Leaving you this week with the above BBC video of Things Not to Say to People with Dwarfism. With candid personal stories ranging from awkward jokes to physical abuse and assault, discretion is advised. This is not your typical the-only-disability-is-a-bad-attitude public service announcement. Kudos to all involved for the honesty. And to the rest of us, what are we still doing that allows these incidents to continue and pervade?
As I wrote on Facebook after I saw friends posting them, I really don’t like those #TinyTrump memes. I’m not outraged. I’m just really, really uncomfortable whenever human size is used as an insult or a sight gag. (And yes, I have had friends and admire several human rights activists who are almost as short as Trump appears in those memes.) Being physically small isn’t hilarious or humiliating. It just is.
200 years after Napoleon, political discourse is still rife with the insidious concept of small man syndrome. Male acquaintances still report conversations coming to a screeching halt on Tinder after they answer an interested woman’s inquiry after their height. So here is an old, popular post on the subject that is just as apt as it was when I first published it:
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. I did not undergo limb-lengthening to “look normal.” I did it to function better in everyday life with less difficulty and less pain. Height has mattered tremendously to me as an issue of accessibility. But as an issue of social interaction, I tend to find it only slightly more significant than eye color.
Throughout high school, I had a Yoko Ono quote taped to my bedroom wall: “You call me ‘little,’ but I have a universe in my head.” Every teen needs role models. I got excited when I lived for six months in southern France, where I encountered several women my size. There is something inexplicably pleasing about being at eye-level with someone. Which is what made the moments when guys have gotten on their knees to dance with me utterly touching.
But my husband stands at 6’5” (1.96 m), more than a foot taller than I am. Being at eye-level with someone can feel important, but it’s not that important.
And we’ve gotten compliments for being such a striking couple due our height difference. (Should we thank John and Yoko for blazing the trail?) But as said before, when we tell our loved ones what exquisite hair or adorable hands or gorgeous eyes they have, it’s more a display of affection than a statement of what we require to be intrigued. When we tell someone, “You are so beautiful,” and we mean it, it’s a testament to the sum of their parts. To the entrancing union of their perfections and imperfections. Height is what you make of it.
I generally find a preoccupation with height amusing. When my father-in-law, who is from the Black Forest, married my mother-in-law, who was from Stockholm, they had their wedding photos shot only in close-up, so that you can’t tell that he was standing on a box.
When I was undergoing my first limb-lengthening procedure at age 11, I explained to one of my teachers, “I’ll never be super-model tall. The muscles tighten up when you stretch them and that’s why there is a limit to how far you can lengthen your legs.”
“Well, that’s actually good for you as a girl,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, you wouldn’t ever want to be too tall and end up walking alongside a man who’s shorter than you!”
I looked at her quizzically and then smirked to myself. Sure. That was my first concern about undergoing limb-lengthening.
Eighteen years later, as I prepared my wedding, I came across a discussion on a forum for brides-to-be about the ubiquity of complaints about heels that were too high.
“Why am I hearing so many comments about not wanting to be taller than your husbands?” the main commenter wrote. “I mean, seriously? This is the 21st century. We’re all liberated about LGBT rights and feminism and healthy body image and equality, but we’re still convinced it’s unfeminine for a woman to be taller than her husband?”
Nine out of ten of the replies all said, “Well, I don’t want to look like some freak.”
This week, HuffPost Live features an interview in which dwarf reality TV star Ben Klein reveals his past struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts due to social isolation and bullying. Earlier today on Germany’s ZDF Sundays morning news show, opera singer Doris Michel revealed that no man has ever been able to get over her dwarfism and see her as a romantic partner.
It’s easy to shake our heads and feel sorry for these individuals, and then to be inspired by the courage they have demonstrated in overcoming such hardship. We praise them for raising their children to be self-confident enough to face adversity. But when the adversity is inflicted by our society’s lingering attachment to something as silly as height, it is crucial that we own up to our collective responsibility for it.
We have to ask ourselves, do I ever trash women’s bodies? Do my friends laugh at dwarf-tossing? Would they harass someone with dwarfism in public? Am I brave enough to stop it? If not, why not? How important do I think size is?
Surely if Klein and Michel can overcome bullying and denigration, we can overcome any hang-ups we have about size.
Painting On Scars 