Zeus wrote:For you shorter people out there (I'm 6'2" myself), you have one thing over us: the world is built for you not us. You're more comfortable when travelling, have a far easier time buying clothing and shoes, and can buy or be a passenger in any car. It's much more difficult for us tall ones (if you're fat, it's even worse).
I actually have been well aware of this and have had reason to be grateful for my short yet compact frame. A friend of mine had to buy a car specifically to accommodate his long, lanky frame and legs. And I rather enjoy being 5'5" but stocky and dense and muscular, I'm actually way stronger than I ever thought I could be growing up as an unathletic kid - indeed stronger than a taller person would be at my weight, if I cared about that in the least.
As I said, I don't have a problem with my height, I have a problem with people trying to assert that somehow it puts me in the "beta male" category, a priori to anything I've done, and apropos of nothing I've said or done to them. Those kinds of assertions help create the reality of human thought more than anyone cares to think, and the folks who espouse these kinds of opinions usually end up denying any responsibility in the matter, or just go "well, that's what the study says, I'm sorry you're so short". It's aggravating because it ends up coming off like tall people trying to assert their own right to social dominance, which I think is a bunch of arrogant laziness. The only other time I've heard this theory seriously proposed and agreed with was at a lunchtable discussion at Stanford, and one of the reasons I had such a bad time there was that the place was full of kids who thought one or another thing made them better than other people, whether or not it was height, intelligence, future earning potential, athletic ability or anything else. It gets wearing on the soul to be around other people who are continually trying to convince you about how much cooler they are than everybody else.
