Amanda's got some thoughts up on a silly Salon piece about the still-popular idea that women should only be dating men who are taller than they are.
Television continues to push the monstrous sexual dimorphism thing for no good reason, except to make people feel bad about themselves if they're not paired up "correctly" (or even paired up at all). There's nothing I find so irritating as those reality shows that cast mixed-sex groups where the men are all 6'2 200lbs and the women are all 5'6 108lbs. Like Sex and the City, it makes it look like men and women are totally different species.
As someone who's as tall as - and weighs as much as - the average American man, I find these portrayals disingenuous and slightly offensive. If you want to argue averages, and say, "No, no, television is just portraying average people," I'll laugh at you, because not only is everybody on television prettier than average (they're in the upper 2%), the average man in America is actually 5'9 191lbs, and the average woman is 5'4 145lbs.
In order to continue to perpetuate the monstrous sexual dimorphism myth, I'd have to eliminate 50% of the male population from my radar based merely on height. Because couples are "supposed" to "look" a certain way.
You know: they both have to be white, or they both have to black, or they both have to be hispanic. Or they have to be composed of one (1) man and one (1) woman.
Look at the huge media machine trying to keep us all in our proper boxes.
How exhausting it must be for them.
Monday, November 08, 2004
And Etc.
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2 comments so far. What are your thoughts?
I always think of Gloria and Art, a farm couple neighbors of mine when I was growing up and how Gloria was about 8-9" taller than Art and had a good 90-100 lbs on him - she did all the milking because you have to 'hoss' the cows around some when milking and Art did much of the tractor driving , maybe in part because he was more nimble than Gloria - the two best farm equipment operators in the area were women, Ruby and Violet were their names - Mrs. Peterson could heave 100 lb potato sacks all day long loading them onto the back of a truck - another big powerful woman and we always wondered who would win if she and Gloria ever had a wrestling match - we never questioned the roles of women and men, we just accepted what had to be done to make a living
Posted by goesh
It's funny - the stereotype/funny papers couple when the US was more rural was the big, fleshy farmwife and the skinny little husband. I'm wondering if the Sex in the City couple-type is an urban "ideal type" associated with money and power, and so is trickling into the rest of the US through there. Of course, the idea of the trophy wife, or petite, child-like bride is nothing terribly new.
Posted by Kameron Hurley
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