Would a 5'9 man be driven to rope instantly if he were two inches shorter?
We don't have to guess. There's objective data from women's real secret preferences that quantifies exactly how bad 5'9 is compared to 5'7. The chart says that a 5'9 man has a chance with 17% of women, and a 5'7 man has a chance with 9% of women. So the 5'9 man has it almost twice as good...but even so, less than 80% of women would give him a chance at all.
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Also note that this data is a few years old. This entire curve shifts leftward every year due to height inflation, reducing the disparity among men the S-shaped curve delineates as "short" (since they're all trending to zero). To extrapolate a little: it's 2025, five years from 2020, so let's add a modifier of -5 inches — women in 2025 perceive a 5'9 man as 5'4, and a 5'7 man as 5'2. With this updated standard, those two men would only have a chance with 3% and 2% of women. Every year, the 5'9 man grows (or shrinks) closer to 5'7 in terms of results.
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