The Social Complex

“Cause they’re short but they act like they’re big, tall, and bad”

TSC: More shitty dating advice for short guys.   ಠ_ಠ  

Sorry, Man, You’re Too Short (Am I A Bad Feminist?)

Randy Newman on “Short People”

TSC: Singer/Songwriter Randy Newman was featured on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” (5/8/13) to talk about his recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  During that interview, Mr. Newman get’s a question about his most infamous song, Short People, which seemed to have thrown him off guard and left him scrambling for a non-apology. 

For those of you that don’t know, Randy Newman penned and released a song in the 1970’s which probably represents one of the most noxious and offensive examples of naked heightism in modern popular media.  In it, the song’s main character asserts that short people “have no reason to live”.  You can listen to the entire song here:

Needless to say, most people would never purchase a song with the lyric “Gay People have no reason to live” or “Black People have no reason to live”, or even “Fat People have no reason to live”.  But here, people justify their enjoyment of the song by saying that the tune is merely a parody on other types of prejudice and it’s not supposed to be taken literally.  They assert that the song is really about racism and how stupid it is to hate people for reasons beyond their control.  (Of course, this interpretation of the song doesn’t explain how one can use one form of prejudice to lampoon another).  

However, in this excerpt from NPR, Randy Newman completely debunks the “parody interpretation” of the song.  Apparently, the song is to be taken literally - except that the song’s protagonist is supposedly a crazy person. 

So, the song has nothing to do with racism.  Mr. Newman admits that his album needed an “up [beat]” song and that this bit of bigotry was the first thing that popped into his head.  So, he thought that it would be a good idea to make a song about it.  

During some portions of the interview, you can almost hear some regret in his voice (like when he sighs at the wedding story).  But ultimately, he defends the song by saying that he didn’t know that it was a “sensitive topic” at the time (TSC: cop out).  He goes on to say that he can understand why a child may be hurt by the song if his classmates taunted him/her when the song was popular. 

Ultimately, it’s clear that he doesn’t like talking about the song, and the interviewer mercifully moves on.  Listen to the interview excerpt here:

You can also hear the entire interview at  

THE ENCLAVE: Just discovered the anti-heightism movement on Tumblr/the internet as... →

meravie:

Just discovered the anti-heightism movement on Tumblr/the internet as a whole, and working out whether it’s an MRA parallel to feminism’s fat acceptance movement. I can’t tell yet. Much of the heightism stuff looks really resentment-fuelled with massive undercurrents of “all women are evil bitches…

TSC: This is a serious problem.  I’m not really clear on how the heightism issue became associated with MRA, but it has nothing to do with it.  Heightism is a social prejudice which is based in gender norms, but it isn’t about resentment - it’s about tolerance.  And, the focus of our efforts should not be on physical attraction, but on social justice and challenging a systemic cultural prejudice which ultimately demeans people of all heights.  When the majority of a populace believes that height affects the intrinsic worth of human beings, there is a problem.  And that problem is especially bad when everyone recognizes the prejudice on some level, but it is so normalized that challenging it produces an unsettling feeling because it’s disruptive to the social order. 

Notice how defensive people get when they are first introduced to the idea that it is wrong to stigmatize people based on their height. 

NOPE

TSC:  What is it about car advertisements and height? 

So here is a new European Volkswagen ad that uses height as its primary theme.  It’s somewhat similar to the infamous Honda CRV ad from ten years ago because the premise of this ad also relies on the idea that a woman must not date a shorter man.  Or that tall women must find a taller man at any cost (even though its like “looking for a needle in a haystack”, as the background music asserts).  It seems that the grand take-away from this ad is that a tall woman should attach herself to the first taller guy that comes along - even when he happens to drive a horribly ugly Volkswagen.  

