We live in an age of linguistic caution. We think before commenting on someone’s age, ethnicity, gender or disability. We have learnt that unsolicited observations about another person’s physical characteristics are best left inside our brains.
Yet, there remains one curious exception to this enlightened social contract: height. As a short person, I have spent a lifetime receiving information people think I was previously unaware of.
“You’re tiny.” Really? I had no idea. “You’re small for an adult.” It depends on your perspective. And then there are the jokes: “Stand up for yourself! Oh, you are” and “How’s the weather down there?”
We shorties are not mentally impaired and are not suffering from height denial: every driver’s seat and kitchen cupboard has already reminded us of our stature.
Imagine making similar observations about any other physical attribute: “Morning, Al. Still got that full-sleeve tatt, hey?” or “Hello, Mary. I see your rather large nose remains where it was yesterday.”
Others would rightly regard such comments as bizarre. Yet, with height, we all just roll with it.
While Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 protects people from prejudice on a range of attributes including age, race, sex and impairment, height is not among them.
Shorties could lawfully be denied a job or a service because they are small. The legislation was designed to address serious and significant forms of discrimination – and rightly so. But the omission does highlight that laws and manners are not always the same thing. Society often talks about respect, inclusion and psychological safety. Yet, a person can walk into a meeting room and have their height commented on before they’ve opened their mouth. It might be the last bastion of physical traits that people feel comfortable commenting on to a stranger.
Perhaps the answer is not legal protection but simple restraint. A useful rule of thumb might be this: if a person cannot change a physical characteristic in the time it takes to make the joke, there is probably little point making it. And if your first utterance to another human being is about their height, you’re standing a little short on material.
And yes, I have heard that joke, too.
