Criticism at its height over the holidays
BELOW 5-FEET, 7-INCHES — Measuring one’s worth by how much they’ve grown may sound ridiculous, but for Ellen Frankel, it was a harsh reality through much of her childhood.
At 4-feet, 8-inches tall, Frankel suffered from “heightism,” the cultural bias favoring tallness and stigmatizing shortness. Feeling inadequate because of something she couldn’t control, Frankel became obsessed with something she could control, her weight.
Frankel ended up falling victim to an eating disorder.
“There was a lot of pressure on me growing up,” she said. “My parents considered growth hormone therapy. There was just a lot of focus on my height, so much so that I felt the only way I could make everyone happy was to stay really thin.
“Short women were supposed to very petite and that belief spawned my eating disorder.”
The holidays can be an uncomfortable time for those returning home, only to hear critiques and criticism from relatives. It can be especially difficult for those like Frankel, who suffered from low self-esteem, particularly when grandmothers or great aunts are constantly sizing up their offspring. By doing so, the things they say and do may harm their loves ones, ranging from avoidance to inappropriate medical suggestions.
Frankel, a Massachusetts social worker and expert in the field of eating disorders, is looking to help those suffering from height-ism and raise awareness about the “last acceptable prejudice” with her new book “Measuring Up: A Memoir About Short Stature and Inner Growth.”
In her writing, Frankel, an advisor to the National Organization for Short-Statured Adults, shares the difficulties of living in a world in which stereotypes are based on gender and size. She also explores her life and the damaging choices she made to compensate for her feelings of not measuring up.
Frankel likewise touches on the pharmaceutical industry and the expansion of growth hormone therapy and painful leg-lengthening surgery.
“Imagine how difficult it is for somebody when their own families don’t understand how devastating it can be to be constantly reminded how short you are if you haven’t grown since you were 10 or 11,”Frankel said. “You have this feeling that you’re always the child. It’s hard. A comment here or there isn’t bad, but when someone is constantly reminded, whether it be on the playground or corporate boardroom, it can add up.
“At the holidays,relatives will often focus on how much you’ve changed physically,instead of what your interests are or what you love to do,” Frankel added. “It’s really all about your body size or your height. You get comments like, ‘When you are going to grow?’ or ‘Look at cousin Joe. He’s two years younger than you and three times your size.’ Sometimes that can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
PUSHING BACK Research has shown that shorter people — under 5-feet, 7-inches for men and 5-feet, 2-inches for women — are often treated differently than those who are taller; the exception being taller women, who generally have a harder time dating or receiving promotions. Shorter people are also more likely to be victims of bullying and research has tied this to lower levels of achievement later in life.
Then there comes discrimination in the workplace. Many jobs require, or at least favor, people who are tall, including many manual labor jobs, professional sports and the military, with pilots having to be between 64 and 77 inches tall.
While studies have shown that short people are typically paid less than taller people, generally, height discrimination is more covert, with people being passed over for promotions or denied jobs.
A survey of Fortune 500 corporate executives in 2005 found that they were, on average, 6-feet tall — 3 inches taller than the average American man. Similar surveys have uncovered that less than 3 percent of CEOs were below 5-feet, 7-inches tall, and that 90 percent were above average height.
Being short also plays a role in politics. Of the 43 U.S. presidents, only five have been more than an inch below the average height, according to psychologist John Gillis, author of “Too Small, Too Tall.”
Moreover, of the 54 presidential elections, only 13 have been won by the shorter candidate, and only 11 times has the shorter candidate received more popular votes. Abraham Lincoln has the distinction of being the tallest president at 6-feet, 4-inches tall.
SHORT, LIGHT AND HANDSOME?
Heightism may also be a factor in dating preferences. Researchers in London studied thousands of married men and bachelors and found that the height of a man is a major factor in sexual attractiveness. Taller men were more likely to be married and have more children than shorter men. Quantitative studies of women-for-men personal advertisements have shown strong preferences for tall men, with a large percentage indicating that a man significantly below the average was unacceptable.
Conversely, studies have shown that women of below average height are more likely to be married and have children than women who are above average height. Some researchers said the reasons for this could be that shorter women become fertile earlier and that shorter women make their partners feel taller, and therefore, more manly.
“If you look back thousands of years, the successful hunters and gatherers were big men,” Frankel said. “If you were hunting, it was advantageous to be taller. It was a matter of survival, but yet the bias still exists, despite the fact that we buy our food in grocery stores. We don’t need big strong hands to cure a computer virus.
“With this focus on the external we are neglecting the internal,” Frankel said. “That leads to short men abusing steroids, more children being subjected to hormone treatment and more money being spent on products that claim to make you taller, but really don’t.”
Frankel said she is concerned about the increase in children taking drugs to grow taller, as well as those who elect to have leg-lengthening surgery, a painful procedure that includes breaking the shins and inserting a crank to stretch the bones as they heal.
Growth occurs in the space between the end of bones. In that space there is cartilage. As a person ages, the cartilage is replaced with bone tissue and the bone grows in length. Eventually, the end of the bone fuses with the bone shaft and a person cannot grow taller. This occurs for most people by their late teens, but can continue up until 20 or so years of age.
“We need to stop asking the question of how to make short people taller and instead ask ourselves how we can confront the prejudice and change the culture,” Frankel said. “Right now, all we are doing is medicalizing a social prejudice. We would never say it is hard to be African American in America, so why not take a black child and make them lighter. That’s absurd. Why do we think we can do that with one’s height?”
The media has played a significant role in perpetuating heightism, Frankel said. Oftentimes, shorter characters provide the comic relief and are often portrayed as being unsuccessful in career and romance, or they are unlikeable tyrants in need of compensating for their lack of height. The unpopular, but girl-crazy, Bud Bundy from “Married With Children,” and Radar O’Reilly from “M*A*S*H” are good examples, as are the hot-headed Louis De Palma from “Taxi” and the cranky Cosmo Spacely from the cartoon series “The Jetsons.”
Randy Newman’s song “Short People” deals with heightism in a satirical, lighthearted manner as a protest against bigotry, but many people have found the song offensive. Fall Out Boy’s song, “Short, Fast and Loud” is about a girl who dumps her boyfriend because he is too short for her.
“Being short is definitely something that is ridiculed and made fun of. It is not something that is taken seriously,” Frankel said. “Why the glorification of tall and the stigmatization of short? We need to fight for everyone, of all sizes.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 25, 2006. Read the original PDF.