August 24, 2011 • 22 mins
In a previous episode, Cristen and Caroline focused on how height affects men. This episode explores the research on women and height -- and, unfortunately, it's not all good news. Tune in to learn more about how height can affect women.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. So for listeners
(00:22):
out there who did not listen to the last episode,
tis tisk first of all, but just to get you
up to speed. In our last episode, we discussed men
and height, and especially these hosts of studies about how
tallman seemed to have advantages health wise, they seem to
make more money, they seem to be more sexually attractive,
(00:45):
I mean, just good, good, good across the board. Yeah,
it seems very good to be a tall man. And
it's promised today we're going to talk about women in
height because we've discovered that the story is much different
than it was for the men. Yeah, it's not all
it's cut out to be to be a tall woman, unfortunately.
(01:06):
And let's also remind folks that, uh, you know, I mean, Caroline,
I have to have a little sensitivity today because I
am a tall woman. Absolutely, I'm I'm five ft nine
inches and I'm proud of every inch or centimeter. For
our metric listeners most of the world. Yes. Um, so, yeah,
there's some bad news. Let's start. Let's get the bad
(01:27):
news over with al right. Well, in July, researchers at
Oxford University broke the news to Kristen, just to me,
to Kristen, uh that actually tall ladies are at a
greater risk of developing cancer. Yes. Uh. And this was
a study result that was circulated in a lot of
mainstream media, so you might have already seen something about this.
(01:52):
And just to boil it down to you, for you,
a woman's chance of developing cancer rose according to the study.
And this is a study, it's called a million woman study,
and um it boiled in this particular instance, boiled down
to nine thousand women who had developed cancer. Um, and
the risk of developing cancer rose by sixteen percent for
(02:15):
every extra ten centimeters or four inches in height. And
it and it freaked me out, Caroline in particular because, uh,
it focused on women from five ft tall to five
ft nine inches tall. So let's study I'm in the
highest highest risk group. I am not at all, not
(02:37):
even close. Uh. Yeah. Well, they actually researchers focused on
seventeen types of cancer and the risk increased was statistically
significant for ten of them, including breast, ovary and large
bowel cancer. And this is not the first study actually
to correlate cancer and being tall. And some researchers think
(02:58):
that it might have something to do with a protein
called i g F one. Right, it's called insulin like
growth factor one, and it has a lot of effect
on your childhood growth, not so much on adult growth.
But some researchers think that it could predispose you to
cancer later on if you have more of it, a
(03:20):
higher concentration of it circulating in your blood. Right, And
the main purpose of i g F one is to
stimulate growth in muscle cells, kidneys, bones, liver, lungs, nerves.
It kind of makes you get big and strong as
you're a child. Yeah. In a study from George Davy
Smith Um, he says that more evidence has been found
in recent years that i g F one plays a
(03:41):
role in cancer. Uh. Something else that's uh that's related
to that is calorie intake. Because the higher overall calorie
intake earlier in life. You know, if you're stuffing your
face full of cheetahs like I did, and it didn't
make me grow. Actually, probably why I'm short, um, but
no that the higher that help caloric intake earlier in
(04:01):
life could actually raise the cancer risk, and they think
it has something to do with um more calories, more
energy boosting I g F that kind of right. Well,
it also makes sense that okay, say, I'm um, I
was a tall child and probably had a higher concentration
of I g F one that was stimulating all of
that growth. I was always the tallest kid um before
(04:23):
I started home schooling, how is the tall as kid
in my class? And probably because of all of that growth,
I had a pretty high caloric intake compared to my
shorter classmates. So they're thinking that maybe there's a link
between between all of that that calorie intake, because there
have been other studies on calorie intake and cancer development
(04:45):
down the road that says that you know, lower calorie
diets makes you healthier down the road. For instance, if
we look at the Okanahan's in Japan, the Okinawans have
the greatest longevity on the planet and there also very short.
For instance, the average height of an eighty seven year
old man Noquanalwa would be four ft nine inches, pretty short,
(05:09):
and they also have a very healthy, low calorie diet.
So you know, there are all these different pieces to
this height cancer puzzle. It seems to affect women more
than men, so it might be something to do with
calorie restriction interacting with i g F one, which stimulates growth.
