Yuri to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

A Shoujo ai centred Weblog

A lovely height complex – The effect of size on sexual relationships

Posted on | April 29, 2007 | 6 Comments |

As I watched Lovely Complex 1 on a train sharing love-love headphones with Mr Yuribou, in between the giggles and poking in the ribs, I felt a strong pang of wistfulness and nostalgia as I empathised with the lovely Koizumi. See, I too am tall. Not like giant tall, just tall. I’m now 5’10” (178cm), or peaking 6’2”ish in heels, which is great now, but as I was growing up I was very tall for my age and it was pretty rubbish. Throughout my school days I was generally a good head taller than my contemporaries. I was always stooping to get down to the level of other people to hear conversations, and being shy and tall and kind of gangly seemed to compound together distancing me from my classmates.

And then of course there was boys. At the age of about 17, after getting over the initial fancying everything in sight phase of leaving an all girls school to go to a co-ed sixth-form, I wrote a list of 5 things that I really must have in a boyfriend.

1. Tall (at least over 6’)

2. Good hair

3. Have a car that he can drive me about in

4. Not be a pikey

5. Dislike peanut butter

As you can see height was pretty major factor in choosing a partner. There’s this definite stigma that I think many girls see in dating a shorter man. According to wikipedia “For most women, the height of a man is a major factor in sexual attractiveness.” And if wikipedia says it, it must be true. Obviously for short girls this is a lot less limiting, but with the average height of British men being 177cm, for me this strikes off about 70% of the population of 16-24 year olds that I was likely to bump into.

Why is there a stigma? Well you don’t have to be that good a psychologist to work it out.. Men are supposed to be all protecty and strong and women all vulnerable and protectable. A nice simple case of sexual selection. As we saw so perfectly in episode 1, the stunning tall guy sees Koizumi more as one of the guys, and the cute short girl got on with Otani as he was more like a girl and less like a scary guy (yet another great way of teasing your male partner – especially if they have long hair and you often get mistaken for a girlxgirl couple anyway!) . Incidentally, this kind of occurrence is made even more annoying as having a short girl snatch up one of our measly 30% of men means there’s even less change of us tall girls finding the perfect man among the remaining few tall men!

| Disputes about height often involve tuna. Also, Yuribou would not be seen dead with hair like that.

Well, somehow, having said all that about only dating tall men, I’ve ended up sticking with Mr Yuribou, who at 5’7” is, yes, a good 3 inches shorter than me. (Even after one of our first conversations involved the phrase ‘I can’t go out with you, I couldn’t ever date a guy who was shorter than me’). ‘Love conquers all’ shall we say – even sizist prejudices. Which, to be honest, looks like the inevitable conclusion of Lovely Complex as Koizumi and Kotani (teehee) realise that they are madly in love with each other and that thinking up new and inventive ways to tease people about their height is actually a really fun way to spend a lifetime :3

Category: Anime, Editorials, Lovely Complex, Philosophy/Thoughts

Comments

6 Responses to “A lovely height complex – The effect of size on sexual relationships”

  1. Zyl
    April 30th, 2007 @ 12:41 am

    As we liked to say in the army: ‘Girl taller never mind, lie down is all the same height.’ ;)

  2. heavens lolipop
    April 30th, 2007 @ 5:45 am

    taller usually = great legs…nothing to worry about >=]

  3. Kaoru
    April 30th, 2007 @ 4:15 pm

    See now, wasn’t that more fun that revising? =P Great post, full of cuteness and hilarity ^_^ “Love conquers all” indeed.. Go conquer those exams! xxx

  4. Farthingale
    May 3rd, 2007 @ 9:18 am

    See, this post made me smile, because I’m also dating a bloke a few shorter than me, and I’m not that tall myself. I always liked the Michael J. Fox thing myself. ;)

  5. Leave a reply
    June 21st, 2007 @ 9:34 am

    i love lovely complex its so great.

  6. rocket
    June 22nd, 2007 @ 1:57 am

    Love,

    I downloaded ep1 when it was first released and then it sat on my hardrive gathering dust until I finally caught up with my Yuribou reading. Thankfully your review gave the kick in the pants to dust it off since I’m enjoying the whole series quite a bit now.

    Of course it may also help that my Sweetie *is* a 6′ blonde amazon and Rocket clocks in at shrimpy 5′10″…

Leave a Reply