Short men thrive in spite of bias, author says

Updated Mon. Oct. 23 2006 3:16 PM ET
Mary Nersessian, CTV.ca News
The world clearly prefers tall to small, the author of a new book argues. But being short has its advantages, particularly for adults who grappled with discrimination as children, he explains.
"There is a long history of both positive qualities like moral rectitude that's been associated with tallness," award-winning journalist Stephen Hall told CTV.ca in a phone interview from Brooklyn, NY.

"There is a longstanding social association of tallness with gifts like strength. I think it's much less important now, but I think there's probably a cultural and evolutionary carryover from the early importance of physical size," said Hall, author of "Size Matters."

Hall argues in his book that the experiences men have as children and adolescents help shape their emotional growth.

Drawing on his own experiences, Hall traces the history of society's past and present bias against shortness and reveals how vertically challenged people thrive in spite of this widespread heightist discrimination.

Hall, who was shorter than 99 per cent of boys his age in the first year of high school, says he was very far behind the curve and "intensely" aware of it.

"I found it intensely frustrating. At that time, it seemed like most the miserable set of circumstances," he said.

But Hall argues that while one child's small stature may lead to torment another short child could well develop an emotional resilience that will carry him through life.

"In the process of writing this book, I came to realize I probably cultivated a lot of social skills -- I guess what passes now for social intelligence or emotional intelligence -- during adolescence because it was a way for me to compensate for the fact that I was not as big," he said.
"In retrospect, a little bit of adversity during adolescence may have been a great deal of help in adulthood," he said.

When asked by Playboy magazine in 1984 about the impact being short had on his upbringing, songwriter Paul Simon had this to say: "I think it had the most significant single effect on my existence, aside from my brain. In fact, it's part of an inferior-superior syndrome. I think I have a superior brain and an inferior stature, if you really want to get brutal about it."

Children realize very early on that there are distinct social advantages to being tall, he said, adding that he noticed this even with his own son.

"In my son's case, at least as early as first grade when they start lining up kids by height, it's a very routine and traditional way of organizing children and so they notice it. They are very much aware of it then," Hall said.

Hall cited research from one of the leading authorities on physical aggression, Canada Research Chair in Child Development Richard Tremblay, which suggests children are aware of their size even in pre-school.

"He makes the point that physically larger kids are very much aware of superiority even then and begin to use it their way ... some children realize very early they can get their way by exerting their physical superiority," he said.

Even after children leave elementary-school bullies behind and move on to high school, size seems to matter a great deal, he said.

But as they "move beyond gym glass and the high school cafeteria, and all these dreadful places where boys act out without too much supervision, size does not matter nearly as much because all these adult qualities that we culturally prize come much more into play."

Still, studies show that society continues to favour the tall over the small.

"Over the last 30 years there have been a number of studies that show taller people on average are compensated better in terms of income than shorter people," he said.

A 1995 article in The Economist, entitled "Short Guys Finish Last" cited a 1980 survey that showed more than half of the chief executive officers at Fortune 500 companies were six feet or taller.

A 2004 study by a group of economists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan found that the strongest correlation between the highest income was not among the tallest adults, but among those who had been tallest between the ages of 11 and 16.

"The notion is that being tall -- during roughly the high school years and certainly around the time of puberty -- probably confers some sense of social confidence and self esteem that carries over into adult life and adult-earning power," Hall said.

But it's not all doom and gloom for men of diminutive height.

Citing recent findings from the fields of animal behaviour, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Hall argues that the role of physical size in mating success is given too much weight.

"Everyone assumes women tend to seek taller males for mating because tallness is seen as factor that suggest reproductive fitness in the male," Hall said.

"I think part of is a sort of comfort level thinking the male should be taller and bigger than the female," he said.

But he cites research from Rutgers University that casts doubt on this prevailing belief.
One of the factors that makes a man attractive to a woman is how he moves, the study suggests.

"Specifically, how they dance. And it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, because to be able to dance reflects a sense of balance and symmetry that probably also suggest normal development and normal cognition and mental ability and agility."

Hall, who is measured at 5 feet 5 ¾ inches, and whose wife is 5 feet 9 inches tall, says the height difference does not bother either of them -- but the taboo prevails.

"I don't think it really makes a difference at all. And I think if you asked her she would probably say the same thing -- she still wears high heels," he said.

