on by hormones and by environment). However, it is important to note that the roles and skills which are reinforced by society absolutely shape how our brain interprets information. It's quite easy, I think, for people to imagine that the way someone raised in isolation or abuse thinks is going to be fundamentally different from the way someone raised in a healthier environment thinks. The same is true for people raised in male and female society - what society reinforces for them as skills they need to learn, what they are complimented for doing and not doing, and similarly what they are chastised for doing and not doing.
Ultimately these do shape how men and women approach and interact with each other, as well as how we interpret and assimilate information. Sometimes these things are difficult to de-internalize, or the people may have no interest in de-internalizing them. For example, some women may feel that men need to pursue them in order for them to feel desired, and that could be deeply-seated feelings which have been internalized from what society values, how it treats women, how it tells women they should feel, and ultimately how dating is "supposed" to work. Since dating is simultaneously a dance which is informed by these values as well as a way to check on alignment on particular issues and compatibility through these lenses, it's frankly a complicated mess of an issue. I would highly suggest making friends of all genders and especially with those outside the binary if you're trying to understand how other people raised in different settings think.
I don't disagree with your tips on how to meet women and it's true that normal people meet and date normal people and the internet distorts that reality to some degree, but the whole comment feels like you are not entirely aware of social bubbles you live in.
It reminds me of an observation/interpretation of the conflict between contemporary feminists and certain groups of redpill men. The gist is that their disagreements stem, among other things, from them living in quite different realities because the feminists are mostly middle class women with higher education whereas the redpill guys are often working class men. Saying that men only care about looks in women or that men cheat on their wives with their babysitter is a social norm among working class men (whether the person saying it actually does those things or not). The men are saying how they think the world works around them right now. The middle class educated women however see that obviously this is not how their world works, so they call the men bigoted or brainwashed.
I think that a similar thing must be happening here, because while in my social circles the world does mostly work this way, outside of them it's often a very different image. The world is full of shallow and stupid people, it always has been and it always will be. And they don't even have to be those things, average preferences imo obviously change in different groups of people to some degree. I'm a skinny nerdy young looking guy, I'm not effeminate in my looks or demeanor, but I'm obviously non-threatening. In my experience this seems to be much more of an attractiveness handicap in certain social groups than in others.
I'm just short of 180 cm, so I never had problems with height specifically, though I still remember the first look of a Tinder date who was 5 - 10 cm taller than me and neither of us realized in advance, and how she wasn't entirely successful in hiding her disappointment - fortunately I thought it was funny rather than disappointing. But dating certainly seemed visibly tougher for my short friends, even though most of them were eventually successful.
My best guy friend couldn't make it to my wedding (middle of COVID) so my best gal pal was my best woman at my wedding. She's part of our story anyway so it really worked out better anyway.
I've always had close female friends so I consider myself lucky to a) have them and b) to be married to somebody who doesn't mind and doesn't get jealous. I feel like too often social media and reality trash emphasize that jealousy is the default state and that just sucks for everybody involved. Lack of trust erodes reality faster than anything.
I think people are missing the point as to the why: sure. Insecurities are definitely a part of it, body acceptance is another, and general body dysphoria, things that impact people of all morphologies shapes and sizes.
There are actual, real costs for not meeting societies ideals of attractive, or normal, and I don't think that they can be handwaved. If you are a short man, or a fat anybody, or an ugly anybody, it impacts romantic prospects, job prospects, how seriously people take you. There are definitely observed differences, that said I don't think limb lengthening is the way forward just due to how insanely disruptive it is, but I can at least understand it. I'm lucky enough that despite being a short man 5'5, I'm still more or less the same height or taller than most women, but given how common preferences are for not just "6ft+" but especially "taller than me" for cishet women that if you were say 5ft even, I could easily see it adversely affecting both your mental health and your romantic and professional success, that's unfortunately how it goes. I think perspective and mindfulness can help but it's easy for me to say as I got married before the influx of dating apps and egregious standards. Not that I necessarily but the exact numbers, but iirc it's something like every additional centimeter of height gets you ~1.3% more income, all other things being equal. I've noticed the shift to remote work (as I've mentioned before on Tildes) seriously helped my career as my height was no longer obvious. And I could see how that would hurt others who may have a stutter or speech impediment, too, humans are just brutal at judging based on observed behaviors, and rarely in the positive direction.
