THE SHORT STRAW

As Tinder introduces a height filter, Helen Coffey asks the experts where some women’s preference for tall men comes from and if true love really does boil down to feet and inches

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I’m a feminist, but as women we don’t always help our cause – especially when it comes to the realm of romance and relationships. The number of us who still expect a man to pay on a first date, for example – 46 per cent according to one 2019 survey – hurts my heart. Women I love and respect still refer to various household chores as “blue jobs” because taking the bins out apparently requires a Y chromosome. But worst of all is arguably our blatant and abhorrent heightism, so abiding that it has essentially radicalised me at this point.

It’s always been problematic below the surface. Now, Tinder’s trialling of a new feature that enables (paying) users to filter prospective matches based on how tall they are has brought the issue kicking and screaming back into the light.

Tom Stroud, he of Love Is Blind: UK fame and now host of the podcast Why Do Men…?, which explores male behaviour in dating and relationships, discovered this prejudice first hand when he shared a video on Instagram encouraging women not to discriminate against potential partners based on feet and inches. It was, he said, one of his more unexpectedly polarising posts: “I was pretty confident that the message that I put out there was one which most people would abide, but it was completely split down the middle,” he says. “I saw a lot of women in particular saying, ‘Look, I’m 5ft 10in, this doesn’t apply to me. I want to go out with a guy taller than me’.”