Excerpt from "Size Matters"

"Stature" is one of those beautiful words that has a narrow meaning - in this case referring to physical height - but that easily expands to much larger, even metaphoric, dimensions when it refers to less quantifiable but more important human qualities that we admire, aspire to, and devote so much life energy to attaining. Turning the concept inward, "stature" also refers to how we view ourselves in the mirror as well as in that private chamber of self-identity where we really undress our hopes, fears, vanities, insecurities, and self-appraisals.

If Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon is that mythical place where "all the children are above average," I have lived most of my life way south of Wobegon. At any stage of physical development and growth, from infancy to adulthood, in any country on the planet - and we could be talking here about the Netherlands, where the average Dutch citizen is taller than the average height anywhere else on earth, or those parts of equatorial Africa where pygmies still gather and hunt - about half of us are, by definition, below average in height for our particular tribe. That's not to suggest that this half of the population is abnormal. But in a social context that focuses on physical appearance and celebrates physical performance, size is an aspect of our identity on which we are constantly measured throughout life, even though the quantity measured lies almost totally outside our control. In ways subtle and blunt, physical stature affects who we are and who we become: the way people treat us, the activities we pursue, the games we play, the spouses we choose, the respect we command, even the salaries we receive.
Although many men who were small as children or adolescents reach average or above-average height, the fear of remaining forever below average carves one of the deepest furrows in the otherwise hardscrabble surface of a man's emotional and psychological life. From a parent's point of view, size becomes one of the earliest areas in which we compare, as we all do, our own children against other children. They're all beautiful, of course, but we carry around in our heads our children's percentile positions on the growth chart just as proudly as we carry their photos in our wallets. Their height represents the signature of our genes scribbled, however briefly, on the unfurling scroll of human events. During adolescence, a child's deep emotional frustration about being short can yank parents down into the disturbing world of teenage anguish and pain and remind us of our own limitations as parents. Trudeau recalls the night he fell sobbing into his father's arms: "We both knew," he writes, "it was one problem he couldn't fix." The inability of parents to fix the "problem" of small stature, and the sense of betrayal that helplessness incurs in their offspring, can color, often darkly, the relations between parents and children.
Having lived this experiment, I know the feeling. Of all the childhood terms of endearment I endured - shrimp, runt, peewee, pip-squeak, punk, peanut, bug, mouse, gnat, midget, Mr. Peabody - I had a particular favorite: squirt. It might seem odd to embrace an insult, but I loved the short, explosive burst of energy the word captured. Though intended to diminish me, it was at the same time subversive, irrepressible, and relentless, perhaps even avenging. Nonetheless, all the nicknames were diminutives; on the phylogenetic ladder of adolescence, I was down there with mice and mascots. When I was a high school freshman, my height placed me in what would be the first percentile on today's standard growth chart. I didn't need a chart, however, to be reminded that 99 percent of my male peers were taller than I was. They reminded me every day, with teasing, taunts, and occasionally physical assault.
Since then I've inched upward to a fairly respectable smaller-than-average adult size. However, physical size was the most consuming emotional issue of my youth, especially during adolescence - more consuming than, but not unrelated to, peer acceptance, dating, bullying, classroom performance, sexual maturation, and almost anything else considered essential to adolescent self-image, not to say self-loathing. And I gather I'm not alone. I've been surprised at how widespread and intense this lingering obsession about developmental size is among perfectly normal, seemingly well-adjusted adults whenever the topic comes up. I think we never entirely outgrow the sensation of being small, of being different, of being physically vulnerable. The emotional impulses we learn, usually as a matter of day-to-day survival in the difficult, formative times of adolescence, are like the reptilian brain, deep inside, surrounded by more civilized tissue but never totally disconnected, just waiting for the right conditions - perhaps a sufficiently stressful situation - to emerge.

The human life cycle relentlessly reinforces the dominant role of physical size in our personal development. I have been in the delivery room when a ruler was first laid against the fat, writhing masses of my newborn children. I've been the last boy picked for sports games. I sent away for my Charles Atlas booklet when I was a scrawny twelve-year-old. As an adolescent with delayed puberty, I stood in front of the mirror searching - even praying - for the first visible hint of sexual maturity. I stood on tiptoes to kiss a high school date. And I grew increasingly impatient with and distrustful of my parents' repeated assurances that I would undergo a growth spurt - which, when it finally arrived, seemed too little and too late. I have spent a lifetime being asked by photographers to sit in the front row - except the photographer at my own wedding, who nonchalantly asked my wife to sit in a chair while I stood behind her, so that the disparity between my height and hers (about three inches) would not be so apparent.

Copyright © 2006 by Stephen S. Hall. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.