I'm not sure this will change anytime soon, so I guess I hope the technology improves and the people who feel they need this can go through it with less pain and complications.
This is the only take in this thread I can agree with the most, as I feel every other thing I've read on here missing that important point. Yes, there are plenty of psychological/mental reasons to decide to do this surgery; yes, this is in a way a gender-affirming surgery for cis men - but there are lots of other reasons factoring in into that decision (such as what you said), and reducing people to "brainwashed", "mentally ill", and/or "chronically online" people is a bad thing. Looking at it from the distance, is this really any different to the type of tropes used against trans people by some?
As a trans woman, I have insecurities about my body, beauty standards I cannot meet, and physical dysphoria about my body. These are further legitimised by the actual, real social costs of not looking "normal". They impact job prospects, how seriously people take me, how I have to (over-)plan my actions, and how safe it is for me to exist without being hate-crimed (or worse). Are there cis women with a random subset of those characteristics? Yes, of course, a lot of those elements are normal variations for cis women, and having a given number of those elements does not delegitimise a person, but the more you deviate from the expected societal "normal", the more you'll be discriminated, delegitimised, et cetera. Therefore, some of us - not all of us - may proceed with any given surgery that not only alleviates our insecurities but also makes it a lot more possible to live a better, "normal"-er life societally. We may surgically shave off or otherwise surgically reshape our head's bones and cartilage. We may surgically alter our vocal chords. We may surgically remove part of our collarbone to make our shoulders smaller. We may get our genitalia surgically removed and reshaped into our preferred configuration. Hell, perhaps some of us are getting leg shortening surgeries like the article mentions for women. Are we brainwashed, mentally ill, and/or chronically online? No, unless you ask a handful of people from a very loud minority. If we're going to apply one standard to trans women and trans men, and to some extent cis women, why not apply that same standard to cis men? Why is it that whenever it's about a cis man having gender-affirming medical care - not necessarily surgical, but even dermatological such as in the case of using 5α-reductase inhibitors to slow or reverse hair loss - disproportionately many people show up to call them vain and/or various other negative epithets?
Sure, the internet, the "manosphere", "toxic masculinity", and a lot more factors are somewhat responsible for these upticks (see also: a somewhat-recent tildes post about chin masculinisation surgeries in the manosphere), but we can't legitimately put all our eggs in one basket.
And, to be clear, no, I'm not trying to evangelise a very painful surgery with a lot of potential complications and put it on a pedestal, nor am I trying to evangelise a surgery that makes cis men look like "gigachads" rather unrealistically. If anything, I'm terrified of surgeries and wish to avoid them at most costs; yet, I recognise that, even in my own case, I'd rather perform one of the surgeries I previously listed than keep experiencing body horror, massive stress, and other problems for the rest of my life if I can have anything to do anything about that.
Like, yes, I understand that the "manosphere", incel groups, "toxic masculinity", unbridled capitalism, and various sources promoting unrealistic body standards are partly to blame about some of these surgeries, but let's please do these people some agency.
Absolutely. It is unfairly framing this activity as "black and white" when it's on a spectrum of grey (as most things are).
If someone is altering their body, and it's something they truly want, I don't have any objection (as long as it isn't harming someone else).
However, I think it is fair to point out that many of these men are not doing it to be who they want to be, but instead who they think society says they should be. And I'm not suggesting if someone wants it for themselves they are brainwashed, I am saying anyone who explicitly says they are doing it because they think it's what women want, etc.
It's a pipe dream at this point, but I wish society would just accept everyone for who they are, and not find more and more ways to create division. We're all human, we all want our basic needs met, and we all want to find a way to be happy.
I hope I’m not being offensive here, let me know if this is offensive because of the content or just the way that I express it
This is such a weird take to me just coming from my reality where I cant even change my personality enough to fit in, so changing my body just seems so pointless. I already look normal and as soon as I open my mouth I give myself away immediately, I am actually an alien in human skin and everyone knows as soon as I talk.
