Calling all short men

I suppose by doing this blog I’m trying to work out what it means to be small.

So I’ve started gathering evidence of the short man experience. Google news alerts for the key subject matter: Sarkozy, Ricky Ponting, Jamie Cullum, Aston Merrygold from JLS.

I’m putting my bait out there to see what pops up. The first alert I received under “short men” was an article in the Los Angeles Times about malice in South Korean society. A Seoul college student, appearing on a popular TV show, stood up and said that “short men are losers.” Uncalled for, unjust, and unpleasant. But an internet campaign of led by short Koreans forced the student to withdraw from Facebook, apologising profusely as she went. Good stuff.

A fellow called Mohammed posted a plaintive open question on Yahoo: “Why did God make me short?”

Firstly, I’m staggered that someone should throw such a personal question out over the internet to see what random responses come back.

Typically, I suppose, he gets a mix of anti-islamic nutjobs, anti-short man jibes, anti-religious nutjobs. There is some support from women saying, don’t worry, at least you aren’t disabled or have AIDS. (I agree, being short is less bad than having AIDS.)

And then there are a couple of small chaps, putting an arm round the shoulder of Mohammed. Another guy who is really struggling with being small. He concludes that he wouldn’t wish being small on his worst enemy.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100102011607AACJ0ub

This is some heavy stuff, and I’m only just scratching the surface of this short man thing. The average-sized world really lays it on thick for the smaller chap. I’m here to get the small man to push his chest out, thinking of all the greats out there: Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino. And of course the R&B superstar, Sisqo, making his entry into the Celebrity Big Brother house…