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by alienchow 1368 days ago
I'm very much below the national average height for my gender. After a while you'd start hoping that conversations occur at your eye level instead of flying over your head. Practically everyone I know from the same gender and half the other gender are taller than me. It's difficult to quantify the psychological impact of always having to metaphorically wave your hand in the air to get attention. Or when you invite friends over and every time you open the door, you find their eyes looking over your head before looking down seemingly to say "oh there you are". In the article, one of the patients at 5' 5" talked about being ignored by the bartender because a taller customer talked over him. That is something I actually experience fairly frequently.

WFH has been wonderful for this reason, everyone is a half body stump on camera.

I don't think the people in the article are aiming to be super tall. Just tall enough to match their peers. Arguably super tall people (YMMV since everyone is tall to me) and short people both want the same thing, to be average.

With all that being said, I don't find the tradeoff of cost, lost time, immobility, and pain to be worth that marginally extra social respect. And to be honest, it's just a mild annoyance.

1 comments

You can see my other post. I am also quite short. However I do not have this experience you are conveying here. I think it is a matter of attitude, more than height. Of course being a quiet guy who is 190cm would be better than being a quiet guy who is 165cm.