By David Futrelle
In the Braincels subreddit, the main hangout on Reddit for so-called “involuntary celibates,” the regulars are once again bemoaning that “life is over” for guys who are a few inches shorter than the national average.
Naturally, most of those Braincellers who have responded to 86160’s thoughtful analysis of height discrimination not only agree with him; they also think that he is probably understating just how dire it is for short men, suggesting that he could probably raise his estimate of the Height Below Which All Male Life is Basically Impossible to 5’8″ (just one inch shorter than the average height of American men) or even 6′ (3 inches taller than the average).
Ah yes, because no man less than 5’5″ 5’8″ 6′ has ever succeeded at anything, or been respected by anyone, or gotten a kiss from a lady. You may recall how the musical career of the wee fellow who called himself “Prince” was derailed forever because he was only 5’2″ — and good luck finding anyone who thought he was cute, much less sexy.
And you’ve probably never heard of Peter Dinklage (4’5″) or Martin Scorsese (5’3″) or Paul Simon (also 5’3″) or Seth Green (5’4″) or Micheal J. Fox (also 5’4″) or Mel Brooks (also also 5’4″) or Truman Capote (also also also 5’4″). And there couldn’t possibly have been an actual professional basketball player (“Muggsy” Bogues) who was 5’3″, must have hallucinated that.
Looking over the course of history, there have clearly never been any short men with power or prestige or HAWT girlfriends or anything, I mean, obviously you’ve never heard of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (4’11”), Andrew Carnegie (5’2″), Beethoven (5’3″), Voltaire (5’3″), Gandhi (5’4″), Picasso (5’4″). It’s not like Genghis Khan — whose genes live on today in literally millions of men, making him the most genetically successful man in history — was a 5’1′ shorty. OH WAIT.
If I were to raise this arbitrary cutoff to 5’8″ I would have to include such notable male unsucccesses as Martin Luther King, Jr., Bruce Lee, Winston Churchill, Napoleon Boneparte, Rivers Cuomo, Robin Williams, Bono, Tom Cruise,
Thom Yorke, Al Pacino, Roger Daltrey, Daniel Radcliffe, Dustin Hoffman, Bruno Mars, Jack Black, Aziz Ansari, Jason Schwartzman, Jon Stewart, Elton John, Mario Andretti, Henry Winkler, Beck, Manny Pacquiao, Bob Dylan, Alfred Hitchcock, Spike Lee, Mike Myers, Steven Spielberg, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
J. R. R. Tolkien, Ralph Lauren, Alexander the Great, David Sedaris, Jesse Eisenberg, Gael Garcia Bernal, George Lucas, Isaac Newton, Sylvester Stallone, Elijah Wood, Billy Joel (to shamelessly steal names from a couple of lists I found here and here, as I did for the previous paragraphs as well).
I would include some examples of famous men less than 6′ as well except then I would have to list MOST OF THE FAMOUS MEN WHO’VE EVER LIVED.
Yes, dudes, it’s true that short men do face discrimination of various kinds. And yes, there are women who, all else being equal, prefer taller men to shorter men, just as there are some men who prefer women with bit tits to women with small tits. Because some people have preferences about such things.
But all you have to do to rebut the incel folk belief that “short people got no reason to live” (to quote a song intended to point out the absurd nature of all prejudice and not actually to rag on short people at all) is to get off the Braincels subreddit for five minutes and observe the world around you, in which you cal literally see with your own eyes countless short men living happy lives, some of them even with HAWT girlfriends and wives in tow.
I mean, I’ve literally seen HAWT women out there walking hand in hand with short men down the street within feet of my apartment, and I don’t even get out that much. I’VE KNOWN SHORT DUDES WHO ENDED UP DATING WOMEN I WANTED TO DATE GODDAMMIT, WHY AM I EVEN DEFENDING THESE LADY STEALING DUDES IN THE FIRST PLACE, DAMN YOU SHORT DUDES DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL WHY ARE YOU SO GOOD WITH THE LADIES
What was I talking about again?
I guess the moral here is that you can make yourself miserable about anything and maybe, just maybe, this is not a good way to live your life? Maybe a whole movement designed to convince dudes that they should be miserable all the time because of things that they don’t control and that … aren’t actually going to condemn them to lives of misery if they don’t let them … is a really bad idea?
Just a thought, fellas. I mean, seriously. What the hell are you even doing?
I am also 5’10”, and like some others on here, that sometimes makes it harder for me to find guys that are taller than me. But guess what? To me that doesn’t matter because I tend to be very attracted to Asian men. Yes, Jet Li is short. He’s also incredibly fucking hot.
@Virgin Mary
Forget passing as a decent man, pass as an indecent man! 🙂
But like Cyborgette said, it’s not for other people. And 5’7″ isn’t that short, it’s just below average for the U.S., and I believe the U.S. is a bit of an outlier for the average of the entire planet.