Doctors are still working it out. Yeah, some of the
(05:29):
other longest living people in addition to the Japanese were
Chinese people and greats, and all of them are shorter
and way less than the average Northern European and Northern American.
But at the same time, when it comes to women
in health, being shorter is not always a positive indicator
of health because, as NPR reported recently, the average height
(05:53):
of women in fourteen African countries has actually shrunk, which
is suggesting not necessarily that the adults aren't as healthy,
but that childhood living conditions have not improved despite improvement
and infant mortality rates. Because when we talk about where
our height comes from around it comes from our genes,
(06:15):
but the rest of it comes from environmental factors, especially
childhood nutrition right childhood disease as also. Um. Yeah, in
this study where they looked at just all over the world,
in nineteen countries, women actually gained height, and in twenty
one they stayed the same. Um and researchers found that
changes in height were associated with income. Actually, affluent women
(06:38):
grew taller, I guess because they have more access to healthcare,
better nutrition, all of those things. Um, So it's kind
of interesting to see how there's there are these positive
and negative correlations with women in height in particular, but
in terms of in the in the US now we're
(06:58):
shifting to a Western focus culturally, height and women hasn't
been a pretty story. Tell me about it. Well, I
had never heard about this before until I started researching
on on tall women for this episode. And fifty years ago, Caroline,
(07:21):
It's not that long ago, not that long ago at all.
In Europe and in the United States, pediatric and chronologists
used to treat tall girls for their height because being
like it was a health issue. Yeah, well it was
a stigmatizing thing. If you were an extremely tall woman,
you were not as socially desirable. You're kind of an
(07:42):
odd ball who just passed. She can find a basketball player,
I know. But back you know, during that time, you know,
women weren't being raised to be basketball players. They were
supposed to be housewives. You know, they needed to to
attract a mate so that she could get married and
cook meals and have babies. One example that Hannah Echo
(08:03):
points out in Bitch Magazine when she's talking about this
tall female stereotype is Julia Child. If you've ever seen
Julian Julia, there's a great scene between Meryl Streep and
Jane Lynch, one of my favorite I love ackers um,
and they're, you know, they're both very tall women, and
they're just kind of talking about how they sort of
(08:23):
ostracized growing up because they were so tall. But going
back to these these end of chronologists, they essentially gave
these tall girls estrogen pills that they would take every
day because estrogen would stunt their growth. Because, like we
talked about in the male Height episode, the stuff that
(08:45):
makes guys so tall is tasterone. But thankfully, with the
advent of things like institutional review boards and upperment in
medical morals, yes medical ethics, that practice um went away, thankfully,
but the tall female stereotype has stuck around. I'd say,
(09:09):
I'm not at five nine, I'm not a super tall woman.
I don't feel unless I put on some some stilettos,
I don't feel I rarely feel awkwardly tall just when
I'm standing next to you. Yes, when you're in flats
and I am in heels, it is quite a sight
to see. But I mean, being tall isn't all bad
(09:30):
that there was no evidence on okay Cupid that tall
women still can can find a mate, right, Oh, absolutely
there was, Yes, speaking from experience, tall women can date successfully. Um.
But we talked about this okay Cupid trends blog post
(09:52):
on height and how it related to the number of
sex partners that people related and also how attractive they
were on the site, And we talked about the male
portion of it last time, and about how a lot
of guys lie about being um taller than they really are,
and for women, as you can imagine, the story is
a little bit different. It's not so much that women
(10:12):
are lying about their height, but a five four woman
on okay Cupid get sixty more contacts each year than
a six footer six footer um And nevertheless, on okay Cupid,
women who are five ten reported the highest number of
sexual partners. But at the same time, the blog post
(10:34):
did make a somewhat snarky at side, saying it was
a little they're like, well, maybe you know they're they
have these sexual partners because they're just desperate and taking
whatever they can get, whereas the short youth can just
pick and choose. Yeah, And to that I say, um, no, no.
But let's go away from Okay Cupid a little bit
(10:55):
and talk about evolutionary biology, because when you go into Google, uh,
the question that comes up for men, is our taller
men more attractive? And for women are shorter women more attractive?
And evolutionary biology might say yeah, yeah, they actually researchers
think that the height differences are going to stick around
(11:16):
because men tall men seem to go for short women. Now.
