Also of note the income data is combined household income (2 incomes for a married couple) and over the entire population (including 40+ later-career incomes).
It's likely significantly over predicting how common $100k yearly income is among the 20-35 year old "dating pool". Though probably balanced out some by being 10 year old data by now.
> In a gaggle of 100 suitors, it's actually unlikely that a single one will meet all three criteria. Perfection. We now have a truly unreasonable set of standards by which to choose our dating partner.
Is it actually truly unreasonable?
Who has not seen 4000 males? Sure, you might not be able to name 4000 but that's not the criteria. You only need to learn about 1000 of them because visually you can tell the remaining 3000 are too short. And of those 1000 you only need to learn a little to tell if they're going to earn over 100k (i.e. what career path and where they rank in their cohorts).
That Blended Exclusivity Score is really a minimum so of the 170 remaining people at least 17 qualify. You don't even have to sleep with the remaining unqualified ones, make sure the lights are on and just leave if it's too short.
For the Average Man, gaining an inch of height is worth losing roughly $25k in annual salary. Meanwhile, an inch of pecker is roughly offset by reducing annual salary by $128k.
No, D2F only matters if you're trying to optimize stroke between two hot-swappable participants.
And then it's really if an angle allowed by Base to Floor (B2F) and Length (L) is compatible with an angle allowed by the other participant's B2F and L.
A single woman trying to derive pleasure from a single man has a totally different set of criteria she needs to qualify.
I really thought this post was gonna be adjacent to the hip-hop group, and I was patiently waiting to be told that Poppin one's Collar accounts for a pecker deficit.
For amusement, one could calculate the fraction of the population that has a blended exclusivity score < x (using the article’s 0.425% or any other threshold strictly between 0 and 1), and one will, of course, obtain a result greater than x. So anyone following these dating rule is risking p-hacking their mates!
In the extreme case of using many independent traits, I think one might find that most of the population is in an exclusive minority :)
[0] Use logs. If there are n extra traits that aren’t in the original three, a random person scores some expected log exclusivity points for each extra trait. (Exactly 1 point, in fact, if you use natural logs and negate the result to get positive points.) Multiply that expectation by the number of traits and the average person scores n points. e^-n is very exclusive for even moderate n!
And here I was shocked and really happy to hear about Three 6 Mafia on HN.
Fun fact: Three 6 Mafia used to be Triple 6 Mafia, they changed their name to be "radio friendly" (Three Six Mafia rolls off easier than Triple Six Mafia) after signing a record deal.
Putting on my atheist hat for a minute, I think these statistics are interesting in reminding people that there is an underlying biological and evolutionary process underlying mate selection. You’re being evaluated for biological fitness criteria.
That said, individual chemistry is highly variable so these particular criteria are just a proxy and negotiable. Don’t take stated criteria at face value. My now wife’s type was chubby 6-foot plus midwestern future lawyers. But then she met a 5-9 Bangladeshi in law school and got baby fever and that was that. My personal view of it is God has a plan for all of us, but if you’re an atheist you can see it as the chemistry of biological compatibility being highly complex and individualized.
I've got a couple of methodological qualms with this article, but I do agree that in this case we should follow the spirit not the letter, so I'll keep them to myself.
Unfortunately the effort is likely lost on the people who most need to understand it. It's very hard to reason someone out of a position they didn't get into via reason.
I am curious why is height important? Understandably, income affects the lifestyle and opportunities, but what does height affect? What changes if you are several inch taller or shorter? I cannot understand.
Also, why those who care about height so much do not go for basketball players?
Also, the picture with income graph says "household income", not "personal income".
> Isn't there simpler explanation in terms of evolution: taller men look more intimidating and can provide better safety for their offspring?
That is certainly a simpler explanation, but it doesn't mean that it's a correct explanation.
* "Looking intimidating" doesn't necessarily mean that they are better at providing safety
* Providing safety isn't necessarily the sole responsibility of a sexual partner
* Other factors may be more important than height in selecting a sexual partner
* Evolution selects for attributes other than mate suitability
Given the wide variety of preferences across the human species, I find it highly reductive when someone asserts a simplistic reason for such a human behavior, ignoring the many cases when humans do not follow that behavior.
Aesthetics and societal factors probably factor into this because I find that Americans in particular are absolutely obsessed with height. Yes, it's a factor in the beauty standard of most cultures, but it feels like no other Western country has as much staked on a person's height alone. Whenever I see posts about needing to hit a certain height barrier to be worthwhile, or people openly expressing disdain for short people, or idolizing being tall, you can almost guarantee the poster is from the US.
This is just my own observation, so it's probably biased. But if this correlation is real, that shows this is not just evolution. Subjectively, it feels like there's a lot of societal influence stacked on top of whatever is there initially.
Could be, depends on the woman and what she values. Celebrities are usually in a league of their own. The way you have to see it, is that women look for a certificate of potential for success (and many other things, but this is one of them). Since being tall is generally desirable in society, it acts as such a certificate. It is definitely not the only trait or circumstance that acts as such, but it is pretty much impossible to fake.
The reason why height is so important, is because it serves as a proxy for strength, potential for dominance, and protective capacity. Women feel safe from the world and other men, when they are with a tall man (assuming they also feel safe from him). The circular effect of this is that tall men are seen as a successful archetype from all the attention and resources they get, which inflates their true sexual value. Probably social media and internet has a big hand in this too.
While cultures tend to have different standards of attractiveness, weight is most definitely, objectively related to health. If you care about having a healthy partner, you should probably care about their weight.
