[Soup] Short stature is more advantageous these days

*Mara Altman is the author of "Gross Anatomy."

I am exactly 5 feet tall.

Converted to meters, it is 152.4 centimeters.

The idea that taller people are better is a fantasy story that should have been discarded a long time ago by my standards.

If tallness is conducive to survival, it makes sense to praise height and stature.

Let's think of the prehistoric times, when unexpected life-threatening situations could happen every day, every moment.

At that time, tall people had an advantage in defending themselves and their families, and may have excelled in hunting and brought plenty of food.

But today, buying meat in a take-out container and taking it home doesn't require a lot of height or a gigantic frame.

Rather, it is better to have the stamina to sit in an office chair for a long time.

Discussions about a person's height are actively taking place even at this moment.

There are also many studies on the effect of average height on the prosperity of a country and the fairness of a society.

But I'm more interested in height on a personal level.

Modern humans can survive without knocking down other people or animals.

Of course, there are still times when being bigger and stronger than others is good, but considering the battles of the era of guns and drones, being tall just makes you a more prominent target and doesn't seem to have much of an advantage.

In "Size Matters" by Stephen Hall, there is a story about King Frederick William of Prussia in the 18th century gathering and recruiting giant soldiers to create a "giant army".

King William's obsession with his army of giants is regarded as "the first instance of a desire for great heights since the Middle Ages."

Since then, tall height has been recognized for its high value, and the aftermath still remains.

People's wishes and the prejudices that stem from them, once established in our hearts, seldom disappear.

People give more votes to taller candidates, perhaps because of thoughts that are entangled in our brains, like advertisement slogans that come to mind even while sleeping.

They seem to think that if they are tall, they have the qualities of a great leader.

Being tall and being a good spouse are completely different things, but somehow height is often a factor when choosing a spouse.

John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist and diplomat, was a giant six feet eight inches tall and over two meters tall.

He once said:

People don't mind crossing the line in order to grow a few centimeters taller.

People lined up to get limb-lengthening surgeries, which cost as much as $150,000.

Parents send healthy, well-bred children to a growth clinic for hormone treatment.

There are still no known side effects of this treatment.

This means that safety has not been sufficiently validated.

I know this well because I came from a short child.

For three-and-a-half years before puberty hit me, I received periodic injections of Humatrope into my thighs.

It was the utmost sincerity of my parents who worried that I would be ostracized at school because I was too short.

Well, given how society treats short people, it's not that I don't understand why my parents did it that way.

Just looking at the lyrics of a song that reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts just a few years before I was born, "Short people have no reason to live in this world" is terrifying.

Now I am also a mother of twins, and my children are the smallest among their peers in kindergarten.

But I'm not going to inject my children with growth hormones according to the outdated conventional wisdom.

Instead, we try to teach our children to love themselves the way they are.

This is because, in the near future, there will come a world where short people are praised.

We marvel at the beauty of a short tooth once every four years.

I am talking about the performance of short athletes in the Olympic gymnastics, as Simon Biles did.

Come to think of it, there are quite a few things that are advantageous for short people to do, and there are a lot of good things about being short, but it seems that the world doesn't know this advantage too much.

On average, shorter people live longer and are less likely to get cancer.

Although the exact cause has not been identified, there is a study that the probability of cancer cell growth is also lowered because the overall number of cells is small due to the short stature and small body.

It is a good study to take as comfort by reflecting on the fact that it is not good to dunk in this life because of his short stature.

Short people become activists who personally practice environmental protection just by being there.

In a world with a world population of 8 billion, the value of protecting the environment is invaluable.

There is a scholar named Thomas Samaras who has studied height and height for 40 years.

He is the godfather of this field, who advocated 'Shrink Think', which praises the greatness of small things.

It's not a popular philosophy, but Samaras calculated that if Americans stayed at their current consumption levels and shrank all 10 percent in height, they could save 87 million tonnes of food a year.

It's not the world's population, it's just the height of Americans.

Also, if you think about food, it's like this.

Adding together water, energy and waste emissions, the effect would be staggering.

"I certainly don't want tall people to be ashamed of that fact," said Samaras quite seriously, "but in today's world, being short is a virtue."

Parents always brag about how well their children eat.

Also, because my feet are growing so fast that I can buy shoes, I often say that my shoe cabinet is full of new shoes that I have never worn before.

My children tend to eat their rice in small bites.

However, there is nothing wrong with health.

It is unlikely to happen in our house that the cost of food and meals becomes a burden in household expenses because of children's eating habits.

If you buy a pair of shoes, you can easily wear them for a year.

If someone asks me if I am not envious of children who grow thick like weeds, I can say for sure.

No, I will choose a child who grows like a cactus.

Short people are not just conserving resources and doing good for the earth.

In a world where resources are increasingly scarce, the earth's population continues to increase, and climate change overlaps, short people can have an advantage in survival.

It's not because short people can ride more on spaceships when humans can no longer live on Earth and have to escape.

Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens" tells the story of early humans living on the island of Flores.

On the island of Flores, which was separated from the land by rising sea levels, "the taller people needed more food to support themselves and died first."

Over several generations, the islanders have evolved.

His height continued to decrease, down to 107 centimeters.

Although they were shorter, they could do everything a taller person could do, such as making tools and hunting.

It was advantageous in many ways to survival.

People who are in a relationship with a short person, people who are thinking of starting a family or having children are contributing to saving the earth.

First of all, there is a high probability that the child's height will be reduced, which will help to curb the exploding human demand in every way even a little.

So by lowering the minimum height requirement for someone on a dating app, you've done something good for the planet.

Dutch scholar Nancy Blaker has done research on social status.

Blaker explains that shorter people make up for their short stature by developing some positive traits better, which goes against the conventional wisdom that shorter people are more sensitive.

My husband is 5 feet 6 inches, about 168 cm.

She always says that if she had grown taller, she wouldn't have had to work hard to have the sense of humor she has today, but I don't think so.

No, it's vastly different.

I laughed so much on our first date with her husband that it made my jaw hurt. If I hadn't known he was such a fun person, or if he wasn't really funny, I wouldn't have married my current husband.

The biggest problem is that we still haven't escaped from the fantasy.

The premise that more of anything is always better is still firmly established in the world.

Alberto Hayek, an endocrinologist at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, explained this.

When I met Hayek, who is now retired, I asked why parents would give their children hormone therapy when they had no health problems.

He explains that the tendency to like tall people makes sense in a capitalist society.

Hayek explained that the parents' generation's idea that bigger is better was projected to some extent when they had children.

Another endocrinologist, Ada Grimberg, is the scientific director of the Growth Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

While there is certainly a culture that favors being taller, he worries that some parents continue to associate height with success.

I agree.

As a short person, the only thing I can't do is take out items from the high shelves at the supermarket.

Instead, there are always tall people around me who are willing to help a short person like me.

Perhaps they feel proud after being kind to help short people.

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