In the last episode, we also referenced a study of
ten thousand people born in the UK in a single
week in March. N and researchers then went back and
examined their life outcomes, and one of the findings was
that tall men were less likely to be child and
(11:40):
childless and single in adulthood, and on the flip side,
shorter women seemed to be the more sexually attractive among females.
And Dr Nettle, who was one of the main researchers,
said that maybe shorter women have a greater reproductive success
(12:00):
because their shortness might signal more fertility. Right, because tall
women that their height is perhaps a signal that they
had later a later onset of puberty. But at the
same time, in the New scientist Daniel Nettles, same guy
says he's not really sure why the shorter women, like
(12:24):
why men might prefer shorter women because he says, quote,
there's no evidence that shorter women can see more quickly
or are more fertile in a contemporary population. So Nettle
is talking about that. UM. Even though previous studies have
shown that smaller women are more likely to die in childbirth. UM,
people are still drawn to evolutionary cues and that shortness
(12:49):
might be some kind of fertility cue, even though, like
you said today, there's not the major fertility difference based
on height. Right. And I actually in one study that
now that women have more access to cesarean section that
more tall babies are being born and more small women
(13:10):
are actually surviving childbirth. Really, so yeah, no, no high
disparity going away anytime soon. Right. Yeah, they really don't
expect that to ever change. UM. But if we look
at just what people find attractive, UM, if they're asked
to rate the attractiveness of one woman compared to another
woman based on height. Here's one finding from Brunnel University.
(13:35):
They found that shorter, slimmer females with long, slender legs,
a curvy figure and large breasts, well I'm the most attractive. Sure, sure,
and give me Brad Pitt and Clive Owen together. They're
a little dash of Ryan Reynolds in there. Yeah, sure, yeah,
I mean, but it seems like though from that maybe, uh,
(13:57):
the ideal woman is on the middle of the spectrum.
You know, she's got the long lady's legs and the
shorter woman's Torso no, wait a second, that is not ideal.
That is actually my body type for Okay, I am
five for two I have. I was told by a
guy at one of those like wilderness outfitter places I
needed a pack of a pack and he gets me
(14:18):
a small one and he puts it on me, and
he's looking at me and he's like, this is weird.
Why isn't it fitting you right? And he's kind of
like adjusting it and shaking the pack so that it
fits me better. He goes, oh, I know what it is.
What he said, Oh, well, for your height, you have
really long legs but a really short torso, so it's
(14:38):
great your ideal Caroline. Well for having babies, maybe even
not for wearing a pack. No, but this is but
they were asked to. This is based on these three
D optical scans and people volunteers assessing how attractive the
bodies of the opposite sex were. And I mean, and
that's that's it. This isn't about having babies or fertility.
(15:01):
And a similar study of attractiveness using these body scans
people like to make to make body scans and have
other other folks rate the attractiveness. This involved Australian and
Hong Kong men and women rating the attractiveness of body
scans of Chinese women. And they did that because they
wanted to to try to eliminate they wanted to control
(15:21):
for any type of cultural bias for a specific height.
And in that study they found that scans of taller
women who had longer arms were also rated highly. But
in this one leg size, unlike the Brunell University study
that favored the long slender legs, legs size did not
contribute significantly to the ratings. So who knows, as long
(15:47):
as you have slender arms, slender arms. Yeah, that's that's
what it is, Michelle Obama arms. Maybe that's why we're
so obsessed with Michelle Obama's arms, because that's really the
one yeah, the one cultural strand throughout she and her cardigans,
he cardigans. Um. But one question that was burning in
(16:08):
my brain was evolutionary biology is telling us, you know,
shortness and female signals fertility, which might signal heightened sexual attraction.
At least among tall men. They seem to prefer shorter women. Uh.
These other these body scan studies seemed to say that
women and people prefer the hour glass, very Marilyn Monroe
(16:30):
esque shape. But what about the tall rail thin model conundrum.
You mean those walking clothes hangers. Yes, it seems like
that's kind of in in Western culture, at least, that
is held up as some kind of um ideal physique
for women. Yeah. Well, there's actually a Ford models blog
on my space. Someone is still in my space. Um,
(16:54):
and and there's basically saying that women are expected to
be walking hangers. I didn't just pull that out of
thin air. Um. But that body type helps the clothes
to be the focus, You're not distracted by their feminine wiles.
