
Short men and fat women 'get fewer chances in life', research says - MollyR
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/650785/Short-men-fat-women-less-chances-life
======
sixQuarks
Being a short man is particularly frustrating, because unlike being fat, there
is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Call a man short, or say you only date tall men, nobody bats an eye. Call a
woman fat, or say you'll never date a fat woman, everyone goes nuts.

~~~
Mz
On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, women get to look
forward to being kicked to the curb for being too old. Past a certain age,
even men your age will act like "You are too old to be fuckable" and no one
bats an eyelash at that either. Even otherwise "enlightened" men routinely say
they will happily date a woman who is 10 years younger, but have zero interest
in a woman more than a year or two older.

~~~
sixQuarks
That's not an apples to apples comparison. Old age happens to ALL women - and
ALL women are young at some point, thus it doesn't affect any one individual
adversely. Short stature only affects SOME men, and is a huge disadvantage
throughout life to the individual.

~~~
Mz
There are no apples to apples comparisons here. But, I use female age as a
comparison to male height -- instead of female weight -- because they are both
things beyond our control. If a woman really, really wants to lose the weight,
she potentially can. But you can't make yourself younger or taller.

~~~
sixQuarks
No, you didn't understand. It doesn't matter if a woman can't control her age,
this is not the same comparison. Old age is not controllable, BUT it affects
EVERY SINGLE WOMAN, it is a fair plane when it comes to their peers. Short
stature is not controllable, BUT it ONLY affects certain men. Those men are
treated unfairly compared to their peers.

The only true comparison would be something like "women who are disfigured",
or "women who are super-hairy". It has to affect only a portion of the set.

~~~
Nadya
_> Old age is not controllable, BUT it affects EVERY SINGLE WOMAN, it is a
fair plane when it comes to their peers. _

People age differently.

I've met a 73 year old woman who, I swore, did not look a day over 40. I only
found out her age because I used to work at a theme park where one of the
games I had to run was a weight/age guessing game. I guessed 38 and her entire
family was ecstatic and bursting out in laughter.

Meanwhile I nearly got hit by a woman's boyfriend for guessing she was 35. She
was 24. Keep in mind my job was obviously to have fun and try to avoid
insulting the customer. I guessed 35 because _she looked over 40_.

It will, eventually, affect every single woman. But some have a bit more time
than others.

~~~
77pt77
Just out of curiosity, are you male or female?

------
nilkn
I'm a short guy (5'8") and don't doubt this is true. However, I also strongly
believe that it can be completely overcome and then some. It would be a little
immodest for me to explain why I believe that, but suffice it to say that my
height has not held me back in any appreciable way in any area of life. I
suppose it might matter more if I were to seek the Presidency, but the present
evidence is that it would still be possible for me to at least be a temporary
front-runner for a nomination (see Rubio, Cruz, Paul, etc.). Not bad.

In fact, there are a lot of elements of my height that I've always enjoyed.
It's made me naturally athletic, in the sense that I've always been very
agile. I've never not been able to trivially do pull-ups. I can do things in
gymnastics without training that some much taller people with twice my
strength cannot do with training. I also think that while taller people can be
viewed as more dominating or powerful, at the same time shorter people can be
viewed as more endearing, relatable, and morally innocent. I honestly believe
that on more than one occasion I've been given the benefit of the doubt in
some situation because my physical stature caused me to be viewed with more
empathy and with less of a competitive spirit.

~~~
Jtsummers
You're not short, at least not in the US. You're not tall, either. Current
average is 5'10", with a standard deviation of 4". You're very nearly average.

~~~
nilkn
I don't doubt that statistic is true for the US in general, but it's
definitely possible to end up in some small micro-segment of the population
where the average male height is much closer to 6' than 5'10" and where
heights of 6'2"\+ or even 6'4"\+ are somewhat common. I believe that through
some sequence of events I've found myself mostly existing in such a segment of
the population. For instance, I'm the shortest male in my family (both sides),
including at least one cousin who isn't even done growing yet.

~~~
hkmurakami
I recall my college years where I felt like I was around giants, both genders.

(also 5"8')

------
maxxxxx
You could also add shy people, nonathletic people, ugly people, disabled
people and other groups to that list.

------
domfletcher
I'm not saying there isn't hard evidence for this but The Express is a not a
reputable newspaper and it's articles should always be looked at with a very
skeptical eye. In case that wasn't obvious from clicking around their site for
20-30 seconds.

------
Mz
Yeah, this is incredibly old news. We already know this. When are they going
to investigate why or come up with a new hypothesis?

My hypothesis: Most women reject short men as mates and most men reject fat
women as mates. A successful marriage tends to strongly correlate to
socioeconomic success, longevity, etc.

