“When will the obsession with men’s height stop?”, asked the “Guardian” newspaper a year ago. According to the announcements of the major dating apps, it is already over. Dating app Bumble assures its users that height is no longer an issue for more than 30% of singles using the app.

Looking at the facts, there seems to be no end. The height filter (also on Tinder) is most commonly used on this app, and many men add a few inches to their height, thus supporting the old adage that… “size does matter”. Correcting the figures of a man’s height has even entered the American presidential race. Last October, Politico devoted several … column inches to analyzing whether former Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSandis lied about his height and whether he wears shoes with hidden heels.

Men and height

Could neuroscience explain why so many men lie about their height? Louann Brizendine, author of “The Male Brain,” a book about understanding the male mind, thinks it’s pretty simple. “Men lie about their height on social media and dating apps to increase their attractiveness to women. They believe that stronger men – therefore taller – are better able to protect women and offer them a better standard of living, since they have more power. Similarly, taller men are usually associated with higher prestige,” he explains.

“The male characteristic of height has been socially desirable for as long as scientists have been studying it, and on social media men try to present themselves in the most desirable ways possible.”, he notes. He clarifies that and women may do something similar when referring to their breast size and says it’s not uncommon for both men and women to lie about their age on social media. The association of height with the ability to provide protection may seem surprising (and even primitive) to some, but surveys of various single women found that it is common for many to still think this way, as “El Pais” writes .

When we talk about couples in which the man is shorter than the woman, it is quite difficult not to mention his case Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

The truth is that the actor, although he always claimed to be very proud of his height, wore men’s shoes with a lift on the red carpet so that, visually, the height difference between them was not too obvious.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni is another such couple. When they posed together for the cover of ‘Paris Match’ the comments from users were, indeed, delightful. Until the paper was forced to issue a statement on the matter!

On the big screen, we rarely see dramatic differences in height. However, casting director Marta Noguera denies that actors’ height is taken into account during casting. “I’ve never come across a casting process where we had to consider actors’ height, even when creating couples. I don’t think it’s important”points out.

However, it is a fact that height is something that people keep in mind, especially when the person looking for a partner has a height that deviates from the norm.