Clothes are not made for men who are not 6 feet tall

This summer, TikTok creator Girl on Couch went viral when she told the world she was looking for a man.Finance, trust fund, 6 feet tall, blue eyes.” The video permeated pop culture and even made it.” The Golden Bachelorette“, where one of Joan Vassos Suitors mocked the song by telling her, “I heard you're looking for a man in finance, with a retirement account, 6 feet tall and blue eyes.”

RJ, a 66-year-old financial advisor, didn't get a rose, but the desire for a tall man persists throughout society.

“There are definitely some women who are shorter but want the man over 6 feet tall,” “Intentional dating” podcast host Talia Koren told HuffPost. “Some men get noticed – no pun intended – because of their size. And tall men know they are more desirable.”

The fast fashion industry bases its size medium on a man who is 6 feet tall, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average height for an adult man over 20 in the United States is 5'6 m.

“The fashion industry hasn't designed clothes for realistic bodies,” said Lauren McAndrews, an associate professor at Kent State University's School of Fashion. “It's an interesting decision that many brands make to offer such a narrow range because they exclude a large part of the population. And you would think in a capitalist society that you would want to maximize those sales. It sends a very strong message: if you don't fit this very narrow, strict body ideal, you are not welcome in this field. This is so heartbreaking for something that is a basic need.”

According to Larry Josephs, a psychology professor at Adelphi University, the reasoning behind women's tendency to choose larger men dates back to prehistoric times, when larger gorillas had the upper hand in mating with female gorillas.

“There is a certain male size bias that is rooted in our evolutionary biology because we descended from monkeys where there was a lot of competition for mating opportunities,” Josephs told HuffPost. “When males compete with each other for mating opportunities, they develop large bodies; They are twice as big as the females. Females mate with multiple partners during ovulation, but the alpha males go first.”

As humanity evolved, height became associated with dominance.

“It teaches the ability to protect, so that a dominant male can protect people, especially women, who are more vulnerable to danger than men just because they are smaller and have a vagina,” said Michael R. Cunningham, a psychologist and professor at the university from Louisville. “For this reason, women often like men who can take on a protective role and look dominant and strong. The other element associated with dominance is the ability to secure resources. And that’s why they like a man who is a good provider, who can get his fair share or more than his fair share.”

Of course, “body size stereotypes are not true,” Cunningham said. “But social perception can cause reality.”

You can see this in the way we still maintain these stereotypes today. Participants in a 2022 study preferred, on average, taller-than-average male partners and shorter-than-average female partners, reinforcing the societal idea that a man in a heterosexual relationship should be significantly taller than a woman.

Dating coach Erika Ettin told HuffPost that she speaks to clients every day who tell her they want to date a man of a certain size. “But I say, 'Well, if you want someone who's 6 feet or taller, you've now excluded 86% of the population. “If you want someone who is 6 feet tall and taller, you have now excluded 96% of the population,” she said. “If you limit your dating pool so much, is it worth it?”

Koren hears heterosexual clients cite many of the biologically-based factors when explaining why they want to date a taller man. “When I talk to women who date men, the clear answer on this topic is that they want to feel safe, secure, protected and more feminine, and that is achieved by dating someone taller than them, bigger than her, huge in a way over her,” she said.

The fashion industry also reinforces this stereotype.

Eugene Ree, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, explains that most mainstream clothing retailers make garments for models who are typically a medium size in the U.S. with a 32-inch waist and 32-inch inseam.

“The industry is finding that using media makes it easier for designers to review designs, so this has been standard practice for a long time,” explains Ree, who has worked for Banana Republic, Brooks Brothers, gap And Ralph Lauren. “This is also for practicality as it is easier to get a higher or lower grade. It's almost like a bell curve. We produce most medium and large formats. Shorter men would have a harder time as these extra underwear are sometimes not produced at all. They basically cut small; (Retailers) assume they can always buy larger and then scale it down.”

However, retailers have the option to offer models of different sizes. “It would be the company telling the fit modeling agency that we like this particular measurement or type of bust height and leg length, and then they will provide you with models,” Ree said.

The height of 6 feet for a medium comes in part from a 2000 book called ““9 Heads: A Guide to Drawing Fashion” which teaches fashion students how to sketch designs. “Essentially, your entire body should be nine heads. That's how I was taught in the '90s,” said McAndrews, who previously worked at Anthropology, Gap and Urban Outfitters. “But realistically, the body shouldn't have more than seven heads. That’s not realistic.”

Fixing this problem would start in fashion schools. “We are trying to correct this at Kent State. We teach how to sketch your designs on an idealized form,” McAndrews said. “We try to tell students, 'No, no, it has to be shorter.' We try to use these more realistic bodies when designing fashion clothing.”

McAndrews said Size of the washbasin – in which ready-to-wear clothing increases in size over time while the size on the label remains the same – skyrocketed in the late 1980s.

“There can be a lot of size variation in cosmetics, which we call alpha sizes: extra small, small, medium, large and extra large, and that can be a branding issue,” she said, referring to the same size In Different stores may fit you differently. “That creates even more confusion and frustration around sizing and then leads to this further distorted view of the question: What is this average body?”

Ree reiterated that the absence of Variety of sizes it depends on the budget. “For many companies, it is simply not financially feasible to keep their inventory stocked in this manner,” he said. “It's practical and finance is part of it. They're trying to consolidate sizes so they don't have to produce as much.”