Hi, I am Prapti and I am exactly five feet tall and I am tired of people calling me ‘tiny’ all the time and tagging me in “tag your short friend” memes.
I always wonder when we talk about body shaming, why we do not talk about height shaming at all, and the fact that if I was being body shamed for being fat, I could still lose my weight but how do I change my height?
From childhood, I was called out for being short – from people asking me “beta complan nahi pete?” to being “too short for playing basketball”, I have faced all typical “short” height problems. I have spent hours explaining to people how genes are a big part of your height and how being short does not mean ‘cute‘.
The issue does not end here and goes deeper than this, as many men face discrimination for being short in height since many women still want “tall and handsome” and this is as bad as men looking for “fair and thin” girls. I am not gonna debate on who is struggling more and I am not gonna compare the hardship of a fat person to a little person but the fact is, we all go through social scrutiny.
We have created superficial stereotypes that make many people insecure and make them feel unworthy. The social scrutiny can be for being too fat, too small, too tall, too dark, too thin, and what not. At the end of the day we all are “too something” and somewhere in the midst of all these societal standards, what we are, will never ever be enough.
I am not gonna give a moral lecture because we all know what we should be doing, but just remember that the next time you make fun of a person’s height, also think about your “height of hypocrisy” for a moment.