Does height matter?


The height bar from my inversion table - I like hanging upside down like a bat, it is good for the back. 

I was intrigued to read about  a young woman who had been dating a guy for a while, had fallen in love with him and then discovered that he had been wearing shoe lifts to make himself taller,  he was in fact slightly shorter than she was, so she ended the relationship,  in disgust at the treachery.
Now think of this : you are a young woman who feels a little self-conscious because your breasts are smallish, so you wear a push up bra to go on a date but then your date finds out you are not really a D cup and never wants to see you again. What's the difference between the two scenarios?
We change everything about our appearance from weight to hair colour, even eye colour (through contact lenses). But height is more difficult to modify.  There are extreme remedies like leg lengthening surgery, which is very expensive and not always successful and which involves having your shin bones being broken and then a long period of recovery follows during which you are most vulnerable. Personally, I would love to be a little taller but would not be willing to have my bones broken, sorry, not even if someone offered me a substantial sum of money to do it.
There are people,  bodybuilders among them, who try to ingest as much Human Growth Hormone as they can get hold of, in the hope to grow taller and build muscles, yet it is not proven that HGH stimulates growth in height after a certain age, usually set at around 25, when all bone growth naturally ends, and  if not taken with medical supervision,  its damaging side effects are considerable.
The desire to be taller, especially among some men, can be quite obsessive and it's all because it seems that taller men are more attractive to women and they are more successful.  There are a few myths here that need exploding, no doubt. Napoleon comes to mind, for one thing, he was short, it seems, but was not out of luck with women nor did he do so badly, he did crown himself emperor after all. Ok he was eventually defeated by Lord Wellington. And, incidentally, Lord Wellington was not all that much taller than Napoleon.
Internet scams about growing taller abound, just do a quick Google search and you will find people asking you to part with considerable money promising you a growth of six inches within two weeks, with dubious methods such as meditation on the pituitary gland and self-hypnosis. Honestly, how gullible can one be!


But I am not writing this post in disapproval of those men who have recourse to lifts to boost their height, no more then I would tut tut a woman using a push up bra. Whatever gives you confidence is OK and wearing shoe lifts (such as the ones in the picture above) is harmless! I guess it might be unusual, but it does not have to be looked down upon and certainly it is not a reason to break up with someone. How shallow is that?
 Height increase is generational, by and large older people tend to be shorter, also because a certain amount of shrinking kicks in after the age of 40, becoming very obvious by age 70. Height is a very relative thing. It seems that at 5'6 Grace Kelly was regarded as tall in the 1950s, so there is some fluidity in this concept of height.
In some occupations there is a minimum height requirement but this is constantly being revised, to make room for  ethnicities whose heights might be different.
Modelling used to be the preserve of the very tall but nowadays petite models are (finally!)  in demand, especially for ecommerce (online), though apparently they are not used enough, as often clothes for petite women are modelled by regular size models (on the tallish side) , see the entries in this forum about QVC regular size  models and how ill fitting their  clothes are for petite women who cannot gauge what they really look like on a petite frame as the models are not petite.
 In any case many top models are, shall we say, vertically challenged yet they have achieved renown, from Kate Moss to Laetitia Casta to Devon Aoki and now Lottie Moss and Lily Rose Depp, as well as a host of other girls. Beauty ideals do change and there is also a realisation that  non-Caucasians are not always very tall, though this does not mean they are unattractive.
Women have always managed to get away with heels to make themselves taller, so why should men not do so if they so wish?  Heels for men are no longer in fashion, hence the shoe lifts.

Me modelling for online boutique Whatalicefound

If we were all the same height, the same weight, the same skin colour, the same hair colour, the same eye colour  it would be an extremely dull world. We would be machines rather than human beings.
What really matters is posture and bearing. Many people make themselves look shorter than they are because they have a bad posture. That can certainly be avoided.  Height is just a physical trait which ought to be regarded neutrally. For now it is not possible to change it drastically without using external aids. This may change at some point but till then lets embrace our individuality, height included and let it not stop us from achieving whatever we wish to achieve. And if we want to wear heels and/or shoe lifts to make ourselves a little taller why should this be an issue?

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