This inability to fit in has risen such resentment in me that sometimes I’m just purposely obtuse, I refuse to even try to change small parts about my personality cause I feel the effort is wasted, I learn all about small talk and all the tricks and memorize all the gotchas so people wont be offended by me so quickly and still eventually they reject me, they cant help it, I’m different and therefore not trustworthy.
I never in a million years would consider going through the pain of surgery just to fit in with all these assholes who wouldn’t like me soon as I open my mouth anyway. I honestly cant imagine what it would even be like to want to be normal.
I can see that people do this to themselves, women have been getting plastic surgery since long before I was born, but to me its horrific and they’re all fine just the way they are and changing themselves wont make people like them more anyway, not really, not in the way that matters.
To add to this, for the majority of cis women I've asked about the topic, height matters. It may be the most consistently important physical trait for women. They may not particularly appreciate that this superficial thing matters to them but they admit that it does.
I'm reasonably tall so it's not something I've had to deal with but from my 3rd party perspective, it's harder out there for short men.
No doubt much less so for those that don't fixate on it and turn it into an insecurity, plenty of people will look past physical details if there's a connection. But I don't think it's fair to short men to pretend that there aren't real challenges to being short.
I know there’s an issue with these MRA (is that even really a term anymore) talking point. But it does seem the conversation always goes to “oh you’re so vain, don’t worry about it, look inward” when it comes to men talking about their physical insecurities. When women talk about their insecurities, they get a lot of “you’re beautiful either way” stuff too but it’s coated in sympathy as opposed to the way male insecurity is.
An example would be alopecia, a woman dealing with alopecia is sad it’s a tragedy, but a man dealing with it just needs to shave it off and hit the gym. It’s an odd thing. Even in this thread the immediate reaction is to label the guys getting this surgery as toxic.
Perhaps another dimension to think about, though, is that to many people, if a heterosexual woman is ugly, she has no chance of getting herself a man (like your alopecia example - she really is screwed to a lot of people!), whereas for a man, he has other assets that might attract someone, like his money, or his career, or his muscles. It may be equally superficial, but there is an absolute plethora of examples of unattractive men picking up all kinds of attractive women, and the reverse just isn't really true. You're allowed to get old and saggy as a man, and baldness and beer guts are commonplace after a certain age, but God help you if you're an old saggy woman going out without a full face on and hair dye!
I think traditionally there has also been much more severe criticisms via entire industries policing women's looks, often enforced by women's culture. Early American dieting fads are linked back to imperious Protestant magazines, extolling the virtues of pale, thin women who are dutiful to their husbands, whereas there isn't really that same level of toxic policing of men's bodies (also linking back to their virtuousness). I think there's certainly growing industries and manosphere articles talking about the importance of men's bodies and status, but I think it still has a long way to go to catch up with the sheer hatred that many women are taught to feel about their bodies - too thin, too fat, too booby, too flat, too hairy, too dark, too light, too muscular...and on and on and on. All enforced by the beauty industry. When men can't buy pants without also thinking about the right accompanying accessories to store their keys and wallets, I'll know we're in the same ballpark!
I acknowledge that beauty standards have been harder on women, but the “men can just be rich” stuff is the exact dismissive comment about male insecurity that I’m talking about. As if it’s somehow easy to be rich and muscular. Or like there aren’t extensive art pieces of being an unattractive man (Notes From the Underground, The Elephant Man).
It’s also not that true. It suggests that women are somehow more virtuous than men in not prioritizing looks, but they do. We all do. It’s just how it goes. If you’re at a disadvantage looks wise (whether that’s weight, hair, wrinkles, or height) it puts you at a disadvantage in romance. Do we really want to believe that every man who has struggled to date for his height is some toxic person with a terrible personality? Would we say the same about every woman who struggles dating for being too big?
This is a grass is greener on the other side, because of your experiences you believe a looks-deficient man has an easier time dating than a looks-deficient woman. Whereas men think the other way, that it’s easier for women to get romantic attention even if they’re average or below average looking.