You know, you're looking at the clothes and they're just
hanging kind of straight and flat. So that's it. So
so from what I'm getting for all of this, Whereas
(17:16):
in the last podcast, we were able to establish from
many studies that tallman seem to have a lot of
luck in terms of sexual attraction success, health, height all
that women, it's all over the place. We can't figure
out whether, you know, there's the tall model ideal, there's
the Marilyn Monroe kind of curvaceous Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez like,
(17:40):
I'm my I'm making our blast gestures with my gesticulations
with my hands for those of me not in the
in the studio right now. Uh, And we we have
people liking long arms, legs maybe maybe not. Maybe you
like legs, maybe you don't. Yeah. The only thing that
we can really determined from all of this is that
(18:02):
tall women might be at a greater risk for developing cancer. Yeah.
So I don't know why why. I'm just I'm now
curious to know why that is. Why there isn't a more,
um more sustinct answer to the at least for the
sexual attractiveness part. I assumed that the evolutionary biologists would
be like, oh, yeah, it's it's short swear. They didn't
(18:23):
seem to have a definite answer as to why men
men prefer short women or women. Short women are perceived
as more fertile, yeah, or if or if short women
even are more preferable. So I don't know. Maybe the
takeaway is Tom, and have all the luck and just
women awesome. You know you're great at any at any height,
(18:44):
any size, and and love your body the way it
is because gals, um, we're attractive universally. Yeah, that my
my study conclusion. So with that, I'd like to open
it up to listeners. Maybe you can help us solve
this puzzle tall women out there, let us know your
(19:05):
thoughts too, though, Um, is it is? It? Is there
something to this tall female stereotype. Has anyone ever tried
to make you seem less tall? Have people told you
to stop wearing high heels? Yeah? I do think it's
interesting that if you look at pictures of Carla Berney
next to Sarkozy, she is often in flats. She is,
(19:26):
and she's still taller than him that I know, But
that's probably why she's in flats anyway. Right in, If
you have any thoughts on height men women. All of
that are address is mom stuff at how stuff works
dot com and speaking of which I have an email
here in response to our episode on male birth control
(19:46):
is happy, It's not that happy, um, And I just
you know, I appreciate all of these perspectives because you know,
we're women talking about male birth control, and uh not,
not all the guys agree with what we have to say.
For instance, Brian wrote in really taking issue with the
notion that men could not be relied upon to take,
(20:10):
say in oral contraceptive like a lot of women take.
He said, you insinuated several times that men might not
be trustworthy to take a pill every day. Any evidence
that men might be less trustworthy than women to take
a pill is going going to be pretty flimsy. Men
have to trust their wives slash girlfriends to take the
pill now, and I'm sure you know they sometimes forget,
(20:31):
true and sometimes they even forget and don't tell their
partner whoops, were having a baby. Nothing different if men
are taking the pill and there might be and that
there might be an outbreak of unexpected pregnancies or even
STDs because of irresponsible men on birth control. This is
exactly what men deal with now. When sex presents itself,
(20:51):
whether a one night stand or during the course of relationship,
men have to decide how trustworthy the woman is. Again,
nothing different if men are taking the pill practice safe
sex indeed, um, And we also have an email here
from Elizabeth Well Beth as she goes by with um
a request. So I want to open up to other
(21:12):
listeners as well. Right, that's right. It's one thing that
crosses my mind during almost every episode is LGBT recognition.
Many of the examples brought up in your podcast about
heterosexual relationships. I realized that this is probably because the
studies you're citing are about heterosexual men and women, but
it can feel a bit alienating at times. Maybe a
special LGBT focus podcast, or try seeking out research that
(21:34):
has been done that includes LGBT people. Yeah. And I
wrote Beth back and said, you are absolutely right, Um,
as we bring up a lot of times in the podcast, Uh,
the focus of a lot of these relationships studies are
on heterosexuals. And I just wanted to open this up
to listeners. If there is an LGBT related topic, narrow
(21:54):
topic that you would like us to focus on, let
us know, because we are more than happy to you
research that it's not nothing intentional that we're that we're
not talking about more LGBT LGBT issues. So with all
that said again, our email addresses mom Stuff at how
stuff Works dot com. You can also find us over
on Facebook, where we would love to see leave a
(22:16):
comment like us all that good stuff, and you can
follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. And then finally,
during the week you can read our blog It's stuff
Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
(22:38):
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow the
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it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. So for listeners
(00:22):
out there who did not listen to the last episode,
tis tisk first of all, but just to get you
up to speed. In our last episode, we discussed men
and height, and especially these hosts of studies about how
tallman seemed to have advantages health wise, they seem to
make more money, they seem to be more sexually attractive,
(00:45):
I mean, just good, good, good across the board. Yeah,
it seems very good to be a tall man. And
it's promised today we're going to talk about women in
height because we've discovered that the story is much different
than it was for the men. Yeah, it's not all
it's cut out to be to be a tall woman, unfortunately.
