On Thursday night I slept with the guy I was messaging on Instagram. He was really tall and I forgot how hot he was, and how well he dressed he was, and it was great. But he’s not the subject of this post. This post is about me figuring out why I want to sleep with tall men and how I’m getting over it.

For a while now, I’ve become uneasy with why I have a preference for tall men. I know there are definitely “short”/shorter men I find attractive. But on dating apps, I like to know the height of a man before I sleep with them, and I always want it to be taller than me. It seems so anti-feminist to me though. Deep down I know that I shouldn’t care at all what someone’s height is.

The last time I asked a guy how tall he was when organising sex, he asked what bra size I was. I got really offended and couldn’t figure out how to explain that height and bra size were not equivalent.* So maybe they are the same thing? Is it shallow to have a height preference? Is there an exception, like tall women can go for tall men? Or is height one of those toxic male standards of beauty?

Rhetorical questions aside, I did spend a good few hours of my life trying to figure it out. And then one of my fave feminist pages on Instagram (follow them!) posted this:

AND THEN IT CAME TO ME. Duh – for me, my femininity is wrapped up in how I physically compare to men. I don’t particularly care about the size of my body except when I’m worrying about being fatter than a man. It’s silly. But how many of you out there have actually been with (or dated/slept with/been in relationships with) shorter men? I spoke to my friend about this and she said it’s just the law of averages – there are more taller men than women, so it’s just statistics. Maybe that is the case, but isn’t is strange that we share heights on dating app profiles? Well,  men usually just put their height, or sometimes it’s also followed by “if that matters”. I find that grating because if you think it’s shallow to care about a man’s height, then don’t buy into the whole putting-your-height-on-dating-apps standard. But what if height is just a male beauty standard that they feel under pressure to confirm to – then can I really be mad at them for just sucking it up and accepting the height status quo? And clearly heterosexual men who put down their height know it’s something that women care about. I know for sure there are women who prefer tall men, but when it’s the other way round, it seems like it needs to be commented on or justified as though it’s unusual? I asked Google for answers but learnt very little. Also, all of this height shit is also SUPER heterosexual. I don’t see much about lesbian women and whether they prefer tall or short women. My conclusion was that caring about height is stupid.

So these thoughts were already going through my brain and then I met a guy last Saturday that I immediately fancied – but he was shorter than me in my boots. I don’t know what the height difference is when I’m wearing trainers, but I asked him out so we’ll find out tonight. We got on really well, I would have been up for going home with him that night had the opportunity come up. He didn’t seem to mind that I was taller than him, which I liked – his masculinity wasn’t fragile like that which made me feel comfortable and not self conscious that I wasn’t feminine or attractive enough. I can’t say that a year ago I would have asked out a guy that was shorter than me, but I’m glad I did that night.

*When telling a friend this, she reasoned that asking about bra size is sexist because usually it’s women who have breasts so it’s sexual objectification to ask, whereas men and women both have heights. But we were really tired when talking about it, so don’t know how much sense this makes.