Bingo. I appreciate someone pointing this out.
I don't disagree with you. I think if you're a short guy, life is measurably more difficult than if you're an average height or tall guy. The crazy thing to me about his surgery though is that some of the guys getting it aren't short. It's common for 5'9 guys to get it just so they can be 6'. Guys over 6' have gotten it.
Hell, the guy in the article is 5'6, which isn't even very short. It's slightly shorter than the male average, and still taller than the female average. It seems insane to have an excrutiating, permanently debilitating, extremely risky surgery to get a few inches taller when you're only 6% shorter than average.
Everyone has things they don't like about the way they look. If we could snap a finger and fix those things, everyone would in a heartbeat. This is about as far from snapping your fingers as physically possible though.
Not that I would think any height really makes this type of procedure worthwhile, but if there actually is a scenario, this height seems to be closer to that than many other heights. What's the point of going from 5' to 5'3"? I can possibly see it in the sense that some women want a guy taller than them and those 3 inches might open up some opportunities, but beyond that, that height is still short. The extra 3 inches makes virtually no difference to how you're perceived, which is much shorter than average. At least going from 5'6" to 5'9" does very minorly adjust the circumstances. If 5'9" is the average for guys, then you may lose the perception of being short.
I'd personally never find this surgery to be worthwhile at any height if the only goal is to be a few inches taller. I suspect that if I were 5' tall and felt insecure about my height, I'd still feel insecure at 5'3" tall. Maybe I could convince myself by statistics that going from 5'6" to 5'9" means I'm not short anymore, but I also question if that would be enough, if I wouldn't still feel short anyhow. At a certain point, what you think about yourself can become divorced from reality. I could think I'm ugly as fuck and someone, or multiple people could tell me that I'm not, and it won't make a bit of difference, I'd still think I'm as ugly as fuck because what I'm comparing myself to and what other people are comparing me to can be very different things. That ties into what you mentioned about guys over 6' getting that procedure.
I'd be really curious to know if height itself will compensate for the disadvantages people feel they have if their height is not correlated with how they feel about themselves. If being 6' tall statistically means I'm more likely to get paid more and get laid more, but inside I still think and feel as insecure as I did when I was 5'9", does the increased height even do anything?
When I was a little kid, we had a toy poodle who spent many of her early years hanging out with two gigantic saint bernards that lived down the street. As a result, she spent her whole life thinking she was a big dog. She lumbered around like she was 100lbs and she fearlessly tried to intimidate every visitor that came to the house. Unrelated, but she also learned to urinate like a male dog, which was hilarious.
I didn't realize this until my 30s, but I had a similar experience. My best friends from middle school and highschool were all huge - 6'4", 6'3", 6'6". I never thought I was short at 5'8", I just thought I was normal and they were really big. There were some minor drawbacks, like how I spent most of my time at parties passed out on some couch because I didn't realize I can't keep pace drinking with people who outweigh me by 100 pounds, but my height never crossed my mind.
Then sometime around 2020, the terms 'manlet' and 'short king' started to get thrown around all over the place, and there was a huge shift in how people discussed men's height, especially online. Tall, dark, and handsome had been around my whole life, but it felt like "tall" suddenly became the most important of the three. I began to notice how I was shorter than most of the men I interacted with, even if it was only by a few inches. It was so weird, it felt like I shrunk overnight.
I'm so grateful that this obsession with height wasn't a thing in my teens and 20s. I got to spend those years free of any insecurity about my height, and my potential dates didn't have a social bullhorn telling them to aim for 6ft.
I'm the same height, and never
Thought of myself as short, and
Didn't even know that being tall was even considered an attractive thing in a man until I was in my 20s.
I remember a friend of mine talking about how someone we know gets lots of girls because he's tall, and saying "why would being tall help him get any girls".
I'm not even neurodivergent or anything, it's just something I never picked up on or noticed. I never had much of a problem meeting women, and none of them ever commented on liking tall guys or me being short.
