Does Height Matter on Dating Apps?

It matters a little, and less than most men think. On the dating apps, height works as a quick first impression and, for some women, as a setting they use to cut the list down. Being dramatically short will turn some of them off. It does not decide your matches. A man who looks good, writes something specific and asks for a date loses far less than the man who treats his number as a disaster.

A woman sizing up a stranger on an app decides in a second or two, so anything visible and countable becomes a shortcut. Height is one of those things. Some women type a minimum into a search setting and forget it is there. Others never look at the field.

a dating coach explains the bias in two parts. A bigger man tends to win a fight, and boys who grow tall early are often treated as leaders. Both ideas get attached to height in a woman's mind. My point is that the link is real but loose. Plenty of small men can fight, and plenty of short men lead. Once a woman knows you, she responds to the quality underneath, not the inches.

First impressions are where the bias lives, and an app is nothing but first impressions.

coach is five foot seven. He puts the average American man at about five foot nine to five foot ten, so by his own count he is short. His summary is that height is not as big a deal as many men think, though being dramatically short will put some women off.

He says he cannot trace a single rejection to his height. The one time a woman told him to his face that it was a dealbreaker, he kept talking, and the evening went well.

That is one man's report, not a statistic, and nobody publishes a clean figure for what height costs on an app. The honest planning number is a small cost. It is not zero, and it is not the end of the road.

coach once went through a man's pictures and called out one he hated. The angle and distance made the man look about three feet tall, and coach knew from the man's other pictures that he was not. A poor camera angle did what his actual height never would.

That is the mistake worth fixing first. A shot taken from below, a slouch, a group picture where you are the smallest man in it, or a cropped torso all say more about your height than any number does. Standing straight, in clothes that fit, with your whole body in the frame answers the question before she asks it.

My warning is aimed at the short men who overreact. They carry a chip on their shoulder, act younger than they are, and make the subject bigger than it needs to be.

You can do the same thing in small ways. A joke about it in your bio, an apology in the first message, or raising it on the date all turn a minor fact into the topic. If the app has a height field, put the true number in once. If she asks, answer plainly and move on to something else.

My blunt view is that the bias in your own head is probably worse than the bias in the world, and that is the one you can actually do something about.

He suggests thinking of yourself as a character in a video game. You have a speed rating, a strength rating, a cleverness rating and a verbal rating. How good the character is comes from the sum, not from any single score. Height is one attribute out of twenty or fifty.

He sees this at his bootcamps. A tall student who is struggling in life sits beside a short student who is rich, and each one wishes he were the other. Everybody has strong and weak scores.

Some of yours can change. Fitness changes. So do style, the way you write, how you carry yourself, and how quickly you ask a woman out. Height does not, so the effort goes elsewhere.

• Lead with a clear, well-lit shot of your face, taken at eye level.
• Add one full-length picture where you stand straight in clothes that fit.
• Write two plain lines with something specific she could reply to, and leave your height out of them.
• Answer new matches quickly, and suggest a place and a time within a few messages. coach moves a woman from the app to her number in four to seven messages.
• Change one thing at a time, and give each change a couple of weeks before you judge it.

None of that depends on an inch, and all of it is available tonight.

Some women will never see you. They set a minimum, and the app does what they told it to. Nothing you write can reach a woman who has screened you out before you appear.

Do not spend an evening arguing with a setting. The women who did not set one are still a large group, and your job is to be worth a message to them. A man who stays calm about his height, looks sharp and writes like himself gets plenty of those.