Tinder is testing its new height filter in "limited" parts of the world. - Photo: Reuters
SINGAPORE: Does height really matter when you are searching for “The One” on a dating app?
Tinder has again put this touchy question front and centre when it quietly rolled out in May a new filter that allows its premium users to use height as a metric for a potential partner.
A post on Reddit early in June drew the internet’s attention to it, and it has since set off a spirited debate on the state of love and romance in the world and how dating apps may be screwing it all up.
The new filter lets Tinder subscribers who pay for the two highest subscription tiers set the minimum and maximum height of a potential match.
Tinder is, for now, testing this out in “limited” parts of the world, and it is not a hard filter – meaning the setting is more of a suggestion to the algorithm rather than a tool to completely block users of a certain height.
But it has understandably disheartened “short kings” and “tall queens” – and divided everyone in the middle.
Many insist that height is a superficial metric of attractiveness. But there are those who say that it is not easy to overcome social expectations, and so height becomes for them a minimum requirement for anyone wanting to get one foot in the door.
Shorter men, in particular, feel especially targeted by the filter.
“It’s over for short men. What are they going to do now?” one person wrote on X.
“Tinder just declared war on short kings,” wrote another social media user.
Another joked that “pretty girls don’t pay for dating apps. Short kings are safe”.
Others are putting a positive spin on it.
“Why is this a problem?” a Reddit user asked. “If someone likes a certain height, go for it. It also weeds out the (people) who don’t like your height.”
“Heightism” is real
But “heightism” is real, and it is something that dating apps and social media in general are magnifying with their filters and glorified aspirations for “man in finance, trust fund, 6-foot-5, blue eyes”.
A study in 2022 in the journal Frontiers In Psychology found that women seek men who are 21cm taller than them. Men, on the other hand, are most satisfied when they are 8cm taller than their partners.
Dating apps are exacerbating this fixation on height, Arizona State University Professor Liesel Sharabi, who studies how online dating affects modern love, told CNN.
“They’re seeing people as their height,” she said of dating app users. “They’re seeing the ability to filter it, so suddenly, height becomes salient in a way that it wasn’t before. In doing that, the dating apps are telling you what you should be prioritising.”
Hinge, Tinder’s rival, also lets paying users filter matches according to their height.
Bumble, meanwhile, allows premium users to avoid matches with certain star signs, while subscribers of Grindr can filter by body type.
Tinder, however, remains the world’s largest dating app, and its latest filter is seen also stoking deception and lies.
In 2010, the online dating site OkCupid said its research showed most men inflate their height by 5cm.
“They might think, ‘What’s an inch? No one’s gonna notice that,’” said Prof Sharabi. “People feel like they don’t have any other choice.”
Twitch streamer Charlie Schroeder enraged many users when she weighed in on the “wish list” element on X.
“Not to side with the men here, but why do women 5’3” and under have such strong preferences for men 6ft+. You are a hobbit, 5’8” is tall enough. You can’t even tell when your 5’8” boyfriend is lying about being 6’0” because you’re so short,” she said.
Look beyond physicality
Freelance journalist Claire Cohen, who is 180cm tall, said in a BBC podcast that she once went on a blind date with a man shorter than her by 13cm. Neither was aware of the other’s height till the day they met in person.
“He seemed actively annoyed with me for being tall,” she recalled.
She said shorter men “maybe do have a valid chip on their shoulders”.
“They sort of have a lifetime of being sent a message that perhaps they can’t protect women as well as tall men. They’re not the sort of men a lot of women want,” she said.
“This is just hideously unfair,” she said, “because I have dated other shorter men, and they were all fantastic and kind and charming and have great personalities – all the things you actually want from a partner that matter and are far more important than height.”
Annabelle Knight, an author and one of the top relationship coaches in Britain, said in the same podcast that Tinder’s height filter creates an “unnecessary barrier”.
“Everyone knows deep down that height is not the most important thing,” she said.
“It probably is when you’re first starting to date, and all you’ve got to go on is a physical thing,” she added.
“But aside from that, once you get to know someone, the physicality really fades away. It becomes their values, their morals. It becomes their actions that make them attractive to you.” - The Straits Times/ANN
