Short People in the Era of Zoom Calls
Am I respected more now that people don’t see my height?
I’ve met a surprising number of new people over the last year and a half.
Yes, that year. The year we spent crouching over our computers talking at people in screens when clothing below the waist was optional.
As a very short person (4’11”), this has been interesting. Allow me to report back from the field.
Backstory: What It’s Like to Be Extremely Short
My woes of short going back to around age eleven, when my best friend shot up a foot over the course of one summer and I didn’t, and it was clear that I had stopped growing.
I got my first menstrual period on the earlier end of normal, making me an early bloomer who didn’t get much of a growth spurt. I also come from exceedingly short people (my mother is slightly taller than me, and my dad is slightly taller than her) who come from a short-statured racial background (southern Chinese), living in a place with primarily taller people (White people).
So, I received the requisite teasing kids receive when they don’t fit in. I remember, very clearly, taking my place in line behind a boy who proceeded to chirp with glee: “Wow, she is soooo short!” I got called “midget” a lot (which is just plain ableist, kids) and to this day, children tease me because they see me as a fellow child, I guess.
Adults are better…sort of
Adults are more respectful (at the very least, we save shit-talking for when the subject leaves the room). I’ve never been explicitly bullied by an adult about my height — with the exception of consensual, friendly ribbing between adults I call my friends. Still, unconscious bias is a very real thing.
I’ve been the only person in a group of adults carded. I’ve been asked my age by a well-meaning, concerned-looking plane stewardess who must have thought I was an unaccompanied minor (I was 24). These days, I lean into my lack of height as part of my branding: it’s a self-deprecating joke I use to make people laugh.
But I do think my height brings me real-world disadvantages.
I’ve walked into job interviews and felt…awkward. Who is this person, barely five feet tall, who looks like a fourteen-year-old boy but identifies as twenty-something-year-old communication and marketing professional? No one has ever said that out loud, but I can feel the thought going through people’s heads, behind the eyes that are forced to look down on me.
Enter Zoom
Along came a day when I no longer had to walk into a room and have my height be the first thing people notice about me.
Since March 2020, I’ve met a lot of people. Not in person, of course. But online, for business, and for pleasure. And I can’t help but suspect I’ve been treated with more respect because people no longer see my height.
I feel like a peer, even among people who are older or are more experienced at what we’re doing together. And my hypothesis is that this is because they have less visual data of who I am as a body. New people I’ve met have had to rely on my work and my words; occasionally, they see my face or hear my voice, but height doesn’t factor into either of those.
Of course, I have no scientific proof of this. It’s all just my experience. Perhaps I’m simply more personable on screen. And I’m older and more experienced than I ever have been, so perhaps I carry myself with a little more confidence than I did when I interviewed for my first job.
Nevertheless, this has made me curious about height discrimination all over again.
Heightism = Oppression?
I can’t write about this experience without at least giving a nod to the ongoing (albeit below-the-radar) conversation that is whether heightism is a form of oppression.
There was a time when I liked to point out to people that height discrimination has its own Wikipedia page. Having a Wikipedia page means you’re legit, right? Maybe.
Heightism does have a lot in common with other “isms.” Like race or the gender you were assigned at birth, there’s not much you can do about it. You can’t even exercise or eat your way to more height.
And people of varying heights have stereotypes and assumptions about them. Tall people may be presumed athletic; short people, less dominating. Is this comparable to racial or gender stereotypes? Perhaps.
Here’s the funniest factoid I could find: tall people earn about $789 more per year with every inch they have above average. This amounts to nearly $166,000 over a 30-year career. That’s significant.
Still, there’s something not-quite-right with shoving height discrimination into the same bucket as racism, sexism, ableism, and their ilk. I’m not sure why I hesitate, but fellow Medium writer Georgina Dorrington puts it well:
It may be ingrained in a lot of people’s behaviour but it’s not institutionalised in society the same way at all.
Height discrimination isn’t institutionalized the same way racism and sexism are. As comedian Jon Holmes muses in this debate, it’s not like short people are barred from getting on the bus. And while modern western democracies are built on patriarchal values that have been institutionalized for centuries, there has never been a law in my country’s constitution that says only tall, male, white citizens with property can vote.
…But I’m far from convinced one way or the other. I think the problem we can all agree on is that we — meaning socially conscious people who strive for justice — haven’t talked about height bias enough. I’d love to hear what readers think about this, so go forth and leave your thoughts in the comment section!
A note on dating…
Okay, okay, this section is for all you short, single men reading this. I haven’t forgotten you!
Since dating became a thing, masculine people have been complaining about being too short to be sexually attractive. Meanwhile, feminine people complain about being too tall to be sexually attractive. When I was younger and complaining about my height, people used to tell me, “Well, at least you’re not a man. It would be worse for you if you were a man.”
Being short would emasculate me as a man. But being a short woman isn’t that great either, because it just adds another layer of challenge to the challenge that is being a woman in a patriarchal society.
To the men out there frustrated that they can’t find a partner, I feel you, I really do. But you’re not alone. The dating world is almost, by definition, a place where we openly judge people with few consequences. People get rejected for their height, hair colour, religion, music taste, how cute their laugh is. Whether choosing and rejecting potential partners based on these things is discrimination — well, that’s an essay for another time.
So, is heightism the same thing as racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice? Perhaps…in certain contexts. I think earning less money because you’re short is pretty terrible. But I would hesitate to blame one’s dating woes solely on one’s height.
Talking Heads
Science fiction likes to imagine an era when we’ll all be floating brains in jars, interfacing with each other without the need for clunky bodies. I think we’ve already gotten to this point.
I’m curious to see if this era of talking heads in screens will help society…or hinder it. On one hand, with less focus on people’s bodies and more on their work and words, perhaps we’ll finally get over petty bias.
But this is problematic, too. For one, words and work are arenas for discrimination. Speaking in the “wrong” accent or dialect can hurt your career. And while we like to believe that a person’s work is an ethical way to judge them, more of us are discovering that meritocracy is not as fair as it seems.
Besides, what someone produces at work does not reveal, for example, if they are a very good parent or empathetic friend. And what someone does for work — a remote office worker versus a warehouse stocker, for example — comes with a shit tonne of classist, racist, and elitist baggage.
Besides, until we do float in jars, our bodies are still very much tethered to our work and words. Let’s not forget that our shapes, sizes, complexions, hair textures, heights, and weights remain a key part of who we are. And for the foreseeable future, I think we each have a lot to work on in terms of respecting everyone as human beings, no matter their insides or outsides.
Li Charmaine Anne (she/they) is a Canadian author on unceded Coast Salish territories (aka Vancouver, Canada). Her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines and she is at work on her first novel, a contemporary YA about queer Asian skater girls. To read Charmaine’s articles for free (no subscription required), sign up for her newsletter.