I’m pretty sure most dudes add an inch at least, besides.
QAnon subreddits get the boot! r/GreatAwakening banned.
The incels are probably too young to remember the long running late ’80s-early ’90s TV series L.A. Law. Two of the main characters were lawyers Stuart Markowitz and Ann Kelsey, who had a romantic relationship throughout the series. They were played by real life married couple Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry. Tucker is several inches shorter than Eikenberry, and the show never hid the fact.
@Virgin Mary:
If it’s any help, I have a friend who’s shorter than that (like about 5’3″), and skinny too. He’s happier than he’s ever been since he transitioned, and no one whom he hasn’t enlightened is any the wiser that he’s trans. I hope you don’t let the toxic masculine standards of a bunch of assy incels deter you from doing what’s right for you.
Short men are easier to reach. Handy!
My answer to these Incels is that average height is very subjective, as from experience it seems that most of us from Latin America are probably shorter than most folks in North America and Europe (one example being that southern Mexicans are much shorter than their northern counterparts, although I’m not sure if that’s entirely true). I say this as I’ve noticed that many Incels are from the UK and I’ve heard that northern Europeans are usually tall, thus their eschewed view of “average height” and their nonsense.
I’m around 5’10” and since childhood I thought that I was one of the tallest people around for a long time, that is until my best friend and his brother got even taller (which according to the Incels they should be chads by now, but AFAIK they aren’t) and back in college I used to see shorter guys walking around all the time with their girlfriends. I also had a friend who also had a girlfriend and both were shorter than me as well, for example. And this is from a city in the southern border, so I don’t know if guys in New England, for example, are taller in comparison.
Actual 6’3″ man here, can confirm, must use broom to ward off the attentions of women. Bristles nearly worn off. This may be my last broadcast…
Wetherby:
Perhaps most incels would agree that being 6’8″ provides no further SMV benefit compared to being just about 6′. Heck, it might be even detrimental if you asked some very tall incel!
I’m 6’6″ and it felt surprisingly normal at first, since I wasn’t at all self-conscious in my teens. I was flexible and very thin, which helped to fit in society (so to say). I wasn’t aware that knocking my head on things is dangerous and probably gradually detrimental to my brain health. I wasn’t aware that looming over people might creep them out.
Now I’m older, more aware, less flexible/less able to tolerate positional discomfort, and feel generally more entitled to ergonomy. I automatically duck in doorways, which sometimes makes people curious. On a positive note, it’s super validating when coworkers ask me to reach for something.
One of the hottest men I’ve ever seen was Ian Dury.
But hang on a second – are we sure this isn’t a double bluff here?
Is it possible the posters on the incel forum of joy and reasonableness have noticed that short men (wherever you decide “short” starts) don’t really seem to have a problem attracting partners or achieving success, and are trying to spike potential competition?
If you are x, you have no reason to live… if you are y you have no reason to live, if you are z… hey, why are you still living and getting in my way?
As an attitude to life it stinks, but for people as wedded to the idea of reproductive strategies according to evo-psych as the manosphere seems to be, someone might have thought it worth a shot.
@Virgin Mary –
I’d never heard of canthal tilt either til seeing it on this website. But when I looked it up I was like – oh my man happens to have the ‘good stuff’. My partner has some kickass canthal tilt – I mean these guys would be all over it.
True story – he was a virgin til grad school – and not ‘by choice’. His canthal tilt did him no good (then) – but now, who’s to say I wasn’t actually attracted to that – he does have great eyes. However, he also has a great personality, at least for me. It’s an absolute joy living with him.
As to the anti-semitism of it – I dunno. I wouldn’t put it past the people who are obsessed by such physical features determining their entire fate to have it as a dog-whistle – but my partner is Jewish.
However, that sleepy-eye thing is not something I’d heard of either – here’s the Trumpian use of it: https://politicaldig.com/trump-just-got-called-launching-racist-dog-whistle-attack-nbcs-chuck-todd/ That one does sound for sure like it was dog-whistle.
Someone on incels.me thinks that 6’4″ is average height for a man.
Mind you, these people think that nine-inch penises are also average. And indeed that wrist circumference matters.
It’s almost as if height has less to do with incels’ lack of success with women than the fact their personalities are flaming toxic dumps. How strange.
(Full disclosure: Mr. Dakry is 6′ 4″. I’m a foot shorter. The fact that we seem to be mentally two halves of a complete albeit dysfunctional brain probably had a lot more to do with the marriage and all, though. It’s definitely not an advantage in airline economy class for him.)
WRT Ghengis Khan:
Given your previous post about how incels view non-consensual sex as a ‘successful’ mating strategy, a great deal of the great Khan’s genetic proliferation probably counts, but this might be muddying the waters of your general outlook on such things. The idea of Temujin as ‘height-cel’ probably hasn’t occurred to them, but it’s probably a bad one to suggest.