(01:06):
And let's also remind folks that, uh, you know, I mean, Caroline,
I have to have a little sensitivity today because I
am a tall woman. Absolutely, I'm I'm five ft nine
inches and I'm proud of every inch or centimeter. For
our metric listeners most of the world. Yes. Um, so, yeah,
there's some bad news. Let's start. Let's get the bad
(01:27):
news over with al right. Well, in July, researchers at
Oxford University broke the news to Kristen, just to me,
to Kristen, uh that actually tall ladies are at a
greater risk of developing cancer. Yes. Uh. And this was
a study result that was circulated in a lot of
mainstream media, so you might have already seen something about this.
(01:52):
And just to boil it down to you, for you,
a woman's chance of developing cancer rose according to the study.
And this is a study, it's called a million woman study,
and um it boiled in this particular instance, boiled down
to nine thousand women who had developed cancer. Um, and
the risk of developing cancer rose by sixteen percent for
(02:15):
every extra ten centimeters or four inches in height. And
it and it freaked me out, Caroline in particular because, uh,
it focused on women from five ft tall to five
ft nine inches tall. So let's study I'm in the
highest highest risk group. I am not at all, not
(02:37):
even close. Uh. Yeah. Well, they actually researchers focused on
seventeen types of cancer and the risk increased was statistically
significant for ten of them, including breast, ovary and large
bowel cancer. And this is not the first study actually
to correlate cancer and being tall. And some researchers think
(02:58):
that it might have something to do with a protein
called i g F one. Right, it's called insulin like
growth factor one, and it has a lot of effect
on your childhood growth, not so much on adult growth.
But some researchers think that it could predispose you to
cancer later on if you have more of it, a
(03:20):
higher concentration of it circulating in your blood. Right, And
the main purpose of i g F one is to
stimulate growth in muscle cells, kidneys, bones, liver, lungs, nerves.
It kind of makes you get big and strong as
you're a child. Yeah. In a study from George Davy
Smith Um, he says that more evidence has been found
in recent years that i g F one plays a
(03:41):
role in cancer. Uh. Something else that's uh that's related
to that is calorie intake. Because the higher overall calorie
intake earlier in life. You know, if you're stuffing your
face full of cheetahs like I did, and it didn't
make me grow. Actually, probably why I'm short, um, but
no that the higher that help caloric intake earlier in
(04:01):
life could actually raise the cancer risk, and they think
it has something to do with um more calories, more
energy boosting I g F that kind of right. Well,
it also makes sense that okay, say, I'm um, I
was a tall child and probably had a higher concentration
of I g F one that was stimulating all of
that growth. I was always the tallest kid um before
(04:23):
I started home schooling, how is the tall as kid
in my class? And probably because of all of that growth,
I had a pretty high caloric intake compared to my
shorter classmates. So they're thinking that maybe there's a link
between between all of that that calorie intake, because there
have been other studies on calorie intake and cancer development
(04:45):
down the road that says that you know, lower calorie
diets makes you healthier down the road. For instance, if
we look at the Okanahan's in Japan, the Okinawans have
the greatest longevity on the planet and there also very short.
For instance, the average height of an eighty seven year
old man Noquanalwa would be four ft nine inches, pretty short,
(05:09):
and they also have a very healthy, low calorie diet.
So you know, there are all these different pieces to
this height cancer puzzle. It seems to affect women more
than men, so it might be something to do with
calorie restriction interacting with i g F one, which stimulates growth.
Doctors are still working it out. Yeah, some of the
(05:29):
other longest living people in addition to the Japanese were
Chinese people and greats, and all of them are shorter
and way less than the average Northern European and Northern American.
