In the latest dating app news: Tinder, the app where aspirations of finding a long-term partner go to die, is testing out a new height filter that will allow women to filter out men who aren’t tall enough for them.
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It’s not available to free users yet; only those who subscribe to Tinder Gold and Tinder Premium will be able to use it. The internet is, of course, up in arms about it, but this pay-for-it height filter model has actually already been implemented in several other dating apps already, like Bumble and Hinge.
Height has been a popular conversation topic when it comes to dating — specifically, women’s preferences for men of a certain height. Maybe you’ve even heard women say they won’t date someone who stands shorter than six feet. There’s even a slang term, “short kings,” to describe groups of adult men who are on the shorter side, reclaiming the term “short” and putting a positive spin on it, which seems to have really worked.
In a statement to Mashable, a Tinder spokesperson said they’re “always listening to what matters most to our Tinder users,” with hopes it’ll help users connect “more intentionally” on the platform.
The hopes for this seem quite bleak, given this is one of the most common responses about the filter addition already:
And it’s not the only ridiculous filter suggestion I’ve seen: single mom filters, race filters, age verification (news flash: that already exists), bra size, body count, whatever the hell “vaginal circumference” means. To put it simply, a lot of people are mad. My guess is that a lot of this is from the guys who will be affected by it: the short kings.
Realistically, men have already been including their heights in their dating app bios for years now. A lot of men also lie about their heights online. About 70% of men lie about themselves on their dating profiles, according to a GQ survey — 27% specifically about their height. Lying online is also clearly not specific to one gender. Anyone can do it. I just think it’s funny to see the social media uproar when men feel they have no incentive to just be honest and will therefore still probably just lie about it anyway. I’ve also heard so many men throughout my life say they only want to date short women. My source? I’m pretty tall for a woman.
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What does this even mean? We break it down.I’m almost 5’9”, and I was always one of the tallest girls in all my classes growing up. I also have a lot of short friends, so whenever I hear them complain about wanting a 6’0″ boyfriend, I roll my eyes. They could date a short king and still wear heels and not tower over them, whereas I could not. When I was single, I’d try my best to explain that they need to leave the tall men for the tall women. If their standard at 5’3” was a man at least 6’0″, mine, according to math, was going to have to be like 6’6”.
It makes me laugh now. My boyfriend, who I have been with for four years now, is not by any means that tall. He’s taller than me, but I learned that dating someone who’s not that much taller than you just means that sometimes I’m taller than him in certain shoes and that’s it, really. It literally does not matter at all. Like, at all.
If you’re a man who’s upset about this, here’s what I’ll say: Whether you want to admit it or not, women with a certain height preference were probably already being selective regardless of the filter. Now you just know some of them are actually doing it — and paying for it! — and nothing else is actually changing. Needless to say, superficial or not, some people are just going to have strong preferences. This will literally just weed out people who don’t want you, so why would you want to be with them anyway? That’s an article for another time.
Now, ladies, maybe you should put this filter on. I wouldn’t want to risk ending up with one of the insecure guys who are openly responding to this update — and, it’s worth noting, likely avoiding being grouped by the filters by refraining from sharing their height on Tinder in protest — by asking for filters that are actually just grossly misogynistic and racist.
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