It’s True, A 6-Foot-Tall Man Has It Easier Finding Clothes In The U.S.
This summer, TikTok creator 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 permeated pop culture and even made it to” The Golden Bachelorette,” where one of Joan Vassos’s suitors riffed on the song by telling her, “I heard you’re looking for a man in finance, with a retirement account, 6’5” and blue eyes.”
RJ, a 66-year-old financial advisor, didn’t receive a rose, but the desire for a tall man persists throughout society.
“There are definitely some women who are shorter, but want the over 6’0” guy,” “Dating Intentionally” podcast host Talia Koren told HuffPost. “Some men are — no pun intended — looked over because of their height. And tall guys know they’re more desirable.”
The fast fashion industry models a size medium based on a 6’0” man, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average height for an adult man over 20 in the United States is 5’9”.
“The fashion industry has not designed clothing on realistic bodies,” said Lauren McAndrews, an associate professor at Kent State University’s School of Fashion. “It’s an interesting decision that many brands make to carry such a narrow range because you are excluding a big segment of the population. And you would think in a capitalist society that you would want to maximize those sales. It sends a very strong message that if you do not fit this very narrow, stringent body ideal, you’re not welcome in this space. That’s such a heartbreaking thing for something that is a basic need.”
Why do our brains favor tall men?
The reasoning behind women’s tendencies to go for taller men dates back to the prehistoric age when larger gorillas would be the ones to win out when it came to mating opportunities with female gorillas, according to Larry Josephs, a psychology professor at Adelphi University.
“There’s some preference for male height rooted in our evolutionary biology because we’re descended from apes where there was a lot of competition for mating opportunities,” Josephs told HuffPost. “When the males are competing with each other for mating opportunities, they grow big bodies; they’re twice as big as the females are. The females mate with multiple partners while they’re ovulating, but the alpha males go first.”
As the human race evolved, height came to be associated with dominance.
“It conveys the ability to protect, so a dominant male can protect people, especially females who are more susceptible to danger than males just because they’re smaller and have vaginas,” said Michael R. Cunningham, a psychologist and professor at the University of Louisville. “So for that reason, women often like guys who can serve in a protective role and look dominant and strong. The other element associated with dominance is the ability to secure resources. And so they like a guy who is a good provider, who can take 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 that in the way we still favor these stereotypes today. Participants in a 2022 study, on average, preferred taller-than-average male mates and shorter-than-average female mates, reinforcing the societal idea that a man should be significantly taller than a woman in a heterosexual relationship.
Dating coach Erika Ettin told HuffPost she talks to women clients every day who tell her they want to date a man of a certain height. “But I say, ‘Well, if you want someone six feet or above, you’ve now ruled out 86% of the population. If you want someone 6’2 and up, you’ve now ruled out 96% of the population,’” she said. “If you narrow your dating pool that much, is that worth it?”
Koren hears straight women clients cite a lot of the biologically engrained factors when they explain why they want to date a taller man. “When I talk to women who are dating men, the resounding answer on this topic is that they want to feel safe, secure, protected and more feminine, and that is accomplished by dating someone who is taller than them, bigger than them, towers over them in a way,” she said.
How this favoritism plays out in the fashion world
The fashion industry also reinforces that stereotype.
Fashion Institute of Technology professor Eugene Ree explains that most mainstream clothing retailers create garments to fit models, which, in the U.S., are typically a size medium with a 32-inch waist and a 32-inch inseam.
“The industry finds that using medium is easier for the designers to review designs on, so that has been the legacy practice for a long time,” explained Ree, who’s worked for Banana Republic, Brooks Brothers, Gap and Ralph Lauren. “That’s also for practicality because it’s easier to grade up and grade down. It’s almost like a bell curve. We produce most mediums and larges. Shorter men would have a harder time because sometimes those extra smalls are not produced at all. They basically cut off at small; [retailers] figure they can always buy bigger and then tailor it down.”
Retailers have the power to pull different-sized fit models, though. “It would be the company telling the fit model agency that we like this particular measurement or type chest height, leg length, and then they will supply you with models,” Ree said.
The 6-foot height for a medium originates, in part, from a 2000 book called ”9 Heads: A Guide To Drawing Fashion” that teaches fashion students about sketching designs. “Essentially, your whole body should be nine heads. That’s how I was taught back in the ’90s,” said McAndrews, who previously worked at Anthropology, Gap and Urban Outfitters. “But realistically, the body should not be more than seven heads. This isn’t realistic.”
Fixing that issue would start in fashion schools. “We’re trying to rectify this at Kent State. We are teaching how to sketch out your designs on an idealized shape,” McAndrews said. “We are trying to tell students, ‘No, no, it needs to be shorter.’ We’re trying to use these more realistic bodies in the process of designing fashion clothing.”
McAndrews said vanity sizing — in which ready-to-wear clothes get bigger over time while the size on the label stays the same — “skyrocketed” in the late ’80s.
“There can be a lot of vanity sizing that happens 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 may fit you differently at different stores. “That creates even more confusion and frustration around sizing and then creates this continued distorted view of, what’s that average body?”
Ree reiterated that the lack of size diversity comes down to budget. “For a lot of companies, it’s just not feasible financially for them to keep inventory in stock that way,” he said. “It’s practicality, and financial has a piece of that. They try to consolidate sizing so they don’t have to produce as much.”
