By Cosmas Odoemena
Society has long celebrated being tall. It’s either “tall and handsome” or “tall and beautiful”. We don’t know “short and handsome” or “short and beautiful”. Even during elections, we vote tall candidates with the assumption that they make better leaders. In short (pun intended), short seems to represent deficiency and inadequacy and that’s perhaps why society seems to look down on it.
But that might change according to Mara Altman, the author of “Gross Anatomy.” At five feet (152.4 cm) height herself, she feels “being tall is a widely held fantasy of superiority that long ago should have been retired.” At 5 feet 10 inches (177.8 cm) myself, I feel no schadenfreude. She quoted John Kenneth Galbraith, the 6-foot-8-inch economist, and diplomat, as saying that favouring the tall was “one of the most blatant and forgiven prejudices in our society.”
As a pre-teen, Altman had injected Humatrope, a growth hormone, into her thighs for three and a half years, at the instance of her parents, who were afraid she’d be ostracized for being short. She understands why they felt that way, given how short people are treated in our society. A song, “Short people got no reason to live”, once reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Altman admitted she also gave her children growth hormones just so she could fall in line with society. But though she has twins who are among the smallest in their kindergarten class, instead of getting ready to “medicate them because of an antiquated societal bias”, she plans to let them be the way they are. In her reckoning, “short is better, and it is the future.” She feels short people have been underappreciated because of tall people. But that being short has numerous advantages. To be sure, there have been data that say that on average short people live longer and are less likely to have cancer compared to tall people. One theory proposed that with fewer cells there is a lower chance that one goes wrong.
Thomas Samaras has studied height for about 40 years and is known as the Godfather of Shrink Think, a largely unknown philosophy that believes small is superior, calculated that if Americans kept their proportions the same but were just 10 percent shorter, it could save “87 million tons of food per year excluding trillions of gallons of water, quadrillions of B.T.U.s of energy and millions of tons of trash.” Samaras went on to say, “I don’t want tall people to feel bad about themselves. But the time is right to be short.”
Altman posits that short people are “inherent conservationists, which is more crucial than ever in this world of eight billion.” She advises people to marry shorter people because they are potentially saving the planet by reducing the needs of subsequent generations. Reducing the height minimum for prospective partners on dating profiles, “is a step toward a greener planet”, she adds.
Altman frowned at parents who boast about how their kids “eat them out of house and home” and grow out of shoes the very week a new pair is bought “as if it’s a badge of honour”. But her children eat like gerbils which is fine by her as long as they are healthy. And because of their low percentiles they save money and food, and they fit into the same pair of shoes for a year. She does not want her children to grow like weed. Instead, they should grow like cacti.
From a medical point of view, short stature occurs when an individual’s height lies in the 3rd percentile for the mean height of a given age, sex, and population group. It is a normal variant and it is often confused with Growth failure (GF) which is a pathologic state of abnormally low growth rate over time. Normally, an individual’s height is mostly dependent on the height of the parents. However, about 5 percent of children with short stature have a medical cause apart from poor nutrition. And some children need medical intervention to reach their full potential. Growth is not only about height, it also includes cognitive development. What’s more, race and the society where one lives influence height. For instance, in most Asian countries where short is the majority, you wouldn’t even know you are short. But find your way to a European country where almost everybody is tall, and all of a sudden you seem like a dwarf.
Altman remains persuasive. Short people not only save resources, but as resources become scarcer due to the earth’s growing population and global warming, they may also be what is required for long-term survival. She thinks the way our planet is being destroyed one day we will all want to escape and short people like her could easily cram into spaceships. And that in a time of guns and drones, being tall now just makes that person an easy target. Yuval Noah Harari, in a book “Sapiens”, wrote about a population of early humans who dwelt in an island called Flores. Due to a rise in sea level, the island was cut off from other land masses. Harari said, “Big people, who need a lot of food, died first.” After many years, those who remained evolved to only grow three and a half feet tall.
There have been famous short people in the world. Richard William Stephen Shaw of blessed memory, better known as Bushwick Bill was a member of the hip-hop group Geto Boys. They sang my best rap song, “Mind playing tricks on me”, arguably the greatest rap song of all time. He was 3 feet 8 inches (112 cm). In the song, he described how he fought and defeated his assailant, a man who stood about 6 or 7 feet. Other famous short people are Winston Churchill 5ft 6ins (167 cm), Tom Cruise 5ft 7ins (170 cm), Al Pacino 5ft 7ins (170 cm), Bruno Mars 5ft 5ins (162.56 cm), and Danny Devito 4’10” (147.32 cm). Among the females are Nicki Minaj 5ft 2ins (157.48 cm) and Lil Kim 4ft 11ins (149.86 cm). In Nigeria, we also have Chinedu Ikedieze aka Aki 4ft 2.7ins (129cm), and Osita Iheme aka Pawpaw 4ft 3ins (133 cm). And recently, Lionel Messi, at 5ft 7ins (170 cm), just crowned his sterling career with a FIFA World Cup.
The main advocate for short height in this narrative envisions a different future. Altman wants her children’s children to know the value of short. While one yells, “I’m the shortest,” she hopes the other will bend his knees to gain an advantage, shouting, “No, I’m the shortest!” Perhaps, akin to when we say, “if you tall pass me, you no short pass me “.
In the final analysis, what is constant is change. Almost everything about our world seems to revolve and evolve. But it remains to be seen how this pans out. And while this may not be like the case of David and Goliath, Altman’s view can hardly be ignored.
• Dr. Odoemena, medical practitioner, Lagos.
Twitter: @cuzdetriumph
