Why doesn't the body positivity movement extend to short men?

Whether you love it or loathe it, you can’t deny that Love Island gets the UK talking. And while the winter iteration of the show has been on for less than a week, it’s already raised an interesting debate about body shaming - specifically height shaming.

For the uninitiated, one of the men in the villa, Nas, seems to be less popular because he’s not terribly tall. His exact height isn’t confirmed, but Capital FM report that he’s 5'7, and from watching him next to the women of the villa he’s clearly not a massive man. People on social media have already started to notice the digs about his height.

Yesterday we shared a video with Amy Hart, during which she joked, ‘what do you call a man under 5'10? A friend!’ a sentiment which we know to be extremely common. Data from dating apps suggests that height is women's primary concern regarding a prospective partner.

Nas isn’t the only man to have experienced what people online have dubbed ‘height shaming’. Gavin, 37, is 5'6. He tells Grazia: ‘My late teens and early twenties were unquestionably affected by my height. Women would openly tell me that they thought I’d make a great boyfriend, but that I’m just too short. I won’t lie, it wasn’t a great feeling.’

Richard, 31, echoes this sentiment. ‘I struggled to pull women when I was younger and it made me bloody miserable. I’d see my mates who weren’t any better on paper than I was getting women left right and centre, while no one seemed interested in me. When Sophie Dahl started dating Jamie Cullum it got worse - people would constantly tell me about them, as if that was some kind of act of solidarity.’

So what are shorter men supposed to do?

Gavin took a ballsy approach to the problem. ‘I realised that being short made me feel like I didn’t have much power. So I decided that I’d focus on making a lot of money, so I could redress my own power balance. It worked, in the sense that I don’t feel so badly about it. Initially I thought having money would make me more able to pull lots of women, but along the way I fell for someone who seems to actually find me sexy, so that was a nice bonus.’

Richard went for a more pragmatic approach. He tells me: ‘Honestly? I started to wear lifts in my shoes. I noticed a marked difference in how much interest I got from women depending on whether I was 5'7 (no lifts) or 5'9 (lifts). Obviously I’m embarrassed that I wear Simon Cowell heels, and I wish I didn’t care, but it’s hard not to. And by the time I get home with someone and take the shoes off, I’ve usually convinced them that I’m worth taking a punt on.’

Of course, we’ve all got our preferences when it comes to who we find physically attractive, and there’s certainly no obligation to date or sleep with someone in order to not be a height shamer. But perhaps it’s worth assessing where that height preference comes from?

Is it a genuine preference, or does it stem from an ingrained sense of wanting to be smaller than your partner, or wanting to feel small when you are next to them? Because, let’s face it, the desire to take up as little space in the world has been ingrained in many of us, but it’s not totally healthy.

But in an age where we (rightly) have no tolerance for men who claim to only fancy size six women, or women with big boobs, is it still reasonable to advertise a height preference? Or are we simply moving the goal posts of acceptable prejudices? And isn’t it possible that by deciding that you couldn’t ever fancy someone below six foot, you might be missing out on something pretty amazing?

Here's the full line-up as it currently stands: