The Long and Short of It

     It isn't easy being short in America.  Not for a man anyway.  The country loves tall men.  Women love tall men.  "Tall, dark, and handsome."  We "look up" to people we admire--and "look down" on people we disapprove of.  A singer named Randy Newman had a hit song in 1977 with "Short People" who "got no reason / to live" and "nobody / to love."  The Atlantic magazine published an article in May 2015 that said four or five inches in height can be worth an increase of up to fifteen percent in salary, which translates into tall people earning hundreds of thousands of dollars more than short people over their work years.  No, it isn't easy--and that doesn't even take into account the smug smirks of tall people as they look down and shrug you off as a defective specimen.
     And yet there are long and impressive lists of short world leaders through history--Alexander the Great (5-6), Napoleon (5-6), Gandhi (5-3), James Madison (5-4), Josef Stalin (5-6), among many others.  The lists of short athletes, musicians, painters, writers, movie stars, and so on are similarly impressive, like Yogi Berra and Floyd Mayweather; Beethoven and Mozart; Picasso and Stravinsky; Martin Scorsese and Tom Cruise; Charlie Chaplin and Harry Houdini.  My personal favorites are recent NBA stars Muggsy Bogues (5-3) and Spud Webb (5-6), who barely made it to the waists of seven-foot, two-inch, wide-body centers.
     Lists like these, even abbreviated ones like mine, can be impressively long and may suggest that things aren't so bad for short people after all--but short men in America know better.  There is a silent, persistent prejudice against us built into our national mindset.  It's a discrimination hardwired into our common psyche, into our very hearts, into the language we use every day.  Call it a shortcoming. 

Update:  From the Tampa Bay Times, March 11,2018:  There is a "mountain of evidence that we really look up to men of physical stature.  Americans tend to see taller men as more competent and intelligent.  We're more willing to hire and promote them than we are shorter men, and more likely to elect them to high office.  We like them more."