It’s always amused be that people seem to willing and intentionally say things like:
But male seahorses give birth, and some frogs can sometimes change gender.
Good on them.
The first thing I recall when was first attracted to my child’s mother is that she wasn’t a frog.
I distinctly recall commenting to a friend: finally, a woman who isn’t a frog.
And still isn’t. I suspect she went on to realise I’m not a seahorse when the morphology ultrasound was performed on her and the gestating foetus was revealed to have the requisite number of digits typical of human larvae.
Weight varies much more than height (there is 3x-4x ratio between extreme values) and is instantly noticeable unlike height, so I think this is a bad comparison.
Ok but it's still a really basic evolutionary signal, taller is better, especially for the hunting/fighting gender. Some dogs get up on their hind legs to piss higher on trees.
There was a service called Baller Alert (the name seems to be ungooglable now) that would stalk basketball players and send announcements whenever they were spotted in clubs/bars just so the women could try to flirt with them. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=baller+alert+30+for+30+brok...
In my country there is a saying: height is half of beauty.
A tall person moving around a social setting naturally attracts more eyes, gets more noticed, attracts more attention. She literally “stands out”.
For both male and females I’d say. Then societal complexes pressure some people into the shorter gal taller guy couple stereotype, but the height itself is just a physical thing that brings more attention.
I would liken it more to the male equivalent of facial beauty or weight: most men have a general level of facial beauty and weight they expect in a partner. And if not met, there is really nothing else that can help bind the attraction. For women, that is height. But yes, it is "evolved intuition."
Your argument is that it's just more attractive. That might be true. That would also mean there's an underlying reason for females finding this attractive. This could be due to taller males being able to protect their offspring from other males, hence more of us are descended from taller males and females that found taller males attractive.
But being taller could also give other advantages like perceived or actual dominance over other males which is, in itself, an attractive quality.
You’re going to need some serious sources to back that up man because that flies in the face of our understanding of socially constructed beauty/physical/etc. standards. What we consider “attractive” has historically been incredibly varied and heavily determined by society, class, etc.
I was alive in the 1990s. "Heroic chic" was definitely a thing.
I'm also alive now. It's not hard to find big butts being idolized.
Your linked article is not very scientific. For example, it cites porn-store purchasing preference as evidence of actual male taste in partner selection.
That's the whole point. Due to the touchiness of the subject matter, these kinds of topics would be quite difficult to discuss frankly in a politicized institution guarded by a peer review process.
I didn't mention peer review. The bare minimum for scientific analysis is conclusion drawn from observations based on data points. This article is more like a rant occasionally augmented by pictures of anime boobs. There is no attempt at scientific rigor. A serious presentation could have maintained the rigor even outside the peer-review process (which, despite your assertion, would likely have no objection to the subject matter).
I think what you're trying to say is that this article isn't at the highest level of epistemic certainty. That's not surprising for a given subject matter. The author explicitly acknowledges that -https://www.jsanilac.com/dispelling-beauty-lies/#:~:text=Don...
The article is too long. Judging about beauty standards by using sex dolls as an example is not very smart, first, because they are targeted to a small niche audience with specific tastes, second, they do not look especially attractive in the photos in the article. Also the font is awful and a pain to read.
> Men want to know that the children they raise are their own.
You realize that the number (>0) of prior sexual partners has nothing to do with the parentage of one's children, right? You can marry a virgin and still be a cuckold; or you can marry a prostitute and sire a large family.
>No one was talking about "body count" (at least not publicly) ten years ago.
Why do you think that is? Our great grandfathers were practically guaranteed to be marrying virgins, while today's young men seem to consider themselves lucky if their girl is still in single figures. Things have changed, people are talking about it.
What do you gain from trying in vain to discredit my point? There are statistics available for marriage rates, age at marriage, and self-reported sexual partners before marriage. Don't argue with me, argue with the stats.
Or even use a little reasoning. Do you really think your average 19 year-old bride in 1930 raised in a conservative two-parent church-going home was as ran through as your typical young woman you'll find on the apps nowadays? What is even the point in denying this significant cultural shift?
> was as ran through as your typical young woman you'll find on the apps nowadays?
I'm not saying you are one, but using this kind of language really makes you sound like a full on incel misogynist, who has sublimated his sexual frustration into antiquated paternalistic views of women's sexuality. But I'm sure that's not accurate.
Man this one sentence has really rustled some jimmies. Even if they typically had one or two previous partners, that would still make them a unicorn in the dating market nowadays.
> that would still make them a unicorn in the dating market nowadays.
Are you having trouble in the dating market? Perhaps you're frustrated by frequently meeting women who are experienced enough to recognize your inadequacy.
The solution is to improve yourself, not to shame women.
For one, because it's an indicator of health and healthy development, which are in turn related to other desirable features. Analogous things can be said for women.
You also can't ignore assortive mating. We're not all in the same mating pool, as it were. Women prefer men taller than they are, but that doesn't mean that a woman of 1.25m will pair with a man of 2m. The typical height difference between husband and wife is about 10-15cm, regardless of the absolute height of either spouse.
I've seen plenty of evidence that goes against this. From what I have seen, short women will absolutely prefer a man who is taller than other men, regardless of their own height, so something does not add up. In fact, I've seen it often be the other way around; a man will sometimes prefer a woman who is not a midget compared to himself, purely for practical reasons (unless of course he falls in love).
