I know this is a very prehistoric thread, but I felt obliged to reply and give my opinion here. This opinion is based off observations I've had throughout the years.
As we all know, every boy as he grows up is conscious about how big he is compared to his peers. For children, they want to grow up big, strong, tall, and be a "grown-up". Socially, there are bound to be comparisons / discussions about children's heights by both parents and adults in numerous ways:
- The boys themselves do in fact compare themselves to other boys in terms of height and height growth. It's just a normal part of growing up as a guy.
- There will always be comments by others about our height. Relatives, neighbors, family friends might say to a tall(er) boy during a family gathering, "Oh, Billy has grown so tall since we have seen him".
- Short(er) guys will always get bull*hit comments about "not drinking enough milk" or "not exercising and stretching your legs", while often putting a blind eye to the fact that it's pretty much just genetics (Even the adults know this deep down, but don't want to admit it to children).
But at the same time, there aren't discussions about boys' faces / handsomeness. How his face looks. At least not to the same level. Nor is there discussion about boys losing hair (this happens well past puberty and mainly when boys become adults).
In addition, it's hard to measure facial attractiveness too. While height is an easily measurable thing.
And keep in mind, out of all of this, it also depends on how short the guy is.
Through these children's development, there are bound to be short(er) men who grow up to have attractive facial features along with short(er) men who just aren't facially attractive and have unattractive facial features and traits. During the pre-teen and teenage years, I envision three types of short boys:
- Short boys who are handsome and they know it. They are men who have gotten attention in HS. Sure, they weren't every girl's cup of tea, but they did get some attention and validation, and probably had romantic relationships too.
- Short boys who are handsome and they know it but are unhappy that they aren't appealing to all women, or simply just still subconscious about their height just from growing up as a boy. Nonetheless, they also get attention, romantic relationships, etc., but just don't have as much general appeal.
- Short boys who aren't facially unattractive but aren't self-aware of that. But they might have gotten comments about their height, and/or compared themselves to other boys (and even girls) in terms of height. These types of boys might just be oblivious to the big factor that is their face, and only fixate their assessment of their lack of appeal to their height.
- Short boys who are facially unattractive and fully aware of this brutal reality.
Don't get me wrong, being short is BRUTAL as a guy in terms of its impact to attraction to women. I mean, just look at this graph:
Let's say a guy is at the average American woman's height, which is 64 inches tall (5'4" or 162cm), according to this graph, it says that only 10% of women would accept a potential male partner at that height. I actually believe that data. But some guys in category 3 which I mentioned completely overblow the lack of appeal to women and act like only 0.00000000001% of women would genuinely be interested in them, while ignoring how their face looks. 10% is brutal, but it is still sizeable where you could find love if you have a "good enough" face in my opinion, which is something that category 1 guys might end up getting / doing.
I guess for saying this, I'll be told that I have "toxic optimism", but I don't care. I don't think I'm toxically optimistic either. Toxic optimism is saying that a "ugly and short guy can rizz up any girl provided that he has personality, and confidence" which we all know is nonsense.
A lot of men are oblivious to this, since hell, when it's even acceptable for adults to comment on children's (especially boys') heights openly and casually, why wouldn't grown-ass women in their 20s do it? That's why we have tweets and TikToks of women openly shaming / putting down short(er) men.
I know there are some men who want to be appealing to all women. And I'm not here to judge them for that, even though I'd personally be content with having a pool of even a few women who were heavily into me (it's never, ever happening to me though with my abomination of a face and height, even if I "fix" my height as my face will still be just... bad). But I understand that some people are mentally built differently, as humans are not only physically very different from each other, but emotionally too.