But at the same time, when it comes to women
in health, being shorter is not always a positive indicator
of health because, as NPR reported recently, the average height
(05:53):
of women in fourteen African countries has actually shrunk, which
is suggesting not necessarily that the adults aren't as healthy,
but that childhood living conditions have not improved despite improvement
and infant mortality rates. Because when we talk about where
our height comes from around it comes from our genes,
(06:15):
but the rest of it comes from environmental factors, especially
childhood nutrition right childhood disease as also. Um. Yeah, in
this study where they looked at just all over the world,
in nineteen countries, women actually gained height, and in twenty
one they stayed the same. Um and researchers found that
changes in height were associated with income. Actually, affluent women
(06:38):
grew taller, I guess because they have more access to healthcare,
better nutrition, all of those things. Um, So it's kind
of interesting to see how there's there are these positive
and negative correlations with women in height in particular, but
in terms of in the in the US now we're
(06:58):
shifting to a Western focus culturally, height and women hasn't
been a pretty story. Tell me about it. Well, I
had never heard about this before until I started researching
on on tall women for this episode. And fifty years ago, Caroline,
(07:21):
It's not that long ago, not that long ago at all.
In Europe and in the United States, pediatric and chronologists
used to treat tall girls for their height because being
like it was a health issue. Yeah, well it was
a stigmatizing thing. If you were an extremely tall woman,
you were not as socially desirable. You're kind of an
(07:42):
odd ball who just passed. She can find a basketball player,
I know. But back you know, during that time, you know,
women weren't being raised to be basketball players. They were
supposed to be housewives. You know, they needed to to
attract a mate so that she could get married and
cook meals and have babies. One example that Hannah Echo
(08:03):
points out in Bitch Magazine when she's talking about this
tall female stereotype is Julia Child. If you've ever seen
Julian Julia, there's a great scene between Meryl Streep and
Jane Lynch, one of my favorite I love ackers um,
and they're, you know, they're both very tall women, and
they're just kind of talking about how they sort of
(08:23):
ostracized growing up because they were so tall. But going
back to these these end of chronologists, they essentially gave
these tall girls estrogen pills that they would take every
day because estrogen would stunt their growth. Because, like we
talked about in the male Height episode, the stuff that
(08:45):
makes guys so tall is tasterone. But thankfully, with the
advent of things like institutional review boards and upperment in
medical morals, yes medical ethics, that practice um went away, thankfully,
but the tall female stereotype has stuck around. I'd say,
(09:09):
I'm not at five nine, I'm not a super tall woman.
I don't feel unless I put on some some stilettos,
I don't feel I rarely feel awkwardly tall just when
I'm standing next to you. Yes, when you're in flats
and I am in heels, it is quite a sight
to see. But I mean, being tall isn't all bad
(09:30):
that there was no evidence on okay Cupid that tall
women still can can find a mate, right, Oh, absolutely
there was, Yes, speaking from experience, tall women can date successfully. Um.
But we talked about this okay Cupid trends blog post
(09:52):
on height and how it related to the number of
sex partners that people related and also how attractive they
were on the site, And we talked about the male
portion of it last time, and about how a lot
of guys lie about being um taller than they really are,
and for women, as you can imagine, the story is
a little bit different. It's not so much that women
(10:12):
are lying about their height, but a five four woman
on okay Cupid get sixty more contacts each year than
a six footer six footer um And nevertheless, on okay Cupid,
women who are five ten reported the highest number of
sexual partners. But at the same time, the blog post
(10:34):
did make a somewhat snarky at side, saying it was
a little they're like, well, maybe you know they're they
have these sexual partners because they're just desperate and taking
whatever they can get, whereas the short youth can just
pick and choose. Yeah, And to that I say, um, no, no.
But let's go away from Okay Cupid a little bit
(10:55):
and talk about evolutionary biology, because when you go into Google, uh,
the question that comes up for men, is our taller
men more attractive? And for women are shorter women more attractive?
And evolutionary biology might say yeah, yeah, they actually researchers
think that the height differences are going to stick around
(11:16):
because men tall men seem to go for short women. Now.
In the last episode, we also referenced a study of
ten thousand people born in the UK in a single
week in March. N and researchers then went back and
examined their life outcomes, and one of the findings was
that tall men were less likely to be child and
(11:40):
childless and single in adulthood, and on the flip side,
shorter women seemed to be the more sexually attractive among females.
