Clothes are not made for men who are no taller than 6 feet tall

This summer, TikTok creator launched Girl on Couch went viral when she told the world she was looking for a man in “finance, trust fund, 6’5”, blue eyes.” The video penetrated pop culture and even reached The Golden Bachelorette”, which is one of them Jeanne Vassos‘S suitors performed the song by telling her, “I heard you’re looking for a man in the financial world, with a retirement account, 6 feet tall and blue eyes.”

RJ, a 66-year-old financial advisor, didn’t get a rose, but the desire for a tall man persists throughout society.

“There are certainly some women who are shorter but want a man over 6’0,”Intentional dating” podcast host Talia Koren told HuffPost. “Some men are – no pun intended – overlooked because of their size. And tall boys know they are more attractive.”

The fast fashion industry models a size medium based on a 6-foot man, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionthe average height for an adult male over the age of 20 in the United States is 6 feet 10 inches.

“The fashion industry has not designed clothes for realistic bodies,” he said Lauren McAndrewsassociate professor at Kent State University’s School of Fashion. “It is an interesting decision that many brands make to carry such a limited range, because you exclude a large part of the population. And in a capitalist society, you would think you would want to maximize those sales. It sends a very powerful message that if you don’t fit into this very narrow, strict body ideal, then you are not welcome in this space. That is so heartbreaking for something that is a basic need.”

The reasoning behind women’s tendency to choose taller men dates back to prehistoric times, when taller gorillas would be the ones to win when it came to mating opportunities with female gorillas. Larry Josephsa psychology professor at Adelphi University.

“There is some preference for male height, rooted in our evolutionary biology, because we descended from apes where there was a lot of competition for mating opportunities,” Josephs told HuffPost. “When the males compete with each other for mating opportunities, they develop large bodies; they are twice as large as the females. The females mate with multiple partners while ovulating, but the alpha males lead the way.”

As the human race evolved, height became associated with dominance.

“It conveys the ability to protect, so a dominant male can protect people, especially women who are more sensitive to danger than men, just because they are smaller and have vaginas,” he said. Michael R Cunninghama psychologist and professor at the University of Louisville. “So for that reason, women often like men who can play a protective role and look dominant and strong. The other element related to dominance is the ability to secure resources. And so they like a man who is a good provider, who can get his fair share, or more than his fair share.”

Of course, “stereotypes about height are not true,” Cunningham said. “But social perception can cause reality.”

You can see this in the way we still favor these stereotypes today. Participants in A 2022 studyOn average, they preferred taller than average male partners and shorter than average female partners, reinforcing the societal idea that a man should be significantly taller than a woman in a heterosexual relationship.

Dating coach Erika Ettin told HuffPost that she talks to female clients every day who tell her they want to date a man of a certain height. “But I say, ‘If you want someone six feet tall or taller, you’ve now excluded 86% of the population. “If you want someone six feet and over, you have now excluded 96% of the population,” she said. “If you reduce your dating pool like that, is it worth it?”

Koren hears heterosexual female clients mention many of the biologically anchored factors when explaining why they want to date a taller man. “When I talk to women who date men, the resounding answer on this topic is that they want to feel safe, protected and more feminine, and that is achieved by dating someone bigger than them, taller than them, towers. over them in a way, she said.

The fashion industry also reinforces that stereotype.

Professor of Fashion Institute of Technology Eugene Ree explains that most mainstream clothing retailers make clothes to fit models, who in the US are typically a size medium with a 32-inch waist and a 32-inch inseam.

“The industry believes that using medium is easier for designers to judge designs on, so that has been the traditional practice for a long time,” explains Ree, who works for Banana Republic, Brooks brothers, Hole And Ralph Lauren. “That is also for practical reasons, because it is easier to rank higher and lower. It almost looks like a bell curve. We produce most mediums and larges. Smaller men would have a harder time because sometimes those extra smalls are not produced at all. They have, in fact, become small; [retailers] They think they can always buy bigger and make it custom.”

However, retailers have the power to offer models in different sizes. “It would be the company telling the fit modeling agency that we like this specific size or type of chest height and leg length, and then they will provide you with models,” Ree said.

The height of 6 feet for a medium comes in part from a 2000 book titled “9 Heads: A Guide to Drawing Fashion” that teaches fashion students about sketching designs. “Essentially, your entire body should consist of nine heads. That’s how I learned it in the 1990s,” says McAndrews, who previously worked at Anthropology, Gap and Urban Outfitters. “But realistically the body should be no more than seven heads. This is not realistic.”

Solving that problem would start at fashion schools. “We are trying to correct this at Kent State. We learn how to sketch your designs onto an idealized form,” says McAndrews. “We try to tell students, ‘No, no, it has to be shorter.’ We try to use these more realistic bodies when designing fashion clothing.”

McAndrews said vanity sizing – in which ready-to-wear clothing becomes larger over time while the size on the label remains the same – “skyrocketed” in the late 1980s.

“There can be a lot of vanity sizing in what we call the Alpha sizing, the extra small, small, medium, large and extra large, and that can be a branding issue,” she said, referring to how the same size can be different at different stores. fit you. “That causes even more confusion and frustration about sizing and subsequently creates a constantly distorted image of: what is that average body?”

Ree reiterated that the lack of diversity in size comes down to the budget. “For many companies, it is simply not financially feasible to maintain stock in this way,” he says. “It’s practical, and finance plays a role in that. They’re trying to consolidate sizing so they don’t have to produce as much.”