That's not what I said...
Here is exactly what you said, verbatim:
In Japan and SE Asia, a lot of guys under 170cm are considered attractive because of their other physical aspects.
The direct implication here is that the other physical aspects of these hypothetical "guys under 170cm" are sufficient to compensate for their short stature. This is absolutely false, as is indicated by the second survey I linked, which you didn't address
I know about this survey, but I believe it to be a loaded question. I don't think the choices of:
- A tall but average looking man.
- A short but handsome/good-looking man.
... are actually equal.
The questionnaire should have been presented as:
- Tall man with an ugly face.
- Average height man with an average face.
- Short man with a good-looking face.
One of the problems with these surveys is that "tall" and "short" are prone to subjective bias, despite height being an objective measurement. Most women responding to these surveys will probably imagine the "short" in the "short man" sentence as being their same height or under, irrespective of the respondent woman's own height. They'd also probably not visualize a man who they deem too tall for themselves when reading the "tall man" sentence. I know this is purely conjecture on my part, but so be it.
Whether the questionnaire was presented as it was or as you suggest is unlikely to have made any difference, a point that is substantiated (once again) by the second survey I linked. The majority of Japanese women consider being short a dealbreaker as far as romantic/sexual relationships are concerned. They are incapable of viewing short men as sexual or romantic entities and would in fact be embarrassed to be seen with them in public, and wouldn't want to reproduce with them for fear of producing short sons that would develop complexes (see list of reasons why they don't consider short men attractive).
Your conjecture at the end doesn't hold much logical ground.
Suppose the women in question really did mean "their height or below" when they said "short men". For most of these women, "their height or below" is going to mean 5'2" to 5'4". So, when they said they wouldn't consider a short man as a romantic/sexual partner, what they meant was a man shorter than 5'2" - 5'4" (whatever value within that range constitutes her own height).
Now, again, look at what these women are saying about short men. If a woman says things like "I'd be embarrassed to be seen with him in public" and "I wouldn't want to reproduce with him" about short men, it's highly unlikely she's going to consider a man who's only an inch or two (2-4 cm) taller than 5'2" - 5'4" as "not being short". It doesn't make sense. If a woman is disgusted by a man who's 5'4" to the point she'd be ashamed to be seen with him in public, she's not going to suddenly be attracted to him at 5'5" or 5'6".
It's much more likely that "short" means "below average height for Japanese males". Japan is a highly homogenous society. It's pretty clear to Japanese people what the average height of a young man is in Japan. If a Japanese man is noticeably shorter than most or all of his Japanese male peers, he is short.
I don't believe this at all. It is in SE Asia that Japanese actors/"talents" are the most popular while still being under 170cm. An easy example is Teppei Koike (167cm). He's under 170cm, but has another physical aspect that is taken way more in consideration than it'd be in the West (his face). This is obviously directly related to the height of the natives.
First, 167cm is within average range for a man in SEA. Teppei Koike isn't "short" in SEA at 5'5" any more than Manny Pacquiao (also 5'5") is. There's nothing special about being popular when you're "under 170cm" in a region where most of the men are below 170cm. It doesn't prove anything.
Second, SEA is notorious for being obsessed with Western and East Asian media and culture, especially celebrities, and especially when those celebrities have light skin (the lighter the better, SEA are massive white worshippers). Teppei Koike isn't any more popular in SEA than any given average-height or tall K-pop group member is, or any random white movie star/singer from the U.S. or Europe. Frankly, any white guy with a nordic phenotype (blonde, blue eyes, tall) would be about as popular in the Phillipines as Teppei Koike is.
Third, the fact that Teppei Koike is popular in SEA despite being short relative to other Asian celebrities doesn't mean SEA would consider him sexually attractive relative to those other celebrities. It means he's popular despite being short. 5'4" Bruno Mars is more popular in the US than Teppei Koike is anywhere on planet earth, plenty of women like his music, but I'd be willing to bet a solid amount of money few (if any) of them would rather have sex with him than the guy who played Thor.
I know you may argue something about them being famous or outliers, but that's not the point I was making.
At first I was going to, but frankly, this Teppei Koike character really isn't that "famous" at all. I'd never heard of him until today. Ironically, I saw his name mentioned in the comment section of one of the articles I linked (the one about 75% of Japanese women preferring a tall average man) in my previous response to you and had a feeling you would mention him. I briefly considered adding the points I mentioned about him above to my previous response, but decided against it in the interest of keeping the post concise.
I don't know what else to say. He really doesn't even seem very popular in Japan. He has a small following, but it pales in comparison to what average-height/tall K-pop singers have. He's clearly trying to leverage his stature into the "cute"/"pretty boy" (or "bishonen" in Japan) archetype, which I guess is fine if you don't mind being viewed as a child when you're a grown man.
Unfortunately for Mr. Koike, he is old (32), and despite the excellent aging genetics afforded him by his Asian heritage, he has at most 5 or so years left before he seriously starts to look old and he won't be able to run the pretty boy routine anymore, at which point he'll just be a short washed-up man. I don't know anything about his sexual/dating history, so I can't comment on that.
Justin Bieber would be a much better example of a relatively short (5'7") man who was still viewed as attractive by women... teenage women. When he was a teenager. In his case, however, he aged VERY quickly once he reached his 20's and he looks like sh*t now (tons of acne, balding, facial structure ruined).
What I'm getting at is that the "pretty boy" routine is a poor answer to the problem of a short man insofar as attracting women goes. It works best on underaged teenage girls (which in most countries will land you in prison), and a lot of people seem to forget that for most people life goes on for a long time after women stop finding pedomorphic "pretty"/"cute" boys attractive (that is, after high school or in some women's cases, after college).
Thanks for the links.
And certainly there's a correlation, but I never implied there wasn't any. I said there are taller guys with weak, narrow, and slim frames. I see some of them everyday. I was simply pointing out the variation that exists.
It also most certainly relies more heavily on the genetics of an individual than simply "height", even despite the fact height is also directly (and mostly) related to genetics. The ancestors of the tallest guys with the most masculine frames alive today were much shorter than they are, but they were certainly proportionally more masculine in their frames compared to their (also shorter) peers of the same time period. EDIT: Even if those peers were at similar height levels.
Yes, but when another poster said this:
but it gets a lot easier to be attractive with every inch past 5'6''-5'7'' or so.
Your response was:
I don't agree. There are some tall guys out there without "masculine" proportions at all. Some are due to genetic conditions. Weak shoulders, stick silhouette, below average faces.
Which doesn't disprove the first quote. Statistically speaking, it
does get easier and more likely that you will have a robust frame ("being attractive") as an individual grows taller. The fact that there exist "some" outliers who do not conform to the general trend is not an argument against this, which was my point.