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?
@ weird eddie
Yeah, it’s mainly down to Brit propaganda, also capitalising on a misunderstanding (probably deliberately) of ‘Petit’ as a physical description rather than a rank designation. Napoleon also appeared a bit shorter because he hung around with the dragoons, who were all pretty tall.
@Alan, Weird Eddie,
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=320
@ rabid rabbit
Cheers for that. Those cartoons were interesting, and I guess show how early the myth (was) started.
@kupo No, no you’re not. <3 And Peter Dinklage. <3
I still want Linda Hunt to narrate my biography…if I ever had one. 😀
I personally, being a short-ish man, find myself most attracted to men of around my own height. It’s nice being at eye level with someone, and having similar stride lengths and comfortable hand-holding and kissing. So, within an inch or so, ideally; six footers had better make up for it elsewhere.
Napoleon got a reputation for being very short because French feet at the time were longer than English ones. English cartoonists got wind of the fact that he was 5′2″ (en les unités françaises) and drew loads of propaganda cartoons in which he was really short.
I guess the point is that the portrayal of short men as unmasculine is way older than modern MRA/incel culture (and much older than Napoleon, for that matter).
@Kupo
I did too. That wicked smile. <3
Kupo- You’re not alone. I wanted to marry Warwick Davis after I saw him in Willow. I was about six at the time, and had perfectly innocent fantasies about how we would settle down in his peaceful village for a quiet life of merry harvest festivals and pan flutes. But all that was over once I saw Time Bandits, and fell for bad boy Randall. Then I had perfectly innocent fantasies about how we would embark on adventures of benign villainy and heist the whole of spacetime, cackling over our heap of shiny treasure.
http://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/2017/R/14315-19636.jpg
MUST STEAL ALL THE THINGS!!!
@Genjones:
Did you ever see Rapaport in The Bride? He and Clancy Brown were the main reasons to see that movie.
I just want to drill down into something in the OP:
So all of the incredible experiences that led to great accomplishments (theoretically) in the lives of these “Braincels” are worthless unless they’re validated through… sex? So the accomplishments themselves are not reason enough for being, they need to be used as currency to play kissy-face, huh?
I suffer from depression and at my lowest moments, I told myself that nothing I did was great. That’s how my misery manifested itself, despite all the things I had done (getting a degree, improving as an artist over the years). These guys are just the right kind of narcissist that they think they’re movers and shakers in the cultural sphere, but they’ve attached such value to sex that unless they’re getting it from the most conventionally attractive woman, there’s no point.
It’s such a bizarre bit of self-contradiction and it clearly didn’t cause any congnitive dissonance in the poster, because he typed those sentences right next to each other.
I KNEW IT! I cannot be 5’3, I must be 6’0. It is obvious: I have a stable relationship with a good partner, two smart and charismatic daughters, an advanced degree from a good school, my own business. As such, I cannot be 5’3, everyone else is just 7’5.
Or incels have no clear understanding of human interaction. No…no…I’m definitely 6’0 tall
@Podkayne:
My first thought was of Peter Dinklage. Sexy. Married. Famous. Probably financially decently off, what with Game of Thrones and all that. Very short.
He probably has killer canthal tilt and thicc wrists though, which explains it.
Dinklage was also one of the few redeeming things about Knights of Badassdom, which takes much the same approach to nerd culture as Big Bang Theory: point and laugh at (as distinct from with) the subculture you’re purporting to represent. (Like the first Ghost Rider movie, KOB can be regarded as a fun metal video* with a tedious two-hour prologue.)
*Dinklage–whose character is being summoned as a champion by the song; long story– enters at about 1:48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5a8LiEc3Ro
Wasn’t Dudley Moore a rather infamous ladies’ man back in the day?
Incels can keep talking about canthal tilt and wrist size and whatnot, but guys, seriously. It’s not what you got – it’s how you play the cards dealt.
@Kereea:
A scene I’d always wanted to see in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (but which never happened because the X-Men and the Avengers were in different corporate hands:
(Tip of the adamantium helmet to Agilebrit on Livejournal’s Fanficrants.)
Married couple: the late Argentinian entertainer Jorge Guinzburg and TV producer Andrea Stivel (she’s 5′ 9”). Incels, what gives?
