Shawties

Since my future for the next year, or so, has been decided, I can now turn my blagging attention back to more philosophical topics. The last 18 months of job search and grad school blagging have been solid, but definitely not the most exciting topics I've ever written about.

Recently I've been thinking about women. I've found out that my mom is ready for grandchildren and has a specific desire for Asian ones, which explains why she's been telling me my soul mate is an Asian woman for years now. Yesterday, she even started making me a profile on the scourge on human existence know as match.com. Luckily I was able to change the password on that profile and delete it before any real damage was done. I tell you this so that you can understand why I've been thinking about women and romance over the past few days. It really has nothing else to do with this post.

The point of this blag post isn't to page Dr. Freud. Rather, I want to discuss a phenomenon that I'm a part of whether I really want to be or not. A little under a year ago, I went to an Independence Day barbeque with a good friend of mine (and cutie) Hannah with one of her friends who shall remain nameless. At some point during this event the Friend of Hannah made a comment something along the lines of, "I don't think tall guys should go out with short women, because tall guys should be for tall girls, you know?" I'm sure that I'm butchering that quote, but 11 months has taken its toll on the precision of my memory. As a side note, this was pretty awkward for Hannah and I since she stands at a petite 5'1" and I come in 13 inches taller at 6'2". I don't hold anything against Hannah's friend for her commentary, but I have to say at this juncture, that I disagree.

I've always found this whole concept to be fairly shallow. If I meet the woman of my dreams who meets every criterion on The List and more, you couldn't pay me to care whether she's 4'10" or 5'10". When it comes right down to it, height is just another physical characteristic that's much less important in the long term than things like personality, mutual interests, and reciprocal charity. A woman of below average height is just as capable as a woman of average or above average height of having these intrinsic characteristics. A certain amount of physical attraction is always important to a relationship, but it is nowhere close to the most important things. The only applicable downside of going out with a more petite woman that I can think of is that the mechanics of kissing are somewhat challenging. As long as there's a step around, it shouldn't be a problem.

Adding to this conundrum is the attitude that taller women usually take toward it. Most of the taller women that I've met seem to have a little bit of an entitlement mentality when it comes to taller men. Unfortunately for them, it all comes down to simple economics. Tall men are a scarce resource that most all women want, at least to a certain degree. The scarcity of this, or any other, resource causes the price of that resource to go up. In a simple economic model the consumer with the highest willingness to pay is the one who comes out with the scarce resource. Romantic relationships can rarely be explained fully by a simple economic model, but the principle holds true. The woman who wants the tall guy more will end up with him assuming approximate equality in physical and character traits among the women. In my experience, the more petite women have been willing to pay more than they taller women and have thus often end up with them. As a footnote to this paragraph let me say that the 'price' of a tall man can include a wide variety of things and not just what you're thinking. Get your mind out of the gutter. ;)

Since I've been talking a whole lot about women who are shorter than me, you might be interested to know how I feel about women who are taller than me. Most of the men that I know would not be comfortable dating a woman who was taller than them, and even fewer women would be comfortable dating a man who's shorter than them. Let me just say that, in my life (not just adult life, but my whole life), I've only met about 5 or 6 women who were taller than me, and only one or two of those were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just so we're clear, I'm taller than about 99.99% of American women. I'd estimate that there are about 18 women of that height who are single, active members of the church in the States. If any of those 18 women are interested in me, I will certainly reciprocate. However, in a pool of potentially millions of women, a number like 18 is something that my engineer friends would call "negligible." Basically, I'll cross that bridge if I ever come to it... which is unlikely.

So the moral of the story is that there can potentially be a wide variety of things that contribute to a man's interest in a woman, and height is almost never very high on the list. A short woman shouldn't be dissuaded from interest in a guy solely because he's significantly taller than her and tall women shouldn't take tall men for granted. As usual, this could just be me, but I think I'm pretty well-founded on this one.

Until next time, my friends.