Love is a height thing

So I’m sitting at work the other day when my coworker turns to me and says “I think I have to end things with Jim,”

“Why?” was my instinctive reply, she had been dating him for a few weeks, he seemed sweet, funny, smart, and always paid for dinner what more could a girl want when your in your twenties.

“He’s only an inch taller then me.” She said her voice not even hinting at humor.

“Oh well then you’re totally going to have to end things,” said another coworker who was standing on the other side of her. With that the two began discussing ways to break things gently with Jim and I sat look at the two of them and scratched my head. Apparently even in 2006 the Tall, Dark and Handsome criteria still exists.

The expression has been around since the dawn of time well at least a few hundred years, Tall, Dark and Handsome, or TDH. When I asked a handful of women ages 18-28 how they would describe the man they like to marry in physical criteria there response with TDH.

It’s the way most women describes the man she wants, the criteria we put every handsome fellow through who asked for our number or offers to buy us a drink. It’s our way of figuring out if the guy whose sitting in the next cubical is worth the time of day or not. And it’s been trained into us since childhood.

As a child reading Cinderella or Snow White, you heard about prince charming and his TDH ways. In our teens, magazines like bop and seventeen told us that Tom Cruse, Orlando Bloom or Keanu Reeves were TDH. The romance novels we spend our summer pursuing by the pool all talk about those dastardly handsome pirates and there TDH Looks. Movie and TV stars from Humphrey Bogart to Freddie Prince Jr. all fall under the TDH category.

The history of the expression is hard to find some say it dates back to between the 1800- 1900 with the influx of foreigners from France, Germany, Greece, entering the United States. These men of noble stature from around the world offered the women they married wealth, security, and dreamy accent. Most were tall European men, with mysterious personalities and handsome features. And thus women seeking “the right match” began looking for rich foreigners. Thus the phrase TDH was born and over the years women young and old have used it when describing the man they want and the men they find attractive. But for those short, sweet, and average looking guys out there the phase has meant years of trying to get women to see past there height and to there souls.

The phase drives women to believe that the only way they can be in a happy long term relationship is if the man they are seeing is at least 5’8’’ with chiseled features and a tan. But what does the expression really mean and does it really matter if your future mate is 5’5’’ or 6’2’’? Here is what I discovered.

Most women want a man whose brave, smart, funny, kind, giving, caring, a good listener, yet a women is more likely to try and improve a guy whose not quite Mr. Wonderful then she is to date a guy less then at least an inch taller then her.

Why do woman want men taller then them. The qualities of good boyfriend or husband aren’t kept in tall packages that not to say that TDH guys aren’t caring sweet or brave but rather that if a guy has all of the personality requirements we want in our Mr. Wonderful why should we let him loose if he’s not quite tall enough?

But I guess no matter how secure we are with ourselves in the end we still want someone who’ll go down stairs with a baseball bat when we hear a loud noise.