I will go as far as to say that assortative mating is likely a side-effect of people ending up in the same or similar socioeconomic circles, but that is just me reaching. In reality I would guess that it's a bit of that, and being used to people from a certain "class".
Height coorelates with lots of things. Taller means longer feet. Taller people have larger heads as well. A large head means larger cranial capacity and therefore, likely higher IQ. Mostly, it's just our monkey brain which says taller is more formidible.
I understand that at the every end he acknowledges this is dumb, but I think the biggest issues faced by guys who follow that 6-6-6 rule is that they are immature.
The only three 6 mafia rule i follow is "What is her favorite three 6 album"? Anything after "Da Unbreakables" is a red flag IMO. If "Chapter 2" or "Live By Yo Rep" come up, I might be in love.
I believe it came from a womens' dating forum. Now do most women seriously follow it? Almost certainly not but I don't know any blokes that care about this rule. Why would they?
Are you the type of person that believes only men can say foolish things?
... I mean, realistically it sounds like the sort of thing that only teenage and young adult men would believe in. What makes you think that women subscribe to it?
Guys don't follow that rule (unless they are gay), they worry about women following it. It appears to be originating from a post on the (rather toxic and apparently now defunct) reddit sub /r/FemaleDatingStrategy many years ago, but apparently is still being brought up.
don't worry it will just happen, the market will figure it out. a 7 inch dong will automatically find a sugary person to make up for a $357 yearly income. efficient market hypothesis gooooo
You’re not alone. Most people know a funny person, and someone good with numbers, but it’s less often the same person. You could analyze that with the techniques from the article. :)
Southern Europeans, Italians, Spanish, Greeks also call Germany Northern Europe. It's anything where the weather is generally not as hot (well, this is changing) people are more reserved, more work-focused, or individual, less prominent communal eating, big families etc. It's a real thing that I often hear from Southern Europeans. You could also relate it to Catholic / Protestant split perhaps.
It depends. Quite often, Germanic countries are grouped with Northern Europe because many of them are located around the North Sea, Latin countries with Western Europe, Slavic countries with Eastern Europe, and Balkan countries with Southern Europe.
I'd group the Dutch with the Scandinavians as the "other Germanic branches", possibly also including the UK. As a taxonomy it makes far more sense to me. Western Europe is too broad. You have the French and the Portugese and the Spanish which are all quite different.
Then again, based on local income statistics. Don't know locality of the third one. It's the good old, lies, damned lies and statistics (and meant as humor thus not really an issue).
Not in salary though, given that the salaries in TFA are local to the US, and West European salaries are lower, as a rule (East European salaries, of course, even lower).
OTOH many women may prefer as partner the European man who doesn't work crazy overtime every night, takes 4 weeks of holidays every year with her, uses his months of legally mandated parental leave when they have a baby...
The 6/6/6 dimensions seem to capture very little about what's actually important for the success of a long-term relationship. I guess that's fine, it's presumably a game for 20-year-olds.
What an American makes in absolute terms is irrelevant unless you're planning to move to the US.
And if you're planning to move to the US, then its still irrelevant, because what matters is how much you make in US compared to the cost of living of the US.
Nobody would trade making 40k net in Italy for making 80k net in US, you're actually poorer (and not just financially).
All measures are relative. Absolute wages have stopped being impressive as the world got richer in the last decades and standards of living improved.
Maybe we can get the USA to get the metric system for all those men who are 1.83 meters and below. Or do people internationally say that you need to be 1,8 meters to be dateable?
I worked with a many short men, some of them bald. I mean, STEM, tech, hello, tends to be a big chunk of the demographic. They consistently underperformed when it came to charming women. Tall nerds tended to swoop up the few women on campus.
I always wondered why 6" dick was put into this. The other variant of 6pack abs made more sense. Most women want to verify things before having sex and income, height, and abs are pretty trivial to verify. The size of a guys dick though really only shows up when you're already getting physical.
It’s also funny cause it’s mocking this BS in such a good natured wonderfully overdone way. Guy in my college house who got laid the most was on the shorter side, poor, and kind of acted effeminate at times to the point that people mistook him for gay. Never saw his wing wong so maybe it was like ten inches but I doubt it. He was also kind and not a jerk and did not act like an “alpha male.”
What was he? Fun, hilarious, and confident.
I got zero until I decided to stop pretending not to be a weird nerd and just chat about stuff I was into, which at the time was evolutionary information theory and hacking. Guess what? Leading with who you are is confident.
It’s attractive in women too, at least for me.
The incel stuff is just men catching up with women when it comes to dumb anxieties about looking right according to arbitrary external standards.
> Guess what? Leading with who you are is confident.
That was always my attitude, why hide who you are in the first place, I'm a computer geek who likes playing Chess,Cycling and heavy metal music - I put that on my dating profile and it didn't hurt me in the slightest.
I am pretty sure this 3 6's rule was a social media clickbaity phenomenon anyways. There are people this shallow and silly, but they are actually rare.
To be fair, "confidence" and knowing "who you are" in college is largely an illusion.
I would argue that "success" at that age is more a matter of being interesting and entertaining in a nonthreatening way.
It comes across as insincere to the majority of women who are also getting ignored by the majority of men at that age. That's what you get when you optimize for cheap and easy attraction instead of long term relationship appeal. A lot of younger people don't know the difference.
> "men catching up with women when it comes to dumb anxieties"
It's weird to watch all those fans of patriarchy step right into their own trap. Didn't they get the memo that this stuff was set up to control women? Or is it just a reflection of how these self-proclaimed "alphas" secretly see their own proper place as subjugated by men higher up in the hierarchy?
