Do Tall, Fit Men Have More Sex Partners? Nope.
Have you heard the one about the top 10% of the men getting all of the wimminz? That only tall, fit men have a prayer of getting female attention? Turns out they don’t do better than other men, at least when it comes to the number of sex partners.
A new study in the journal Evolutionary Psychology looks at the effect of height and BMI on the mating market. The paper is an analysis of data of more than 60,000 participants in the ELLE/MSNBC News Sex and Love Survey. The age range was 18-65, with a mean age of 37. (This is important as we consider the data re the number of sexual partners.)
It’s an interesting case because it was designed with a rather straightforward hypothesis, namely that women have such a strong preference for height that sexual success must depend heavily on it.
“Women may prefer relatively tall men because tall height is a cue to indirect (genetic) benefits or because of the direct benefits that taller men may provide. Alternatively, or in addition, taller men may be more effective in intrasexual competition, which can result in more mating opportunities (Stulp & Barrett, 2014).”
There’s been little disagreement among researchers on this point. In this experiment, they did find that short men have fewer sex partners, and media headlines emphasized this. Let’s look at the findings:

Immediately we notice that men 5’6″ and under appear to have fewer partners than taller men, but there doesn’t seem to be much difference between male heights of 5’7″ and 6’2″.
But let’s look at that left axis. Whoa! The man who is 5’2″ has a mean number of 8 sexual partners. The 5’4″ guy has 10. And all the guys between 5’7′ and 6’2″ have 11-12 partners.
But means can be deceptive in that extreme outliers throw it off. Here is a slightly better breakdown showing which men have >5 and >14 partners:

As you can see, there is no difference between men of average vs. tall height.
Mona Chalabi at Five Thirty Eight shares my view about using the mean, and analyzes the more telling medians:

What does this mean?
Short men are not in the sexual desert.
All men over 5’4″ have a median number of seven sex partners. And even the shortest men aren’t exactly in the desert. Remember, this is a survey of over 60,000 people.
We can conclude that any claim that few men get most of the sex are not just exaggerated, they are grossly false. As evidenced by the higher means, there are some extreme outliers – people who have had hundreds of sexual partners – but that does not constitute a model of success for most people.
The authors of the research paper believe the data suggests that women have a minimum threshold for male height, but don’t show marked preferences beyond that.
Overweight men are in sexual paradise.
Even more surprising, at least to me, was the effect of BMI on the number of sexual partners:

Yikes! Score one for the dadbod?
Here’s the graph for BMI:

BMI is not a perfect measurement by any means, but it’s interesting that the most “successful” BMI is 27 with a mean of 13 partners. That’s the midpoint of the “overweight” range.
Chalabi speculates about these findings:
“There’s another important thing to keep in mind when interpreting this data: The number of sex partners people have had might not be the best indicator of how desirable they are. It’s possible that someone might be highly sexually desirable but choose a monogamous or celibate lifestyle for an extended period of time.
Also, “sex” was not defined in the survey, so participants might have differed in their interpretation of “sex partner” when providing their responses.”
Her point about desirability echoes other things we’ve learned:
I. Locales with lopsided sex ratios in favor of men make it easier for unattractive men to gain access to sex.
II. Men with Avoidant attachment styles are rarely if ever off the market, usually pursuing a short-term mating strategy, or cheating where they can.
If the best catches are snatched off the market early, the remaining men are likely to rack up a larger number even as they fail in relationships.
III. Sociosexuality plays a larger role in mating strategy than looks do.
The Key Takeaway
Both men and women of all shapes and sizes can and do attract sexual partners. When Amy Schumer quipped “I’m 160 pounds, and I can catch a dick whenever I want” she wasn’t kidding, and she wasn’t unusual (at least among those women looking to catch dicks 😛 ).
I suspect there is some correlation between promiscuity and less-than-ideal physical traits. Maybe the imperfect try harder. The data here does not allow us to do more than speculate.
In any case, don’t stay out of the dating pool because you think your imperfections will be a turnoff to the opposite sex. As long as you’re willing to match with imperfect others, there’s lots of mating going on.