It's not until recently that I've seen tons of discourse about anything under 6' being short, or women only dating tall guys, and it makes me feel like these people live in a different reality.
I don't know where you are, but I'm in the US, and about half the men I see when I walk around are my height or shorter. 5'8 is a roughly average height (I think technically 5'9 is dead average, but realistically it's hard to visually judge an inch out of 68 of them)
I've still never been called short by a woman I've persued, and while I'm sure that there are a lot of women who would prefer a guy taller than me, they'd also probably prefer a guy richer, funnier, less awkward in social situations, with a more interesting job and better in bed too, so why develop an insecurity on that shortcoming when there are so many others to choose from?
I get the idea that all of this stems from a lack of touching grass; ie, way too much time online and way too little interacting with real people instead of online influencers who are literally paid to say the most infuriating and controversial things they can.
I think you're exactly right. My experience being around chronically online people who are obsessed with "cosmopolitan" culture makes them feel like they need to adhere to global popular beauty standards. Living in a relatively small city with very small town vibes in Canada, all of that goes away - your choices just aren't that variable and unless you plan to move somewhere else, you need to pick from what you have available. I think it's yet another example of online-specific or big-city-culture overshadowing the lives of most "regular" folks.
I have met (and dated) a couple of people who were excessively fixated on looks, and it was annoying and exhausting dealing with them. One guy didn't believe me when I said I was attracted to him and that I liked his height of 5'10" (making him much closer to a comfortable smooching height), or saying I was weird and a real "high-value" woman wanted to be with someone 6' or taller. Barf. For me, at least, someone's attractiveness is reflective of them as a whole person - if you like someone and they are tall, you'll find things to like about their tallness, and if you like someone and they're short, you'll find things to like about their smallness. But if you're in it for the long haul your looks and body are going to change a lot, so becoming fixated on one physical feature seems like a recipe for disaster.
I've noticed this as well with very online (online) friends of mine. I have a few people I talk to every now and again that essentially don't go outside. They spend their entire lives on the internet, and they're very catty and obsessed with whatever the latest trends are.
It was "thigh gaps" for a while, stuff like that. I've never heard anyone in real life talk about this stuff ever, but I live in a medium sized, non cosmopolitan, working class city. These people online talk like they're living in Paris and working in haute couture every day, and I always think to myself "you don't even talk to people in real life. Why do you care about this stuff"?
I think the internet gives people a window into an imagined ultra cool, ultra fashionable, ultra high end lifestyle that probably doesn't even exist in real life, and they somehow start molding their personality into that imagined lifestyle. It's really jarring when you notice it, and totally incongruent with their actual lifestyle. It becomes really frustrating to interact with.
My experience is the female equivalent to yours.
I was way into my 20s when I first heard someone mention height as a factor of attractiveness, and I just thought that person was weird. Later I did encounter some other people like this online, but never in real life. When I was almost 40 I made a new (male) friend who started educating me on what an immensely significant factor height actually is for "most women". Not sure which one of us is the better expert as we are both just one person. Granted, I've never dated women and he has, but on the other hand I'm a woman with life long exposure to how other women feel, and he has no female friends other than myself.
To this guy, who is tall himself, it's quite important that his dates be taller than X cm. To me, hearing someone say they wouldn't date a person shorter than X sounds approximately as baffling as "I wouldn't date someone whose first name begins with the letter J". Huh?
You'd think these people have a huge pool to choose dates from if it makes sense to be this picky, but for some reason, usually it's the other way around.
Hahaha amen to that. The way I worded my original post isn't very clear. What I meant to say is that I don't have that insecurity, but I feel like I would if I was coming of age now. Overall, our experiences seem very similar. The closest I've come to being called short is reading a tinder bio that excludes me from the field of candidates.
That makes sense. My social dynamics are kinda weird in that half the people I know irl are normal people while the other half either have a job in the entertainment industry or are pursuing a job in the entertainment industry and therefore are more likely to be caught up on the the latest trends/discourse. The irl height comments I've heard have overwhelmingly come from the latter category.
I'm a 5'1" man and I cannot imagine being vain enough to go through with this insanity. I put a small plastic step stool in my kitchen and called it a day.