It’s all very obvious hysteria that parodies itself loudly.
It’s also a big con. Andrew Tate might be an abuser of women but his big marks are men. Look at how much money he makes selling that BS to insecure guys. That was his whole schtick as he rose to fame.
I suspect the manosphere stuff is designed to make men repellent to women to keep them hooked on it. If you find a girlfriend you might not pay $25K to attend an alpha male boot camp to have an idiot yell at you.
I guess it's dating app fatigue makes us promote old articles :)
Fun fact, I learned yesterday that Bumble will delete swipes in their upcoming app reset and go ai assistant way. Not that that I am fan of dating apps, it's one of the worse inventions ever, but seems pretty interesting seeing their stock price plummeted 93% since IPO
Also of note the income data is combined household income (2 incomes for a married couple) and over the entire population (including 40+ later-career incomes).
It's likely significantly over predicting how common $100k yearly income is among the 20-35 year old "dating pool". Though probably balanced out some by being 10 year old data by now.
Buuut it's from 2014, and in case you didn't notice there was quite a bit of inflation between 2014 and now.
Back in 2014 the share of household incomes earning more than 99,999 was 34.5 in 2024 it was 42.8
The tragedy of it all is that with all this inflation, my dick never grew longer...
There's a fetish joke just hiding here.
Probably what was meant by "Though probably balanced out some by being 10 year old data by now."
> Blended Exclusivity Score ... 17/4000 = 0.425%
> In a gaggle of 100 suitors, it's actually unlikely that a single one will meet all three criteria. Perfection. We now have a truly unreasonable set of standards by which to choose our dating partner.
Is it actually truly unreasonable?
Who has not seen 4000 males? Sure, you might not be able to name 4000 but that's not the criteria. You only need to learn about 1000 of them because visually you can tell the remaining 3000 are too short. And of those 1000 you only need to learn a little to tell if they're going to earn over 100k (i.e. what career path and where they rank in their cohorts).
That Blended Exclusivity Score is really a minimum so of the 170 remaining people at least 17 qualify. You don't even have to sleep with the remaining unqualified ones, make sure the lights are on and just leave if it's too short.
The information that was missing from my life:
For the Average Man, gaining an inch of height is worth losing roughly $25k in annual salary. Meanwhile, an inch of pecker is roughly offset by reducing annual salary by $128k.
I can see how a man's height is evident, the salary might be according to their spending, but how do you market your slightly longer pecker?
So smaller penises are rewarded with higher salaries?
Something to bring up with your manager for the next salary review.
why do you think they chase the money?
This is solid reporting:
> A 6" wiener is even rarer than being 6' tall. The average erect penis length is 5.166" with a std dev of 0.654".
It's not about length though. It's the dick to floor figure.
One of the many gems from Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-hUV9yhqgY
This thread is just life imitating art.
South Park also had a great episode about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81bt0ZJLMas
No, D2F only matters if you're trying to optimize stroke between two hot-swappable participants.
And then it's really if an angle allowed by Base to Floor (B2F) and Length (L) is compatible with an angle allowed by the other participant's B2F and L.
A single woman trying to derive pleasure from a single man has a totally different set of criteria she needs to qualify.
The data cannot be right. Is the average penis really that small in the states ?
This is probably the data set everyone uses, compiled by Data Panda. Read the sources and methodology, and weep.
https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/penis-size-by-country
All such data is a _little_ dubious, as it's pretty much always opt-in, and there'd always be a question of whether you have a fair sample.
If anything, that would lead one to assume that it overestimates typical length.
There is a correlation with average waist size here...
No wonder for the overcompensation on the worldstage!
I really thought this post was gonna be adjacent to the hip-hop group, and I was patiently waiting to be told that Poppin one's Collar accounts for a pecker deficit.
Really, it should be, they should volunteer for measurements.
For amusement, one could calculate the fraction of the population that has a blended exclusivity score < x (using the article’s 0.425% or any other threshold strictly between 0 and 1), and one will, of course, obtain a result greater than x. So anyone following these dating rule is risking p-hacking their mates!
In the extreme case of using many independent traits, I think one might find that most of the population is in an exclusive minority :)
[0] Use logs. If there are n extra traits that aren’t in the original three, a random person scores some expected log exclusivity points for each extra trait. (Exactly 1 point, in fact, if you use natural logs and negate the result to get positive points.) Multiply that expectation by the number of traits and the average person scores n points. e^-n is very exclusive for even moderate n!
And here I was shocked and really happy to hear about Three 6 Mafia on HN.
Fun fact: Three 6 Mafia used to be Triple 6 Mafia, they changed their name to be "radio friendly" (Three Six Mafia rolls off easier than Triple Six Mafia) after signing a record deal.
Putting on my atheist hat for a minute, I think these statistics are interesting in reminding people that there is an underlying biological and evolutionary process underlying mate selection. You’re being evaluated for biological fitness criteria.
That said, individual chemistry is highly variable so these particular criteria are just a proxy and negotiable. Don’t take stated criteria at face value. My now wife’s type was chubby 6-foot plus midwestern future lawyers. But then she met a 5-9 Bangladeshi in law school and got baby fever and that was that. My personal view of it is God has a plan for all of us, but if you’re an atheist you can see it as the chemistry of biological compatibility being highly complex and individualized.
> Putting on my atheist hat for a minute
What is atheist about your comment? Nothing I can see. God has a plan for us does not contradict the evolutionary factors.