And Dr Nettle, who was one of the main researchers,
said that maybe shorter women have a greater reproductive success
(12:00):
because their shortness might signal more fertility. Right, because tall
women that their height is perhaps a signal that they
had later a later onset of puberty. But at the
same time, in the New scientist Daniel Nettles, same guy
says he's not really sure why the shorter women, like
(12:24):
why men might prefer shorter women because he says, quote,
there's no evidence that shorter women can see more quickly
or are more fertile in a contemporary population. So Nettle
is talking about that. UM. Even though previous studies have
shown that smaller women are more likely to die in childbirth. UM,
people are still drawn to evolutionary cues and that shortness
(12:49):
might be some kind of fertility cue, even though, like
you said today, there's not the major fertility difference based
on height. Right. And I actually in one study that
now that women have more access to cesarean section that
more tall babies are being born and more small women
(13:10):
are actually surviving childbirth. Really, so yeah, no, no high
disparity going away anytime soon. Right. Yeah, they really don't
expect that to ever change. UM. But if we look
at just what people find attractive, UM, if they're asked
to rate the attractiveness of one woman compared to another
woman based on height. Here's one finding from Brunnel University.
(13:35):
They found that shorter, slimmer females with long, slender legs,
a curvy figure and large breasts, well I'm the most attractive. Sure, sure,
and give me Brad Pitt and Clive Owen together. They're
a little dash of Ryan Reynolds in there. Yeah, sure, yeah,
I mean, but it seems like though from that maybe, uh,
(13:57):
the ideal woman is on the middle of the spectrum.
You know, she's got the long lady's legs and the
shorter woman's Torso no, wait a second, that is not ideal.
That is actually my body type for Okay, I am
five for two I have. I was told by a
guy at one of those like wilderness outfitter places I
needed a pack of a pack and he gets me
(14:18):
a small one and he puts it on me, and
he's looking at me and he's like, this is weird.
Why isn't it fitting you right? And he's kind of
like adjusting it and shaking the pack so that it
fits me better. He goes, oh, I know what it is.
What he said, Oh, well, for your height, you have
really long legs but a really short torso, so it's
(14:38):
great your ideal Caroline. Well for having babies, maybe even
not for wearing a pack. No, but this is but
they were asked to. This is based on these three
D optical scans and people volunteers assessing how attractive the
bodies of the opposite sex were. And I mean, and
that's that's it. This isn't about having babies or fertility.
(15:01):
And a similar study of attractiveness using these body scans
people like to make to make body scans and have
other other folks rate the attractiveness. This involved Australian and
Hong Kong men and women rating the attractiveness of body
scans of Chinese women. And they did that because they
wanted to to try to eliminate they wanted to control
(15:21):
for any type of cultural bias for a specific height.
And in that study they found that scans of taller
women who had longer arms were also rated highly. But
in this one leg size, unlike the Brunell University study
that favored the long slender legs, legs size did not
contribute significantly to the ratings. So who knows, as long
(15:47):
as you have slender arms, slender arms. Yeah, that's that's
what it is, Michelle Obama arms. Maybe that's why we're
so obsessed with Michelle Obama's arms, because that's really the
one yeah, the one cultural strand throughout she and her cardigans,
he cardigans. Um. But one question that was burning in
(16:08):
my brain was evolutionary biology is telling us, you know,
shortness and female signals fertility, which might signal heightened sexual attraction.
At least among tall men. They seem to prefer shorter women. Uh.
These other these body scan studies seemed to say that
women and people prefer the hour glass, very Marilyn Monroe
(16:30):
esque shape. But what about the tall rail thin model conundrum.
You mean those walking clothes hangers. Yes, it seems like
that's kind of in in Western culture, at least, that
is held up as some kind of um ideal physique
for women. Yeah. Well, there's actually a Ford models blog
on my space. Someone is still in my space. Um,
(16:54):
and and there's basically saying that women are expected to
be walking hangers. I didn't just pull that out of
thin air. Um. But that body type helps the clothes
to be the focus, You're not distracted by their feminine wiles.