I have never heard of this ‘canthal tilt’ thing, I had to look it up. It looks like another anti Semitic thing, remember Trump talking about someone having sleepy Jew eyes or somesuch rubbish?
Anyway, the young Paul McCartney was very attractive, so it’s utter tosh.
I agree with Cyborbette that tall and strong guys are dangerous. When I was still trying to be straight, I always felt repulsed by men who I felt could over power me. I went out with a guy who was 5’4” and a bodybuilder and that was bad enough, never again. I also tried dating a man who was 5’9” but disabled, as I felt safer with him, he had ME and had to get about in a wheelchair or mobility scooter. I felt that I was expected to be a career tho and he was too demanding, but feeling safe was my objective.
I am worried about transitioning as I am only just under 5’7”, I feel too short and skinny to pass as a decent man, but I’m about the same height as Putin so I guess I’ll just have to live with that.
@Virgin Mary
First rule of transitioning: it is for you and nobody else. You are not obligated to pass perfectly, be handsome, or anything else like that. Passing and being conventionally attractive can definitely make things easier, but that’s not obligation, that’s society being shitty and policing people.
I kinda don’t want to write, like, a long thing about this publicly. But for now suffice to say, it’s your decision and no one else’s, and the hell with society’s conventions about what constitutes a decent man. <3
(Also, being honest, I've met a lot of shockingly handsome trans guys and most have been roughly in your size range.)
off-topic…
moronity by a trumpling responding to a question in a science blog:
yeah… but they eliminated 98% of living species in several cases….
… “oh, my, there sure are a lot of wildfires these days… oh, well, life goes on…”
… “oh, my, but the 107 degree temperatures and lack of rain all summer in Kansas sure makes it hard to grow crops… oh, well, life goes on…”
… “oh, my, the hurricanes are really getting bad… oh, well, life goes on…”
… “oh, my, the sea level is rising and drowning all the coastal cities… oh, well, life goes on…”
So at what point do these doofuses say it’s bad enough to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT???
… “oh, my, it’s even getting hot here in our bunker, and we’ve been out of food for a really long time… oh, well, life… go… ….”
At the point when there’s a magical way to do something about it without hurting oil company profits, and not before, of course.
I’m six foot two inches! I used to be six foot three, but age, you know.
Anyway, where are all my hawt babes at? Did they get lost? Who do I contact about this?
@JenniferAndLightning –
Yes, agreed.
I used to be so self-conscious about being short when I was a kid! I did NOT like it. But it hardly bothered me by the time I was 17 or 18. I thought this was because adults in general don’t care much about height, but now that I think about it, it also could be because women don’t get as much flak for being short (“tall = masculine, small = feminine” stereotype).
As for men, I had a crush on Elijah Wood as Frodo in LOTR when I was 13-15. A somewhat short person playing an even shorter character!
And the only boyfriend I’ve had was almost exactly my height (I think it’s 159 cm? about 5’2”). I’m really not organized enough to do work AND have a boyfriend or girlfriend now, but I do have a slight preference for people closer to my height.
Now, this wouldn’t mean anything to an incel – to them, I’d be a meh-worthy HB5. A bisexual who is not super hot and wouldn’t make out with hotter women solely for their benefit. Shocking. 😛
My husband is 6’8″. He’d gladly trade with someone 6′, anyway. We joke it’s too bad that you can’t give someone part of your height, because I want to be taller & he wants to be shorter.
He’s had several concussions from walking into ceilings/doors/light fixtures, his knees are shot from being jammed around his ears on an international flight, he had a horrific time when he was hospital for 2 1/2 months after nearly dying because they didn’t have bed long enough for him (until they brought in a specialist bed for his horrible bed sores that happened to also be long enough) etc, etc. So yeah, being super tall has a lot of actual physical issues, unlike the incel’s whiny nonsense about not getting laid because they’re short.
*raises hand*
I’m 6’1 with no romantic history whatsoever.
Incels, explain yourselves!
Re: Genghis Khan
Actually, no one knows how big he was since we haven’t found his tomb (which is on purpose, the mongols didn’t want anyone to be able desecrate their leader). However, according to contemporary accounts, he was huge (well, over 6 feet, which was huge for the time). He also might have had red hair and green eyes with Asian features due to the tremendous genetic mixing on the step (remember the Afghan girl from the cover of National Geographic with the piercing blue eyes?)