These variables are not independent so you can't just multiply ratios to get combined ratio.
(If height were not correlated with income that would be surprising, for example.)
yeah that was my first thought too.
a dude who is 6'4'' isn't going to have tiny hands or feet, and probably not a tiny wang.
likewise height directly correlates to management & leadership roles
The three six rule is a low bar for dating: you should also have a 6 pack. If you only want three sixes, here are 666 cents I keep in my pocket!
The night I met my wife I had just bought a whole case, so the six pack thing probably works too.
I've got a couple of methodological qualms with this article, but I do agree that in this case we should follow the spirit not the letter, so I'll keep them to myself.
Unfortunately the effort is likely lost on the people who most need to understand it. It's very hard to reason someone out of a position they didn't get into via reason.
Dutch men must be terrifying to the people that believe this.
1: https://nowpatient.com/health-news/the-member-measure 2: https://longreads.cbs.nl/nederland-in-cijfers-2021/hoe-lang-...
I am curious why is height important? Understandably, income affects the lifestyle and opportunities, but what does height affect? What changes if you are several inch taller or shorter? I cannot understand.
Also, why those who care about height so much do not go for basketball players?
Also, the picture with income graph says "household income", not "personal income".
> I am curious why is height important?
It's a common aesthetic preference, similar to liking large breasts.
> Also, why those who care about height so much do not go for basketball players?
Some of them certainly do. But there aren't very many professional basketball players.
> I am curious why is height important?
Isn't there simpler explanation in terms of evolution: taller men look more intimidating and can provide better safety for their offspring?
I think a lot of physical preferences (generally) have some kind of evolutionary roots to it, crude as they are in 2026.
I'm not sure how well researched this area is however, since it can be a bit controversial in the modern age.
> Isn't there simpler explanation in terms of evolution: taller men look more intimidating and can provide better safety for their offspring?
That is certainly a simpler explanation, but it doesn't mean that it's a correct explanation.
* "Looking intimidating" doesn't necessarily mean that they are better at providing safety
* Providing safety isn't necessarily the sole responsibility of a sexual partner
* Other factors may be more important than height in selecting a sexual partner
* Evolution selects for attributes other than mate suitability
Given the wide variety of preferences across the human species, I find it highly reductive when someone asserts a simplistic reason for such a human behavior, ignoring the many cases when humans do not follow that behavior.
Aesthetics and societal factors probably factor into this because I find that Americans in particular are absolutely obsessed with height. Yes, it's a factor in the beauty standard of most cultures, but it feels like no other Western country has as much staked on a person's height alone. Whenever I see posts about needing to hit a certain height barrier to be worthwhile, or people openly expressing disdain for short people, or idolizing being tall, you can almost guarantee the poster is from the US.
This is just my own observation, so it's probably biased. But if this correlation is real, that shows this is not just evolution. Subjectively, it feels like there's a lot of societal influence stacked on top of whatever is there initially.
So for example, a 6 feet tall nerdy-looking geek is better than 5' 6" athlete or celebrity? Doesn't seem logical to me.
Could be, depends on the woman and what she values. Celebrities are usually in a league of their own. The way you have to see it, is that women look for a certificate of potential for success (and many other things, but this is one of them). Since being tall is generally desirable in society, it acts as such a certificate. It is definitely not the only trait or circumstance that acts as such, but it is pretty much impossible to fake.
The reason why height is so important, is because it serves as a proxy for strength, potential for dominance, and protective capacity. Women feel safe from the world and other men, when they are with a tall man (assuming they also feel safe from him). The circular effect of this is that tall men are seen as a successful archetype from all the attention and resources they get, which inflates their true sexual value. Probably social media and internet has a big hand in this too.
No one claimed that height is the only or the most important metric; simply that it is a metric by which partners can be judged.
I’d prefer anyone else over an athlete or a celebrity, regardless of height. Humans are allowed to have different preferences.
Athletes and celebrities are famous people who have a lot of eyes on them and thus naturally get more attention.
What does weight affect? Breast size? Hair color?
Cultures create an archetype of attractiveness and then everyone feels like they come up short. Tale as old as time.
While cultures tend to have different standards of attractiveness, weight is most definitely, objectively related to health. If you care about having a healthy partner, you should probably care about their weight.
The same is true of long hair supposedly (hair displays a record of illness). Does someone's attractiveness inherently change after a crew cut?
If you cant recognize the difference between weight and hair length as a reflection of health, I dont think we need to continue further
Now that's speed dating.
There is nowhere in the known universe where the average woman is taller than the average man.
Therefore, women will tend to select mates who are taller than themselves.
It’s not a cultural phenomenon, it’s universal.
taking it a step further, sexual dimorphism is incredibly common for vertebrates.
not just universal for humans, but pretty common in general.
Counterpoint: Anglerfish
Wonder if there any guys who are therians and identify as male anglerfish:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therian_subculture
It’s always amused be that people seem to willing and intentionally say things like:
But male seahorses give birth, and some frogs can sometimes change gender.
Good on them.
The first thing I recall when was first attracted to my child’s mother is that she wasn’t a frog.
I distinctly recall commenting to a friend: finally, a woman who isn’t a frog.
And still isn’t. I suspect she went on to realise I’m not a seahorse when the morphology ultrasound was performed on her and the gestating foetus was revealed to have the requisite number of digits typical of human larvae.
Weight varies much more than height (there is 3x-4x ratio between extreme values) and is instantly noticeable unlike height, so I think this is a bad comparison.