Ultimately, large corporations which try to profit off of corrosive gender norms should be discouraged from doing so in the future.  Dating necessarily involves personal choices.  But popular culture influences our choices and when large corporations promote ideas about what couples “should look like”, it can take us down a troubling slippery slope.  For instance, here Volkswagen is casting the Male-Taller-Norm as a social virtue, thereby perpetuating it as a hallmark of cultural cohesion.  One could argue that this sort of message is bad for supposedly egalitarian societies such as ours - societies which strive to maximize our freedom to choose what makes us happy without being widely shamed for those choices.

But, I’ll at least say that this ad is MUCH less offensive than the Honda CRV ad, even though it relies on the same theme.  Here, like in the CRV ad, the woman is disappointed to see shorter men potentially expressing romantic interest in her.  But at least in this ad, the short men aren’t made to look like immature idiots or mere hollow props for the narrative.  The short men in this ad seem like actual people - like real human beings.  Which is more than what can be said for the Honda CRV ad.  

And here is an old critique I did of the Honda CRV ad. The real point of this video was to test some of the animation I was doing for this blog at the time, but it’s still fairly entertaining and so I’m posting it for giggles.

Pick Up Artist gives “advice” to anonymous short guy

TSC: This video actually had me laughing out loud in some parts.  Basically, the video features a Pick Up Artist (PUA) giving advice to a short guy who has written in to say that he has trouble attracting women because he’s 5’4”.  The PUA says that this thinking is “bullshit” because it’s a “limiting belief” that has no basis in fact.

His evidence for this?

(1) He and his mom liked to make fun of short men who seemed angry all the time.  They called it little man syndrome.  

(2) He once knew this short man who talked shit at a club and he was beaten to death.  

(3) There are tall guys who come back from War with no noses or legs, or they have scars running across their bodies - and yet, they date dozens of women a week.  How dare you complain, you ungrateful asshole.  Those men are overseas dying for YOU!

“Danny and Annie” from StoryCorps

TSC: This is an animated video depicting a segment from NPR’s “StoryCorps” about an older couple (a taller woman/shorter man) who know the meaning of True Love.  This story shows that when you love someone, age, distance, height, and weight are just meaningless numbers. 

Also, who the fuck keeps cutting up all these onions in here?

Dove “Real Beauty Sketches”

TSC:  If you spend any time browsing YouTube, you’ve probably seen this pandering series of ads by soap manufacture “Dove” about beauty and self-esteem in women.  All of these ads have a very watered down feminist message which is use to sell beauty products to the masses.  And this particular ad titled “Real Beauty Sketches” is probably the worst yet. 

As many people across the internet have already pointed out, none of Dove’s messages are actually feminist in any way.  Dove is simply being vaguely “pro women” in a Madison Avenue sense. Notice that Dove does not attempt to challenge the cultural idea which ties female appearance to their intrinsic social and self worth because exposing this social construct would mean less business for Dove.  Instead, they simply affirm gender norms and try to reassure their audience that they too satisfy those norms.  In other words, instead of asking “why does female beauty matter so much in our society?”, Dove says “all women can be beautiful”.

If you still aren’t convinced of Dove’s disingenuousness, please note that Dove is wholly owned by its parent company Unilever.  And, Unilever also owns Axe; the makers of Axe body spray and other male grooming products.  You may be familiar with their advertising campaigns featuring women as props for male adolescent sexual fantasies.   

But, there is also a height connection that we should study as well.  So while Dove is attempting to make women “feel good” about themselves by affirming social standards of beauty, they are also affirming other gender norms (related to height) in order to relate to their female audience.    

Take a look at the last few moments of this latest Dove ad.  Listen to the music, listen to the words, and watch what is being depicted.

Here we see a faceless tall man hugging one of the women from the ad - her face snuggled into his chest as if she was a little girl.  I assume that this is what represents female comfort and safety in Dove’s world - a tall man with no face.  And notice the voice-over, “We [as women] should spend more time appreciating the things that we do like”… such as tall men with no faces. 