You know, you're looking at the clothes and they're just
hanging kind of straight and flat. So that's it. So
so from what I'm getting for all of this, Whereas
(17:16):
in the last podcast, we were able to establish from
many studies that tallman seem to have a lot of
luck in terms of sexual attraction success, health, height all
that women, it's all over the place. We can't figure
out whether, you know, there's the tall model ideal, there's
the Marilyn Monroe kind of curvaceous Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez like,
(17:40):
I'm my I'm making our blast gestures with my gesticulations
with my hands for those of me not in the
in the studio right now. Uh, And we we have
people liking long arms, legs maybe maybe not. Maybe you
like legs, maybe you don't. Yeah. The only thing that
we can really determined from all of this is that
(18:02):
tall women might be at a greater risk for developing cancer. Yeah.
So I don't know why why. I'm just I'm now
curious to know why that is. Why there isn't a more,
um more sustinct answer to the at least for the
sexual attractiveness part. I assumed that the evolutionary biologists would
be like, oh, yeah, it's it's short swear. They didn't
(18:23):
seem to have a definite answer as to why men
men prefer short women or women. Short women are perceived
as more fertile, yeah, or if or if short women
even are more preferable. So I don't know. Maybe the
takeaway is Tom, and have all the luck and just
women awesome. You know you're great at any at any height,
(18:44):
any size, and and love your body the way it
is because gals, um, we're attractive universally. Yeah, that my
my study conclusion. So with that, I'd like to open
it up to listeners. Maybe you can help us solve
this puzzle tall women out there, let us know your
(19:05):
thoughts too, though, Um, is it is? It? Is there
something to this tall female stereotype. Has anyone ever tried
to make you seem less tall? Have people told you
to stop wearing high heels? Yeah? I do think it's
interesting that if you look at pictures of Carla Berney
next to Sarkozy, she is often in flats. She is,
(19:26):
and she's still taller than him that I know, But
that's probably why she's in flats anyway. Right in, If
you have any thoughts on height men women. All of
that are address is mom stuff at how stuff works
dot com and speaking of which I have an email
here in response to our episode on male birth control
(19:46):
is happy, It's not that happy, um, And I just
you know, I appreciate all of these perspectives because you know,
we're women talking about male birth control, and uh not,
not all the guys agree with what we have to say.
For instance, Brian wrote in really taking issue with the
notion that men could not be relied upon to take,
(20:10):
say in oral contraceptive like a lot of women take.
He said, you insinuated several times that men might not
be trustworthy to take a pill every day. Any evidence
that men might be less trustworthy than women to take
a pill is going going to be pretty flimsy. Men
have to trust their wives slash girlfriends to take the
pill now, and I'm sure you know they sometimes forget,
(20:31):
true and sometimes they even forget and don't tell their
partner whoops, were having a baby. Nothing different if men
are taking the pill and there might be and that
there might be an outbreak of unexpected pregnancies or even
STDs because of irresponsible men on birth control. This is
exactly what men deal with now. When sex presents itself,
(20:51):
whether a one night stand or during the course of relationship,
men have to decide how trustworthy the woman is. Again,
nothing different if men are taking the pill practice safe
sex indeed, um, And we also have an email here
from Elizabeth Well Beth as she goes by with um
a request. So I want to open up to other
(21:12):
listeners as well. Right, that's right. It's one thing that
crosses my mind during almost every episode is LGBT recognition.
Many of the examples brought up in your podcast about
heterosexual relationships. I realized that this is probably because the
studies you're citing are about heterosexual men and women, but
it can feel a bit alienating at times. Maybe a
special LGBT focus podcast, or try seeking out research that
(21:34):
has been done that includes LGBT people. Yeah. And I
wrote Beth back and said, you are absolutely right, Um,
as we bring up a lot of times in the podcast, Uh,
the focus of a lot of these relationships studies are
on heterosexuals. And I just wanted to open this up
to listeners. If there is an LGBT related topic, narrow
(21:54):
topic that you would like us to focus on, let
us know, because we are more than happy to you
research that it's not nothing intentional that we're that we're
not talking about more LGBT LGBT issues. So with all
that said again, our email addresses mom Stuff at how
stuff Works dot com. You can also find us over
on Facebook, where we would love to see leave a
(22:16):
comment like us all that good stuff, and you can
follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. And then finally,
during the week you can read our blog It's stuff
Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
(22:38):
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow the
house Stuff Works. I frone app has a ride. Download
it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented
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