Ok but it's still a really basic evolutionary signal, taller is better, especially for the hunting/fighting gender. Some dogs get up on their hind legs to piss higher on trees.
You don’t instantly notice how tall someone is?
Unless they are very tall or very short, probably no.
There was a service called Baller Alert (the name seems to be ungooglable now) that would stalk basketball players and send announcements whenever they were spotted in clubs/bars just so the women could try to flirt with them. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=baller+alert+30+for+30+brok...
seems similar to the big millionaire/billionare trackers in China that are big with the "find me a rich husband" crowd
I feel bad for Paul Simon—probably never got laid.
In my country there is a saying: height is half of beauty.
A tall person moving around a social setting naturally attracts more eyes, gets more noticed, attracts more attention. She literally “stands out”.
For both male and females I’d say. Then societal complexes pressure some people into the shorter gal taller guy couple stereotype, but the height itself is just a physical thing that brings more attention.
That's the male equivalent of women asking why men care about boobs and body count. The answer is "evolved intuition", like it or not.
I would liken it more to the male equivalent of facial beauty or weight: most men have a general level of facial beauty and weight they expect in a partner. And if not met, there is really nothing else that can help bind the attraction. For women, that is height. But yes, it is "evolved intuition."
Possibly, but not necessarily.
Your argument is that it's just more attractive. That might be true. That would also mean there's an underlying reason for females finding this attractive. This could be due to taller males being able to protect their offspring from other males, hence more of us are descended from taller males and females that found taller males attractive.
But being taller could also give other advantages like perceived or actual dominance over other males which is, in itself, an attractive quality.
You’re going to need some serious sources to back that up man because that flies in the face of our understanding of socially constructed beauty/physical/etc. standards. What we consider “attractive” has historically been incredibly varied and heavily determined by society, class, etc.
> The answer is "evolved intuition", like it or not.
Maybe. A lot of what we assume are innate sexual preferences are actually determined socially.
No one was talking about "body count" (at least not publicly) ten years ago.
These days, a full-figure on a woman is considered attractive, but in the 1990s, being skinny was in vogue.
Insofar as an attractive partner is a status symbol, the definition of "attractive" changes with fashion.
>These days, a full-figure on a woman is considered attractive, but in the 1990s, being skinny was in vogue.
This is usually based on a selective and wishful interpretation of historical data. The best argument I've found is here - https://www.jsanilac.com/dispelling-beauty-lies/
> This is usually based on a selective and wishful interpretation of historical data
My lived experience says they're right. In the 90s one didn't have a "phat ass", one was just a "fatass".
> The best argument I've found is here
I was alive in the 1990s. "Heroic chic" was definitely a thing.
I'm also alive now. It's not hard to find big butts being idolized.
Your linked article is not very scientific. For example, it cites porn-store purchasing preference as evidence of actual male taste in partner selection.
>Your linked article is not very scientific.
That's the whole point. Due to the touchiness of the subject matter, these kinds of topics would be quite difficult to discuss frankly in a politicized institution guarded by a peer review process.
I didn't mention peer review. The bare minimum for scientific analysis is conclusion drawn from observations based on data points. This article is more like a rant occasionally augmented by pictures of anime boobs. There is no attempt at scientific rigor. A serious presentation could have maintained the rigor even outside the peer-review process (which, despite your assertion, would likely have no objection to the subject matter).
I think what you're trying to say is that this article isn't at the highest level of epistemic certainty. That's not surprising for a given subject matter. The author explicitly acknowledges that -https://www.jsanilac.com/dispelling-beauty-lies/#:~:text=Don...
The article is too long. Judging about beauty standards by using sex dolls as an example is not very smart, first, because they are targeted to a small niche audience with specific tastes, second, they do not look especially attractive in the photos in the article. Also the font is awful and a pain to read.
Evil Vizier’s work on the topic is fascinating
> No one was talking about "body count" (at least not publicly) ten years ago.
People have been talking about virginity and monogamy for 1000s of years. Men want to know that the children they raise are their own.
It might have blipped a bit since the invention of the pill but women cuckolding their partners has been frowned upon world wide for a very long time.
Sex before monogamous marriage has historically been a big thing.
There's even songs, sagas and religious books that make virtue of it.
> Men want to know that the children they raise are their own.
You realize that the number (>0) of prior sexual partners has nothing to do with the parentage of one's children, right? You can marry a virgin and still be a cuckold; or you can marry a prostitute and sire a large family.
Of course. “Body count” is a poor proxy for fidelity. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t historically been used for that purpose.
>No one was talking about "body count" (at least not publicly) ten years ago.
Why do you think that is? Our great grandfathers were practically guaranteed to be marrying virgins, while today's young men seem to consider themselves lucky if their girl is still in single figures. Things have changed, people are talking about it.
> Our great grandfathers were practically guaranteed to be marrying virgins,
Is that what your great-grandma told you?
Cultural prohibitions on discussing sexual matters didn't actual limit in pursuing sexual matters.
> Our great grandfathers were practically guaranteed to be marrying virgins
They also walked ten miles uphill (both ways) to school every day.
What do you gain from trying in vain to discredit my point? There are statistics available for marriage rates, age at marriage, and self-reported sexual partners before marriage. Don't argue with me, argue with the stats.
Or even use a little reasoning. Do you really think your average 19 year-old bride in 1930 raised in a conservative two-parent church-going home was as ran through as your typical young woman you'll find on the apps nowadays? What is even the point in denying this significant cultural shift?