I suspect that Dove chose to hide the face of the man in this ad so that their target audience could picture any tall man in this scenario and imagine themselves in the place of the female character doing the voice-over - comforted by her daddy boyfriend.   

And don’t be mistaken.  It’s no accident that Dove used this as the LAST thing you see in the ad.  It’s the complete takeaway from their disingenuous message:

“Don’t feel bad about how you look ladies, because you’re all beautiful.  And don’t forget about tall men.  ‘Cause, at the end of the day, it’s really all about what men think about you.  And by men, we mean tall men.” 

PLOS ONE: Increasing Maternal Age Is Associated with Taller Stature and Reduced Abdominal Fat in Their Children →

Increasing maternal age at childbirth is associated with a more favourable phenotype (taller stature and reduced abdominal fat) in their children, as well as improved insulin sensitivity in girls.

TSC: I recently stumbled across this interesting (if meaningless) study about childhood nutrition relative to maternal age.  The study found that mothers who have their child later in life (after 35) tend to have thinner and taller children.  But, they only studied 277 healthy pre-pubertal children and found that the kids from the older moms were (on average) 1.5cm taller than the kids from the younger moms.  

For those of you who are Americans like myself, 1.5cm is about 1/2 inch.  So, I’m not sure if this tells us anything, but I suspect that it tells us nothing except that it’s hard to predict the height of your offspring using the height of ones parents.  The paper says:

“Importantly, our finding of taller stature with increasing maternal age was present after correction for genetic height, the most important determinant of childhood height”

One can only assume that the authors of this study assumed that the statistical analysis available to predict the genetic height of children based on their parent’s height is accurate to 1.5cm.  But, I’m pretty sure that this assumption is mistaken. 

Additionally, I have read studies which say that short women tend to find mates and have offspring much sooner than taller women.  Therefore, it’s probably the case that older moms tend to be taller moms.  So that could explain the result as well (assuming that the “correcting for genetic height” analysis didn’t account for that variable).

But none of that is the most interesting piece in all of this.  What’s most interesting is the way the authors framed a cultural norm as if it were a scientific advantage.   

Increasing maternal age at childbirth is associated with a more favourable phenotype (taller stature and reduced abdominal fat) in their children

What do the authors mean by “a more favorable phenotype”?  It almost seems like they are making a social value judgment instead of a scientifically verifiable statement.  “Taller stature” is a more favorable phenotype than average height?  By what measure?  The authors of this study even seem to think that this applies to girls as well as boys. 

Most studies on the subject of height and evolutionary biology say that average height men have the most reproductive success.  Followed by tall men, and then short men.  So how is “taller stature” a more favorable phenotype in scientific terms?  Tall men have less babies than average height men and tall women have way less babies than short women…so what makes “taller stature a more favorable phenotype?.  What do they mean by “favorable”?

Again, it sounds like the authors were talking about the social advantages conveyed to taller people in most societies - which are the direct result of heightism.  A cultural phenomenon. 

Could someone with more Science knowledge tell me whether or not I’m off-base here?  The description seems pretty inaccurate and even downright biased.  Imagine a study which suggests that younger siblings are more likely to have blue eyes than their older brothers/sisters when their mothers have blue eyes.  Would it then make sense for the researchers to say:

Younger siblings are associated with a more favourable phenotype (blue eyes) when their mothers have blue eyes.  

As in the height example, one could argue that there are social advantages to having blue eyes.  But what are the objective scientific advantages which would make it “a more favorable phenotype”?  I don’t think most researchers would phrase a conclusion in this way.  But it seems acceptable when applied to height, for some reason. 

Daft Punk (ft. Pharrell Williams) - “Get Lucky”

TSC: I know this song is already WAAAAY over-hyped, but I’m posting about it because it features 5’7” musical genius, Pharrell Williams.  Also, the song is AMAZING!  You can download this entire single on iTunes right now.