~~~
guard-of-terra
"Most women reject short men as mates"

Are you sure? Because this, why being `obvious' after 15 seconds of thinking,
may be or not be true.

My anecdotal observations reveal an unusual number of pairs where a tall woman
happily dates below average height man. It works the other way too, short
women often date tall men.

Anyway, no person really need _most_ people of opposite genre accepting them
as a mate. A few is usually enough.

If you'll prove that tall men have more successful marriages, it would be a
huge deal, so I assume that no such correlation exist.

Successful marriage is a complicated thing and I assume that its relation to
ease of dating and partner selectivity is _very_ non-linear.

~~~
colmvp
Online dating stats, at least from OKTrends, show tall men have more sexual
partners than men below the average height. I also wouldn't be surprised if
that also holds true for receiving more responses compared to short men.

Furthermore, my recorded stats of women's profiles in the online dating site
Match.com show a significantly higher number of women prefer to date men of
their own height or taller than women who are willing to date men shorter than
them. Plus, it's also not uncommon for short women to exclusively date tall
men, whereas it's very rare for even tall women to date guys who are
significantly shorter than them.

~~~
guard-of-terra
"it's very rare for even tall women to date guys who are significantly shorter
than them"

It's not very relevant who people _date_ , much more relevant who they end up
with. Might be counter-intuitive.

~~~
magicGLASSman
Come on, you normally end up with someone that you date... don't see many
people ending up with someone they never dated.

------
autotune
What kind of "chances" did they take into account as far as professions go?
One of the joys of working with software and servers, for example, and being
able to make a living online in general, is code doesn't care if you are a
mutated, half-bird, half-walrus, half-human living in a cave in some
mountainous region in the wild. As long as you have wifi access, can write
efficient and readable code, and communicate over text, you can use almost any
picture you want for your avatar on github and contribute to open source
projects and get your work noticed, and likely get hired for it at some point
assuming you can communicate clearly with your voice as well.

------
joolze
So this is basically a study on success as related to self confidence? Why is
this news?

Also one of these conditions is basically curable. Two once men become more
fashion accepting.

------
pklausler
Fewer.

~~~
eric_h
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY)
(Stephen Fry explaining his position on this particular form of pedantry,
amongst other things).

It rubs me the wrong way as well, since my parents (well, my mother; my father
grew up bilingual, so precision in english was certainly not as strong a part
of his upbringing) were quite insistent that I used the correct adjectives and
conjugations in english as I was growing up.

However, the less vs. fewer debate is over, common usage replacing 'fewer'
with 'less' vastly outnumbers proper usage of fewer v. less; time to drop the
pedantry as it is of nebulous benefit to begin with (in this particular case).

"You can't pour a glass of <some obviously enumerable item>" really doesn't
matter anymore, and I feel the difference in the adjective never really
conferred any meaning at all (unless, perhaps, the item you were speaking of
was not obviously enumerable, but I can't think of any reasonable examples of
that).

~~~
pklausler
If X has a plural Xs, say "fewer Xs", else "less X". That simple rule will get
you the right usage most of the time.

~~~
eric_h
Yes, that's what I meant by "you can't pour a glass of <some obviously
enumerable item>" \- same principle, pithier expression of it, said in
response to an incorrect usage of "less", e.g.:

"He has less dogs than I do", "you mean 'fewer' since you can't pour a glass
of dogs"

------
colund
What's up with depressing topics on HN?

~~~
Mz
I sometimes post positive stuff, both here and elsewhere. It tends to get
little to no attention.

This is possibly in part because good news tends to not be a danger to your
welfare, whereas bad news is something we need to pay attention to for
purposes of self preservation. Similarly, you see endless arguing online in
part because there is more to say if you disagree with someone then if you
agree.

I largely stopped following mainstream news years ago because news = bad news.

~~~
colund
I disagree that we need to pay attention to negative news. In fact I think
this is a misinterpretation of people who use too much of their 'left' brain.
I think there are much more important factors for who gets successful in
relationships.

\- Confidence and good self presentation \- Caring about and listening to
others \- Not living an immature life limited to travelling and partying but
being reliable and solid and 'future proof'

I disagree with the downvotes my comments received. I think depressing news
are a threat to people's psychological well-being and should therefore not be
encouraged.

It's like trying to get good at a musical instrument or sport via focusing all
your energy on your what you're not good at. Not a good way to spend your
energy. Try passion, hope, love and daring to make a leap...

~~~
Mz
My comment was about positive or negative stuff generally, not about
relationships per se. I do focus on the positive. So far, my experience has
been that gets less attention when I share it than something people can have a
good fit or fight over.

Maybe I still have things to learn. Maybe I will eventually figure out how to
share positives in a way that garners substantial attention. But, so far, my
observations suggest that, even on HN, there is more attention given to "bad
news" than to good.