> was as ran through as your typical young woman you'll find on the apps nowadays?
I'm not saying you are one, but using this kind of language really makes you sound like a full on incel misogynist, who has sublimated his sexual frustration into antiquated paternalistic views of women's sexuality. But I'm sure that's not accurate.
> Our great grandfathers were practically guaranteed to be marrying virgins
Lol yeah, and fetishes were invented in the 1950s. Very few people in history made it to marriage as virgins.
Man this one sentence has really rustled some jimmies. Even if they typically had one or two previous partners, that would still make them a unicorn in the dating market nowadays.
> that would still make them a unicorn in the dating market nowadays.
Are you having trouble in the dating market? Perhaps you're frustrated by frequently meeting women who are experienced enough to recognize your inadequacy.
The solution is to improve yourself, not to shame women.
body count was definitely a topic in the early 2000s
Women, the world over, are, on average, shorter than men.
Therefore women will, on average, select mates who are taller than them.
Cultural relativism has fallen out of fashion, universal truths are back in.
because in nature a bigger male = stronger and better to protect me...
For one, because it's an indicator of health and healthy development, which are in turn related to other desirable features. Analogous things can be said for women.
You also can't ignore assortive mating. We're not all in the same mating pool, as it were. Women prefer men taller than they are, but that doesn't mean that a woman of 1.25m will pair with a man of 2m. The typical height difference between husband and wife is about 10-15cm, regardless of the absolute height of either spouse.
I've seen plenty of evidence that goes against this. From what I have seen, short women will absolutely prefer a man who is taller than other men, regardless of their own height, so something does not add up. In fact, I've seen it often be the other way around; a man will sometimes prefer a woman who is not a midget compared to himself, purely for practical reasons (unless of course he falls in love).
I will go as far as to say that assortative mating is likely a side-effect of people ending up in the same or similar socioeconomic circles, but that is just me reaching. In reality I would guess that it's a bit of that, and being used to people from a certain "class".
>I am curious why is height important?
Height coorelates with lots of things. Taller means longer feet. Taller people have larger heads as well. A large head means larger cranial capacity and therefore, likely higher IQ. Mostly, it's just our monkey brain which says taller is more formidible.
I understand that at the every end he acknowledges this is dumb, but I think the biggest issues faced by guys who follow that 6-6-6 rule is that they are immature.
The only three 6 mafia rule i follow is "What is her favorite three 6 album"? Anything after "Da Unbreakables" is a red flag IMO. If "Chapter 2" or "Live By Yo Rep" come up, I might be in love.
"Guys" that follow 6-6-6?
This is a dating rule by women for women, not guys.
Smells more like a dating rule by guys who think this is a dating rule by women.
I believe it came from a womens' dating forum. Now do most women seriously follow it? Almost certainly not but I don't know any blokes that care about this rule. Why would they?
Are you the type of person that believes only men can say foolish things?
Okay, so someone said something silly on a dating forum once. But the question is who, if anyone, actually _believes_ in it.
Probably no one actually follows this rule.
That doesn't mean that teenage boys are either the origin or the ones perpetuating it. They're just an easy target to throw crap at.
... I mean, realistically it sounds like the sort of thing that only teenage and young adult men would believe in. What makes you think that women subscribe to it?
Guys don't follow that rule (unless they are gay), they worry about women following it. It appears to be originating from a post on the (rather toxic and apparently now defunct) reddit sub /r/FemaleDatingStrategy many years ago, but apparently is still being brought up.
Worrying about women following…
Still a guy issue/hang-up then.
So... if you have a 7 inch dick, you can probably just retire.
If you can find a sugar mommy, sure.
don't worry it will just happen, the market will figure it out. a 7 inch dong will automatically find a sugary person to make up for a $357 yearly income. efficient market hypothesis gooooo
When I read articles like this, they're so far removed from how me and my male friends interact that I find it hard to believe.
You’re not alone. Most people know a funny person, and someone good with numbers, but it’s less often the same person. You could analyze that with the techniques from the article. :)
Just look at some of the other comments here and that'll change pretty quick.
These numbers seem based on global distributions rather than local ones. After all, six feet is just average height in the Netherlands.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-h...
Maybe that's what the rule tells you. Ladies love the north Europeans.
I'd never call someone from the Netherlands north European, it's western Europe
It's North when contrasted with the South, like the Mediterranean countries, and West when contrasted with the East, like the old Easter Bloc.
And South when contrasted with the "real" North?
Northern Europe is a region and while there can be various definitions the most common ones do not include Benelux countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Europe
Southern Europeans, Italians, Spanish, Greeks also call Germany Northern Europe. It's anything where the weather is generally not as hot (well, this is changing) people are more reserved, more work-focused, or individual, less prominent communal eating, big families etc. It's a real thing that I often hear from Southern Europeans. You could also relate it to Catholic / Protestant split perhaps.
It depends. Quite often, Germanic countries are grouped with Northern Europe because many of them are located around the North Sea, Latin countries with Western Europe, Slavic countries with Eastern Europe, and Balkan countries with Southern Europe.
I'd group the Dutch with the Scandinavians as the "other Germanic branches", possibly also including the UK. As a taxonomy it makes far more sense to me. Western Europe is too broad. You have the French and the Portugese and the Spanish which are all quite different.
Average height for boys that were 19 years old in 2019, not for the entire population.
Then again, based on local income statistics. Don't know locality of the third one. It's the good old, lies, damned lies and statistics (and meant as humor thus not really an issue).
