Why Do Women Like Tall Men?

When something is as universally attractive as height, there’s usually a biological root to it. Culture can try to weed it out, or fertilize it, but it seems that most women are born with a genetic predisposition to find height attractive, kind of.

Height isn’t directly attractive. Rather, it’s attractive because it indirectly signals other traits, such as strength. And if we use the example of strength, that means:

1. If you’re tall but weak, you won’t get much of an attractiveness boost from being tall.
2. If you’re short but strong, your physique can be even more attractive than a taller guy’s.

Kind of. There are a couple of exceptions.

Why Height is Attractive

I started by speaking with Dr. Aaron Sell, a height researcher with a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He also put me in touch with Dr. David Frederick, a height researcher from Chapman University. These are the guys publishing all the coolest studies about how height affects male attractiveness. In particular, this one by Dr. Sell, and this one by Dr. Frederick.

It seems that height is attractive for three reasons:

1. Height Hints at Access to Resources

Children tend to grow taller when they’re healthy and have access to lots of nutritious foods. Your height potential is genetic, but you won’t grow to your full height potential unless you have steady access to plenty of nutritious food. Also, if you fall ill for a long period of time, it can stunt your growth. So can certain injuries. That means that height can be a rough proxy for health and resources.

This makes height research tricky. When you see a study showing that taller men tend to earn more money, it’s easy to assume that it’s because taller men command more respect, and I suspect that’s part of it. However, taller men were also more likely to come from wealthier families and to have greater opportunities. Many of these guys are inheriting the businesses they run.

So, when you hear that taller men are more successful at something, whether that’s becoming a CEO or getting married, it isn’t necessarily because they’re tall. It might be, but it’s also possible that something else (like coming from a wealthier family) is the root cause of both their height and their success.

2. Height Hints at Formidability

The second reason height is attractive is that our preferences were formed in the primordial crucible, back when being physically capable was incredibly important. More formidable men were able to gather more men under their banners, claim more resources, and offer better protection to their loved ones. Women valued that formidability above almost all else.

Taller guys are often bigger, and they almost always have greater reach, which can make them better strikers, both with fists and with weapons. And so, if all you know about a man is that he’s tall, you might assume he’s formidable.

Strength is a much stronger signal for formidability, though (study). It’s also far more attractive (study). Or at least that’s what Dr. Sell’s research shows. To test the idea, I drew three men, identical but for their height, body fat, and muscularity:

84% of women chose the stronger man over the taller man. This supports the idea that what women are really looking for is someone who’s physically capable.

The Sexy Son Hypothesis

However, height can be sexy in and of itself. If women already prefer tall guys because it signals health, resources, and formidability, then you can get a runaway effect, like with the peacock’s tail: If a woman mates with a tall man, her sons will be taller, making them sexier and thus more likely to have children. The mother then genetically passes her preference for taller men down to her daughters.

This idea is called the Sexy Son Hypothesis. It doesn’t have a particularly strong effect, but it does mean that height has a plausible way of being without signalling anything else.

The Problems With Being Tall

Being Tall Makes It Harder to Eat Enough

The main disadvantage of being tall is that it’s expensive. You need to feed it a lot of food forever, and if there isn’t a lot of food to go around, you might wither away and starve.

For example, there’s a Tanzanian hunter-gatherer tribe called the Hadza, and they live in an area where food is notoriously hard to find. They need to go on long journeys to find food, and they need to do it without burning many calories.

It’s interesting because these hunters are getting upwards of 30,000 steps per day. They’re almost ten times as active as the average American. And yet their metabolisms aren’t higher. They eat the same amount as we do (study). One of the reasons these men are so calorically efficient is that they’re quite short—only about 5’4 on average.

At the other extreme, you have basketball and volleyball players. These guys are quite tall, and even when they have access to limitless amounts of food, their metabolisms are so high that they still often find it hard to eat enough calories to build muscle.

Being Short Improves Agility

The second problem with height is that the taller you are, the more difficult it is to move your body, reducing your agility. That’s why all of the best gymnasts and ballerinas are short. That’s true for male gymnasts, but the most extreme example is Simone Biles. She’s the most decorated gymnast in history, and she’s only 4’8.

And so, there can be a slight formidability disadvantage from being tall, especially if you’re tall in a gangly way.

Babies Need to Fit Through the Birth Canal

The third problem is that if a woman mates with a man who’s too tall for her hips, there’s a slight risk that the baby might not fit through her birth canal, and she could die. She wouldn’t die now, in the modern world. She’d get a C-section. But these instincts are much older than that.

Conclusion

We often think of height as being attractive in and of itself, and sometimes it can be, but only a little bit. The main reason height is attractive is that it signals resources, health, and physical capability.

That means if you’re short, the best thing you can do to make your physique more attractive is to become stronger, healthier, fitter, and more athletic. Of those, strength is probably the most important. And the best way to signal strength is to build muscle. If you succeed, you can more than make up for being short.

If you’re tall, the same advice applies. And because height makes it harder to eat enough food to build muscle, it’s common for taller guys to be naturally thin.

If you like this stuff, you’d probably like our article about the ideal male physique.