Amanda’s got some thoughts up on a silly Salon piece about the still-popular idea that women should only be dating men who are taller than they are.
Television continues to push the monstrous sexual dimorphism thing for no good reason, except to make people feel bad about themselves if they’re not paired up “correctly” (or even paired up at all). There’s nothing I find so irritating as those reality shows that cast mixed-sex groups where the men are all 6’2 200lbs and the women are all 5’6 108lbs. Like Sex and the City, it makes it look like men and women are totally different species.
As someone who’s as tall as – and weighs as much as – the average American man, I find these portrayals disingenuous and slightly offensive. If you want to argue averages, and say, “No, no, television is just portraying average people,” I’ll laugh at you, because not only is everybody on television prettier than average (they’re in the upper 2%), the average man in America is actually 5’9 191lbs, and the average woman is 5’4 145lbs.
In order to continue to perpetuate the monstrous sexual dimorphism myth, I’d have to eliminate 50% of the male population from my radar based merely on height. Because couples are “supposed” to “look” a certain way.
You know: they both have to be white, or they both have to black, or they both have to be hispanic. Or they have to be composed of one (1) man and one (1) woman.
Look at the huge media machine trying to keep us all in our proper boxes.
How exhausting it must be for them.