It's all relative.
You're gonna need to be even bigger in the netherlands, both in height and salary to impress a dutch woman if you're dutch already.
In south east asia you may get away with less height and money.
Not in salary though, given that the salaries in TFA are local to the US, and West European salaries are lower, as a rule (East European salaries, of course, even lower).
OTOH many women may prefer as partner the European man who doesn't work crazy overtime every night, takes 4 weeks of holidays every year with her, uses his months of legally mandated parental leave when they have a baby...
The 6/6/6 dimensions seem to capture very little about what's actually important for the success of a long-term relationship. I guess that's fine, it's presumably a game for 20-year-olds.
long term success of a relationship =/= mating, breeding, or getting a sugar daddy to cover your lifestyle
What an American makes in absolute terms is irrelevant unless you're planning to move to the US.
And if you're planning to move to the US, then its still irrelevant, because what matters is how much you make in US compared to the cost of living of the US.
Nobody would trade making 40k net in Italy for making 80k net in US, you're actually poorer (and not just financially).
All measures are relative. Absolute wages have stopped being impressive as the world got richer in the last decades and standards of living improved.
Maybe we can get the USA to get the metric system for all those men who are 1.83 meters and below. Or do people internationally say that you need to be 1,8 meters to be dateable?
They do, usually 1,8m+ for men and 1,7m+ for girls
Men are pretty tall in Montenegro too.
Apart from BMI, what is the female equivalent?
Depends on what the goal is.
If it's just dating or a one night stand I think men can sometimes have potentially no standards at all.
If it's about marriage then there's things like hip to waist ratio, facial symmetry but I think in general men are much less picky.
The female equivalent is to reply the multiple DMs sent by desperate men.
bust waist hips
e.g. 32-26-32, etc.
I worked with a short, partially bald guy, but he could charm the socks off any girl. Pretty sure; he didn't care a wit for 6/6/6.
I worked with a many short men, some of them bald. I mean, STEM, tech, hello, tends to be a big chunk of the demographic. They consistently underperformed when it came to charming women. Tall nerds tended to swoop up the few women on campus.
Great comment coming from this username!
I know a North Korean guy who is rich. This proves that all other North Koreans who consider themselves poor are just whiny bitches.
I always wondered why 6" dick was put into this. The other variant of 6pack abs made more sense. Most women want to verify things before having sex and income, height, and abs are pretty trivial to verify. The size of a guys dick though really only shows up when you're already getting physical.
And 6 packs need hard work so it shows some quality.
Amazing read!
Submit this for an IgNobel.
It’s also funny cause it’s mocking this BS in such a good natured wonderfully overdone way. Guy in my college house who got laid the most was on the shorter side, poor, and kind of acted effeminate at times to the point that people mistook him for gay. Never saw his wing wong so maybe it was like ten inches but I doubt it. He was also kind and not a jerk and did not act like an “alpha male.”
What was he? Fun, hilarious, and confident.
I got zero until I decided to stop pretending not to be a weird nerd and just chat about stuff I was into, which at the time was evolutionary information theory and hacking. Guess what? Leading with who you are is confident.
It’s attractive in women too, at least for me.
The incel stuff is just men catching up with women when it comes to dumb anxieties about looking right according to arbitrary external standards.
> Guess what? Leading with who you are is confident.
That was always my attitude, why hide who you are in the first place, I'm a computer geek who likes playing Chess,Cycling and heavy metal music - I put that on my dating profile and it didn't hurt me in the slightest.
I am pretty sure this 3 6's rule was a social media clickbaity phenomenon anyways. There are people this shallow and silly, but they are actually rare.
To be fair, "confidence" and knowing "who you are" in college is largely an illusion.
I would argue that "success" at that age is more a matter of being interesting and entertaining in a nonthreatening way.
It comes across as insincere to the majority of women who are also getting ignored by the majority of men at that age. That's what you get when you optimize for cheap and easy attraction instead of long term relationship appeal. A lot of younger people don't know the difference.
> "men catching up with women when it comes to dumb anxieties"
It's weird to watch all those fans of patriarchy step right into their own trap. Didn't they get the memo that this stuff was set up to control women? Or is it just a reflection of how these self-proclaimed "alphas" secretly see their own proper place as subjugated by men higher up in the hierarchy?
It’s all very obvious hysteria that parodies itself loudly.
It’s also a big con. Andrew Tate might be an abuser of women but his big marks are men. Look at how much money he makes selling that BS to insecure guys. That was his whole schtick as he rose to fame.
I suspect the manosphere stuff is designed to make men repellent to women to keep them hooked on it. If you find a girlfriend you might not pay $25K to attend an alpha male boot camp to have an idiot yell at you.
It doesn't have to be designed, can be an emergent survival property. Wholesome and helpful dating advice just never builds a cult of loners.
I’m 36 and
Would be a bit more interesting if you were in the dating pool, but it sounds like you’ve already wived.
What a waste of time.
oh dont be lameeee, some people are freaks who find fun in doing math. power to em
How does a >2 year old article get necroed to the top on HN?
I guess it's dating app fatigue makes us promote old articles :)
Fun fact, I learned yesterday that Bumble will delete swipes in their upcoming app reset and go ai assistant way. Not that that I am fan of dating apps, it's one of the worse inventions ever, but seems pretty interesting seeing their stock price plummeted 93% since IPO
Maybe by being something different than the regular slop on the HN front page. And just being a high quality article in general.
it's nice to take a break from the AI slop to talk about tech bro insecurity