Truly a hell of their own making. Christ on a bike.
Is it so bad to use technology to treat body dysmorphia by allowing people to have the bodies they desire?
Physical stature is considered an essential masculine trait. Short men get perceived as less masculine. They are approached and messaged much less by women. In the homosexual world, short men get viewed as submissive. To me, this surgery allows people (probably mostly men) to better align their physical traits with their innate gender and how their genderness will be read by society.
The risk of giving people with body dysmorphia the bodies they desire is that their desires are warped by a distorted perspective.
People like Eugenia Cooney have gotten the bodies they desire, but I dont know if I would say thats a good thing for their health.
I dont know the science, maybe its totally fine and healthy, but I cant help but wonder if there are long term negative side effects to snapping your legs in half and reconstructing them if you dont need to.
It's hard to say it's wrong for cis people to medically resolve body dysmorphia while supporting trans people in doing so.
According to a review of 12 studies covering 760 patients who underwent "aesthetic limb lengthening" (ALL), patient satisfaction rates range between 88.8 to 98%. Those are very good numbers.
I’m pretty entrenched in Blackpill areas on the internet so I’ve known about this surgery for years prior to it hitting the mainstream. Celine Song included a plot point of a character having this surgery in her film Materialists.
The last I heard of it you can’t walk for a year following the surgery to allow the healing process to complete. I’m sure as the tech advances that window will shrink.
Really goes to show how beauty standards also affect men if they’re willing to go to this brutal procedure to gain some inches. I’m 5’10, I was lucky enough to get my dads height but if I had inherited my mother’s height (5’2) or the height of her brothers (5’6) I can’t say I wouldn’t consider getting this.
It was also a plot point in GATTACA (1997): in order for Ethan Hawke to pretend to be Jude Law, he had to break his legs for the extra height difference.
It’s the old adage “money can’t unlame you.”
Has there ever been a great time to be insecure as a young person though. Even before the invention of the internet, and definitely before the culture surrounding Instagram and TikTok, would most people not take a magic pill that made them prettier, thinner, and taller. Even going back to the 19th century when the snake oil salesman idea started, people would buy elixirs to grow back hair and whatnot.
It’s just now medical science has reached a point where you can just take a “magic pill.” Ozempic, hair loss medication, hair transplants, jaw implants, this surgery. Expensive perhaps but more available than they used to be, is it shocking that people would flock to it.
I have come to believe that the source of the whole issues between men and women in dating is the fact that men are almost always the pursuers and women are almost always being pursued. I've recently experienced what it's like to switch sides and oh my god being pursued is incredible in the way how in control you feel, like you cannot possibly do ANYTHING wrong that is going to turn off the one pursuing. It was liberating and awesome, but on the other hand it can also be annoying or scary, and I also realized I have absolutely no idea how to say no and especially how to say no without feeling bad about it.
On the other hand, it also gave me extremely valuable perspective of what it feels like on the other side. I genuinely think that if we all experienced both sides of this (that is, if both genders pursued each other evenly) we would all be better at understanding how the other person feels. Most of my female friends have experienced the whole "oh I didn't realize he was into me this whole time, we were just friends" which I think is because they don't know how does it look to pursue someone when you don't know if they're into it. And guys can be oblivious as to when they definitely should pursue or indeed when they absolutely should stop - because they don't know what it's like to be pursued and what signals come from it.
That being said, I don't believe this dynamic will ever significantly change. It feels so damn good to be on the passive/receiving end that I don't think anyone who's in that position would change that dynamic very much. Which is a shame, because I do think it's ultimately a mistake, but what can you do.
[Surgery photo front and center alert]
Archival link https://archive.is/2HibV
The UK's Channel 4 has a documentary episode called The Toxic World of Perfect Looks. It follows three different men, each taking actions to improve their looks, one of whom is undergoing leg lengthening surgery. It's a good companion piece to this article.
I didn't even know that leg lengthening was possible until I watched Baki and saw Jack Hanma go through that procedure.
I remember seeing this in the movie Gattaca. I had no idea it was a real medical procedure.