Bruce Lee, I’ve heard, was only 5’7″ . Yet, he was so charismatic. I know Humphrey Bogart wasn’t blessed in the height department, and neither is Tom Cruise. It didn’t seem to hurt their careers any.
That being said, it can be a pain being shorter than average. I’m 5 feet 2 and a half. I round up to 5’3″ , because every little bit helps☺ One thing about it – IMO, gaining a little bit of weight stands out more when you happen to be short. Gaining 5 pounds, for me, means I can’t fasten my pants.?
Like Podkayne Lives, I was told by my pediatrician that I would be at least 5’10” and probably taller. Whatever new and exciting formula they were using for these forecasts back in the 60’s/70’s was not a winner in my case, either, since I topped out at 5’7″. It still crushed my dreams of being a jockey back when I was 8 or so but it saved my mom from having to tell me that it would’ve been a pipe dream anyway for a kid from such big-boned roots!
It also didn’t stop me from being one of the tallest kids in every one of my elementary school classes which meant nothing to me until fourth grade when we had dance lessons (square dancing, yet!) and I had to dance with other girls because there were more girls than boys AND because I was taller than most of the boys. Maybe because of that, I’ve never felt particularly feminine.
I also have an attraction to shorter men; my preference is for guys shorter than 5’9″. Husbeast is 6’1″ and I didn’t marry him for his height! There are other things that are way more important!! (you should see his wrists /s)
This would seem to be a perfect pretext to mention the late Filipino kung fu sensation Weng Weng–who, at 2’9″, made a career of playing David to various Goliaths in such films as For Yu’r Height Only and The Impossible Kid:
By total coincidence, I was reading the article in Wikipedia on Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, the 18th Century German philosopher, satirist and early researcher into electrical phenomena who, among other achievements, was one of the first people to suggest using paper with a square-root-of-two proportion that is the basis for the ISO “A” Series and which gives the useful feature that folding a given size in half gives you the next size down. The article notes:
It almost immediately follows with:
So, yeah, in your face, heightcels.
(The rest of the article is a a bit squick insofar as at least one of Lichtenberg’s relationships began when the woman was 13, though they at least seem to have waited until she was 16 before co-habitating…)
I’m 5’8 3/4″. Back in my online dating days, when filling out profiles, there weren’t any options in between 5’8″ and 5’9″. I usually picked 5’9″ because that was closer to my true height than 5’8″.
Then I met a gentleman for a lunch date who was incredibly suspicious from the get-go. He kept insisting I wasn’t 5’9″, no way, I must have lied on my profile. He didn’t believe me when I explained the fraction issue (apparently he felt that women’s heights should always be whole integers) and actually made me stand up so we could measure back to back. It was weird how deeply invested he was in trying to prove I had maliciously misrepresented myself. All because of a quarter of an inch.
I ended the date shortly after that. Ain’t nobody got time for that nonsense.
It does seem that people who obsess over height tend to be men, who take as gospel the studies that show that tall men earn more, are more likely to be executives, leaders, captains of sports teams, etc. But all of that is largely men giving power to men for possessing those traits (and the incel corollary, that power alone is what gives men access to women). I don’t have any particular romantic preference for height, and neither do any of the straight women I know.
Incels are their own worst policers.
On top of that, height is also positively correlated with nutrition received during development. People who get to eat better quality food more often tend to grow bigger than those who don’t. The people who are more likely to eat high quality food during childhood are those with rich parents. And whether or not you have rich parents is a huge factor in your future success. I expect it isn’t so much “people who are taller are advantaged in life” as it is “people who are advantaged in life tend to be taller”.
Yes – and a lot of sexual dimorphism in humans may be due to boys getting preferential feeding in infancy and childhood.
Just chatting today to an older friend (b 1943) who remembers that in her family her stepfather and her brother had meat every day, rather cheaper meat scraps for the dogs, and she, her mother and sisters, ate the veg with gravy, or sometimes offal. She recalled the smell of a tin bucket full of lights boiling…
Probably rather healthier, in fact, but a bit short on protein, and the veg would have been boiled to oblivion.
These people seem to be normalizing “crazy”.
But as for short men (and women) it’s a dilemma I sometimes dealt with indirectly in a recent job. I did work involving prior authorizations for pharmacy. And one thing where insurance companies had different cut-offs for was the idea of giving growth hormones to short preteens and early teens (in some extreme cases puberty blockers were added to add time in which the hormones would be more effective).
While I had no actual decision making power I did get to run through the process with different insurance plans. One middle ground in the debate over growth hormones for kids who were “Idiopathic Short Stature” which is to say had no specific growth or endocrine disorder, but were just very short, was to suggest “They should be candidates if their short stature is disabling, but not just for social reasons.”
Problem was a lot of companies went by 2.5 Standard deviations which meant the “disabling” criteria was more applied to girls than boys.