Why All Men Lie about Their Height (And If You Say You Don't, You're Probably Lying)

Our intrepid reporter visits a DMV to find out how truthful guys are being on their licenses. Turns out, not so much


When it comes to honesty, we males come up short. Especially on our driver's licenses, where we come up tall.

As a man who stands 5-7 and lies about it constantly, I have always suspected the universality of DMV height over-reporting. I mean, they ask us to self-report our height while they're standing there and can measure it themselves? That's like trusting us to self-report how many hours per day we exercise.

So I stood outside my local Las Vegas DMV with a medical scale and invited volunteers to help me test this hypothesis. And what I found promises to shake the principles of trust and integrity upon which our great nation was founded.

OK, fine. So I'm really 5-6. But not on my license I'm not. And, apparently, I'm in the vast majority. The dozen males who agreed to be measured were, on average, just shy of 1.5 inches off their stated marks. And this was no random deviation; not a single error was made in the underestimating direction. (By contrast, six females were only half an inch short of their stated heights, attributable mostly to upward rounding to the DMV's whole numbers. Weights were typically underreported by both sexes, but normal fluctuations make them an unreliable gauge of dishonesty.)

A driver’s license may have been what Michael Mack was getting when he filled in 5-11 as his height. But literary license is what the 5-9 man was taking.

"Oh, I totally lied," Mack admitted. "Why not?"

And I have good reason to suspect the deception of being even greater—that good reason being how many guys resembling hobbits walked straight past my scale and into the DMV entrance, yelling some variation on "I already know I lied."

Who are we trying to impress? The TSA agents who scan our licenses? Bar bouncers? Traffic cops?

"It actually helps us feel better about ourselves," says Michael Emerson, a Rice University sociology professor. "It's a piece of evidence that helps us create this reality for ourselves."

Emerson—who says his own license upwardly rounds him by a quarter of an inch to 6 feet—co-authored a recent study that found that 55 percent of all female online daters only wanted men taller than they were.

"Society rewards taller men, in terms of our jobs, being seen as more healthy and, ultimately, more attractive to females," Emerson says. "It's why football and basketball players are always listed as taller than they are.

"You can almost create the reality by simply reporting it."

Most of the men who failed the "Men's Health Challenge"—because all did—wouldn't admit to any deception. Brian H., who refused to allow us to publish his last name, insisted for more than two minutes that our scale's ruler was off. (It wasn't.)

"I know it's not accurate because I was at my doctor's yesterday and measured 5-7-and-a-half," said the irate man, who stood 5-5 although his license claimed 5-8.

"Also, the sidewalk you're standing on is sloping," he added. "You're not even on flat ground!"

Emerson is not as surprised as I was that things could get so heated so quickly.

"Height is a measure of male virility," he says. "It's the ability to provide, the ability to be a strong man in society. So it becomes something that we must defend."

The exaggerating tapered off as height exceeded the male ideal, with our only two over-6-foot subjects rounding up about half an inch each.

OK, fine. So I'm really 5-5.

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