Are shorter men the hottest accessory of the holiday season?

I’m 5’11” and love to wear heels, so one of my top dating criteria when I was single was that the man be over 6 feet tall. I remember thinking it was unfair when I saw tiny women dating lofty basketball players or when tall men told me they preferred dating petite women. When I thought about the limited number tall, age-appropriate men in San Francisco and subtracted those who were in relationships, uneducated, commitment-phobes, or were only attracted to shorter women, would anyone be left for me?

In retrospect, my thinking was shortsighted. Limiting your dating pool by height may prevent you from meeting Mr. Right, and expanding your height preferences dramatically increases your options. Most women have their sights set on the less than 4% of American adult men who are over 6’2”, so why not take a more strategic approach? Here are 5 reasons why you should follow in the footsteps of Nicole Kidman and Catherine Zeta Jones and consider dating a shorter man:

1. They’re confident. What shorter men lack in height, they make up for in presence. Confidence and humor add imaginary inches. Shorter men work harder to refine their social presence. They’re extremely secure and comfortable in their own skin and will be proud to have you by their side.

2. They’re generous lovers. When you spend the night with a shorter man, you will be in for a treat. Taller guys aren’t used to putting in extra effort since they’re in such high demand, but shorter men know how lucky they are to be with you and will make sure you enjoy every second. And no, his height doesn’t correlate with the size of his member.

3. They’re funny. When thinking about male comedians and the funniest men I’ve ever known, they’re on the shorter side. Along the same lines, the shorter men I have worked with in sales are absolutely hilarious and have customers laughing within the first few minutes of every sales meeting. While taller jocks retire from sports during the first half of their lives, funny men will keep you laughing all your life.

4. You’ll have more space. Get ready to sprawl out in bed and fit comfortably with your new man on the couch. You won’t have to significantly adjust the driver’s seat in your car after he borrows it. And you can alternate taking the middle seat on flights since he’s not so tall that he always needs a window or aisle seat. Dating a shorter man makes life easier.

5. You’ll look and feel like a supermodel all the time. The world is a catwalk for women who date shorter men. Embrace your height in heels and flats as you confidently strut around with your new man. A close girlfriend of mine believes that shorter men will be the hottest accessory of the holiday season!

For more inspiration, check out these celebrity goddesses who love dating shorter men and look fabulous while doing it!

Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise

Tina Fey and Jeff Richmond

Clare Grant and Seth Green

L’Wren Scott and Mick Jagger

Rhea Durham and Mark Wahlberg

Tanya Haden and Jack Black

Christine is a 30-year-old, Ivy League educated, East Coast transplant in San Francisco.  She believes that the meaning of life is to love and be loved, and she is passionate about volunteering, technology and yoga

Love at first swipe?

While enjoying Sunday brunch with girlfriends the other week, one of them revealed that a man we knew and respected as a devoted husband and doting father had been cheating on his wife with not just one, but several different women. He was one of the 30 million users who was exposed in July for using the Ashley Madison website that lures people in with the radical slogan “Life is Short. Have an affair.” We all shook our heads in unison as we scanned photo after photo of his beautiful family on Facebook. Why would someone with a seemingly perfect life want to destroy it?

We considered our own Facebook profiles. Endless photos of smiles at gorgeous weddings and on exotic vacations don’t accurately reflect our lives, either. We portray an image of ourselves that often doesn’t paint a full picture of life’s ups and downs. We tend to exclude funerals, arguments, breakups, layoffs, and de-tag ourselves from photos where we don’t look happy and thin.

This is an innocent example of how we represent ourselves to the world, but the same blurred lines exist for everything else we see on the Internet, including dating profiles. Online dating comes with all of the major issues of the Internet, including a lack of transparency, privacy and trust. While in many ways it’s great that the Internet has opened up the dating pool immensely, it also lends itself too much towards fabrication. Why be honest in a dating profile when you can portray yourself as taller, thinner, younger, employed, single, etc.?

With no last names, limited information and no guarantees that any information is actually true, online dating apps have become a breeding ground for infidelity. To my knowledge, no dating sites require people to prove they are single, or even unmarried!

The term “catfish,” popularized by the documentary and MTV show, refers to people who create fake identities on social media and dating sites with the sole purpose of misleading people into romantic relationships. While the show is often humorous, showcasing people pretending to be beauty pageant winners, models and singers, the extent to which people go to pretend to be someone they’re not is quite unsettling. Many of these people are married, and there are serious implications in the real world for both the people who created the fake identities and those who were persuaded by the fake profiles.

According to a recent New York Times article entitled After Ashley Madison Breach, Online Daters Check Credentials, the Ashley Madison data breach “served as a notice to those in the online dating trenches, some of whom have taken to hiring private investigators or matchmakers or turned to specialized data sites to uncover the marital status and reputations of those they are dating.” As easy as it may seem to swipe right or virtually wink at someone to score your next date, the Internet can be a dangerous place to meet someone. Even if you didn’t sign up to use Ashley Madison, you may be someone’s mistress without even realizing it.

At the end of brunch, the single ladies at the table joked that they may have to hire a private investigator or background check service to make sure the guys they meet online, in bars or in coffee shops aren’t drug-addicted, married, sex offenders. It dawned upon us that the only way to know for sure that you are going to meet an honest, single, commitment-minded person, without being a stalker, is to meet people through friends, family or a trusted dating network like Linx Dating.

Family members, friends, and professional matchmakers complete the due diligence for you and understand the full picture of every person in their network, so you don’t have to worry that your next date will be 20 years older than his or her photos or even worse, married and just looking for a little side action. The silver lining to the Ashley Madison hack is that now is a great time to join the honest people who value integrity and loyalty as they flock to professional matchmakers during this time of uncertainty in the dating world.

Christine is a 30-year-old, Ivy League educated, East Coast transplant in San Francisco.  She believes that the meaning of life is to love and be loved, and she is passionate about volunteering, technology and yoga