The Height of Folly

Dating apps have digitally castrated 85% of men.

In the Conservatory by Édouard Manet (1879)

I like to think I have one of those personalities toward which advertising and propaganda have no effect. 

Every day, social media shuffles something ambitious before my eyes. Adverts for a rehab centre for alcohol ‘abuse’ or booze-free ‘wine’. The kind endured by curtain-twitching waifs who ‘have just as much fun without drinking.’

Advertisers take note: If my head danced in flames, and you held a monopoly on all fire-retardant liquids, I’d still refuse your fatuous potions.

But this advert was strangely compelling. 

Rather sadistically, it said: ‘Don’t let your genes deprive you of the respect and attention you deserve!’ 

And what, I pondered, do I deserve? Untold riches, a superyacht, a title-winning football team? Perhaps a varied and exotic sex life, with Irina Shayk just one happy and eager member of an ever-burgeoning harem? What about large tracts of the Donbas region in Ukraine, and my pick of former Soviet republics? 

Not quite. This brand of shoe promised to correct the world’s most intractable problems. 

How? By adding almost three inches to one’s height, this shoe will dissolve forever the brutality of a genetic lottery. 

The sales pitch is impressively shameless. With the magic shoes in hand, a young man traipses over the beach. He approaches two bikini-clad young ladies. 

“Hey, girls. So, how important is height for a man?” 

“Oh, like, very important. Very, very important,” they both concur. 

This advert ensured one lady was blonde and the other brunette.

I’m sure this generic thimblerig was for diversity, inclusion, and equity, and not to exploit the audience.

Classic marketing psychopathy. First, present the problem: height is important to bikini-wearing women. Second, present the solution: 

“So, like, would you care if a guy wore these shoes to make himself like three inches taller?” asks the salesman. 

“Oh, no!” cry both girls. “Not at all. He should legit buy those.” 

Problem? Check. Solution? Check. Now for the implication: 

This advert hijacks your amygdala—the monkey brain. Buy these shoes, and these girls will sleep with you. Perhaps right here on the beach, demented with vertical lust, as they may so be.

Why would they care? Would they insist you kept on your magic shoes?

Perhaps they would forgo such considerations. It's difficult to judge someone's height when you're pretzeled in some carnal configuration. Perhaps height is the last statistic to occupy one’s mind. How effective is coitus interruptus? 

The advert ends. ‘Studies show taller men lead much more fulfilling lives, including better job prospects and romantic opportunities.’ 

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Not so long ago, height-boosting shoes were the preserve of the incurably insecure and vain. As one sage put it, Vladimir Putin is five-foot-five, pretending to be five-foot-seven.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the ex-French president, was particularly touchy about his 5’5 frame. Sarkozy’s staff once selected twenty factory workers by height for a photo-op in which the president towered over them.

History habitually blames shorter men for war and atrocity. Napoleon was a diminutive 5’2. Adolf Hitler, a failed Viennese painter, was 5’9. Indeed, every member of the Nazi party's inner circle possessed some hang-up. Camera-shy Himmler obsessed over and concealed his weak chin. The clubfooted Goebbels waddled like a penguin. 

Apparently, taller men live more comfortable lives. They make more money. The average Fortune 500 boss is six feet tall. Over a lifetime, a six-foot man makes £100,000 more than a five-foot-four man. Only 13 U.S. presidents have been five-nine or shorter.

Taller men live longer and are luckier with women. Indeed, the plight of the shorter man is stark: they’re twice as likely to kill themselves.

Understandably, some men fret about this vertical apartheid. Whilst some opt for height-boosting shoes. Others elect for a permanent solution. 

Some men literally break their legs for a date. By paying $75,000, you can add three inches to your height. Feeling flush? For double that figure, a surgeon will make you six inches taller.

For the squeamish, here’s a warning. During this procedure, surgeons break one’s legs. They insert adjustable titanium nails into the bone. By remote control, these nails stretch by one millimetre per day. Drugged on opioids, and unable to walk, patients wait patiently for their broken bones to fuse to their new length.

For $150,000, doctors will snap both the femurs and tibias. The result? Six inches taller, albeit with the proportions of a toddler’s doodle.

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They used to perform such harrowing surgery on those smashed to bits in high-speed collisions or on those who’d fallen from mountainsides. Now it’s popular with men keen to land a glove on the genetic lottery.

After all, dating apps digitally castrate 85 percent of men. 

On Bumble, sixty percent of women say they’re looking for a six-foot-tall or taller man. Just 30 percent will drop their requirements one inch lower. Just 15 percent of women would consider a man just one inch shorter than the average 5’9 man. Shorter than that? Your chances fall with each descending inch. Understandably, 80 percent of men lie about their height. Why? Dating apps are merciless, Latin American economies. Most women on dating apps like Tinder and Bumble seek the top 20 percent of men, leaving the rest to compete for a small portion of the dating pool. Reader, I’m not bearing a tall grudge from a short height, I’m six-foot-two. 

When I was younger, we used to meet people in person. This antiquated exercise was meritocracy in action.

For the genetically ungifted, that is, the ordinary 80 percent of men, this was the great leveller.

No matter how short or aesthetically unblessed, meeting in person gave all a fair hearing. As the great Christopher Hitchens once wrote, there’s a good reason why men employ humour and why women tend to value a man’s mastery of humour.

Dating apps are anti-merit. Essentially, they provoke a biological feudalism that determines your prospects before you escape the womb.

The 5’9 guy with good humour, high intelligence, seasoned wit, and good manners? Nope.

Social media mutates the ideal into the ordinary. Every man is six-foot-plus. Every woman resembles a Reality TV star: big lips, ballooning bum, bouncing boobs.

In this strange, digital landscape, some porn-addled men use dick pics as a greeting. Three-quarters of women have endured such ‘greetings.’

Dating apps are a primitive world in which some men say ‘hello’ by showing you their rather ugly organs.

Offline, leery weirdoes masturbating vigorously (Is there any other way?) on the night Tube often end up in jail or in the newspaper. Endearingly, the Daily Telegraph still calls this ‘performing a sexual act’ as if on a stage before a ticket-waving audience and a shrivel of critics.

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Reader, I’m no reactionary prude—I’m spiritually French—the only people on earth a majority of whom think adultery is an invigorating hobby rather than a grave sin.

The business of life works better without a screen and an algorithm.

Unsurprisingly, presenting oneself as a product on the ‘dating marketplace’ degrades self-esteem, afflicts mental health, and corrodes our sense of reality. I’m no philosopher, but maybe our burgeoning mental health crisis has something to do with our living as if products on a shelf to be thumbed over by complete strangers.

Perhaps not all is lost. We could end the war in Ukraine. By crowdfunding $150,000, we could make Vladimir Putin six inches taller. Surely that would dissolve his murderous Napoleon Complex? The war would be over by lunch.

Do you have any better ideas?

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