For Short People, it's the Height of Prejudice

Ellen Frankel believes little people are getting the short end of the stick too frequently. Standing less than 4'9", she knows this firsthand. The licensed social worker from Massachusetts, whose favorite writing topic used to be eating disorders, has a new book, "Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature and Inner Growth," to explore what's wrong with people who underestimate short people.

Frankel remembers her parents taking her to doctors when she was young, in search of ways to add inches. She's dismissive of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of use of human growth hormone to help children become taller, a practice she says has no guarantee of success and a cost of $20,000 or more annually.

"There is profit to be made by exacerbating the height prejudice so rampant in this culture," she says. "What we need is education for those who discriminate against short people, not the genetic engineering of the victims of that."

Tall Pitt grads win

Way back in 1980, employment-firm executive Robert Half was warning about "heightism" as "a damaging fact of life for countless men and women." He noted that the taller of the two major-party candidates for president won every election from 1900 through 1968, before Richard Nixon broke the streak by beating George McGovern in 1972.

Half, himself an inch taller than the American male average of 5'9", said tall people clearly had advantages in the job market. He cited a study of University of Pittsburgh graduates by the school's placement office, which found men at least 6'2" received starting salaries 12.4 percent higher than those under 6 feet. More recently, a survey of chief executives of Fortune 500 companies in 2005 found them to average 6 feet in height, 3 inches above the norm.

A short list

The Web site, www.shortsupport.org, lists some of the best-known little celebrities and difference-makers in history. Some of these people might have had Napoleonic complexes due to their size, but one who did not -- irony alert here! -- was Napoleon Bonaparte. He does not even make the short-support list because it deals with people 5'5" or less, and Napoleon was 5'6", slightly above average for Frenchmen of his day.

Here's a short-person all-star team, leaving off such giants as Tom Cruise (5'7") and Dustin Hoffman (5'6"):

5-5: Josef Stalin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Edward G. Robinson, Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin

5-4: Mel Brooks, Pablo Picasso, Sammy Davis Jr., Harry Houdini, Truman Capote

5-3: Paul Simon, Mickey Rooney, Nikita Krushchev, Mahatma Gandhi, Prince

Among other men on the list were Charles Manson and Yasser Arafat at 5'2".

Women don't get as much attention, generally, on the heightism issue, notwithstanding Frankel's comments. But the Web site takes note of women 5 feet tall (Mother Teresa, Mae West, Dolly Parton, Patty Duke, Margaret Mead) or shy of that (Judy Garland, Margaret Mitchell, Dr. Ruth Westheimer).

Aw, grow up

Jonathan Rauch wrote about the topic in The Economist in 1995:

"Height hierarchies are established early, and persist for a long time. Tall boys are deferred to and seen as mature, short ones ridiculed and seen as childlike. Tall men are seen as natural 'leaders'; short ones are called 'pushy.'

"... The men who suffer are those who are noticeably short: say, 5'5" and below. In a man's world, they do not impress. Indeed, the connection between height and status is embedded in the very language. Respected men have 'stature' and are 'looked up to,' quite literally, as it turns out."

Rauch cited a height experiment by Australian psychologist Paul Wilson. He introduced a stranger to different groups of students. He told some of the students the man was also a student. He told others the man was a professor. When he asked the groups to estimate the man's height after he left, those who thought he was a professor sized him up 2 inches higher than those told he was a student.

By Gary Rotstein

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