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The Travails Of Being Short

ramonmercado said:
With hindsight it should be obvious that I meant it old fallow.
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maximus otter
 
Yithian said:
I repeatedly hear that dating apps and sites (never used one) require users to enter their height, and that, basically, a good proportion of women reject those shorter than 6 feet tall as a matter of principal.
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This may be because people using dating apps might lie about their attributes.

For every 'women rejecting men under 6' tall' or 'men requiring women to be under size 14' anecdote there is a counterbalancing 'bus driver claiming to be a transport executive' or 'divorcee neglecting to mention her several children' story.
 
The dating apps reflect what people look for in real life. Setting the criteria just makes it easier.
 
My (fairly tall) friend specified over 6’ in her dating preferences as she reckoned it lowered the number of 5’6” and under liars popping up. She preferred tall men. Also, in my experience, the majority of UK men do not like to go out with a taller woman (unless she is a supermodel i guess) and moan if said woman wants to be even taller by wearing heels. Not all men though, thankfully, or i would still be single (being a tall woman). I don’t know where it comes from as most Spanish men i know (and Italian men apparently, i have on hearsay) do not see it as an issue. One of these man-size/ woman-size sociological things in the UK?
 
I'm 5 ft 9 and the In House GP is 5 ft 10. Both of our boys are over 6 ft, but the Teenager is 5 ft 3 and, at 16, very unlikely to grow much taller. This irks her enormously. Unfortunately she must have inherited her height from my MIL, who is a mere 5 ft 2, but it does seem odd that she is so much shorter than the rest of the family. Funnily enough, when buying jeans for her at the Levi's shop, the assistant made her day by referring to her as "tall"; both the girls behind the counter that day were absolutely tiny, and seemed surprised that the Teenager was considered short by her own family...
 
bugmum said:
I'm 5 ft 9 and the In House GP is 5 ft 10. Both of our boys are over 6 ft, but the Teenager is 5 ft 3 and, at 16, very unlikely to grow much taller. This irks her enormously. Unfortunately she must have inherited her height from my MIL, who is a mere 5 ft 2, but it does seem odd that she is so much shorter than the rest of the family. Funnily enough, when buying jeans for her at the Levi's shop, the assistant made her day by referring to her as "tall"; both the girls behind the counter that day were absolutely tiny, and seemed surprised that the Teenager was considered short by her own family...
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Ms P's granddaughter at age 11 is over 5ft 6, and according to her mother is not the tallest in her class. Grow em tall up North.
 
PeteS said:
Ms P's granddaughter at age 11 is over 5ft 6, and according to her mother is not the tallest in her class. Grow em tall up North.
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I was told that oop North people are shorter than those down south. in the south west they are pretty tall and shortest of all are in Scotland. This was told to me some years ago by a chap selling large and small sizes of shoes so he needed to know where his customer base was. Most statistics just tell you by country for e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11534042. Certainly my experience as a tall northerner is that you are looked upon as an alien being whose only use is reaching down stuff from high shelves in supermarkets.
 
JaneD said:
I was told that oop North people are shorter than those down south. in the south west they are pretty tall and shortest of all are in Scotland. This was told to me some years ago by a chap selling large and small sizes of shoes so he needed to know where his customer base was. Most statistics just tell you by country for e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11534042. Certainly my experience as a tall northerner is that you are looked upon as an alien being whose only use is reaching down stuff from high shelves in supermarkets.
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Yes, every time I venture into a supermarket, it seems inevitable that I get the "sorry, but can you reach up and get me .." approach.
 
I'm five ten, but my wife is only five one. All our children are quite short, my daughter four eleven, oldest son is five seven and youngest is five six. All are adults. Wife's grandad was very short, four foot something or other, I only met him once. He fathered eleven kids that i know of, my wife has quite a large family as a consequence. I used to joke that he started out six foot five and wore down!
 
maximus otter said:
“Go North West said: "When Tracey raised a concern with us, we made numerous proposals to accommodate her, including offering to put her on different routes, and different types of buses.
The suggestions were rejected, a spokesperson said.
"Dedicated, experienced, hardworking bus drivers are difficult to find and so we would never act lightly in a situation like this," they added.
The firm said it was "sorry that it was left with no choice but to bring Ms Scholes' employment to an end".”
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Update ... Ms. Scholes apparently agreed to accept some of the aforementioned suggestions. She's been reinstated, driving different buses on different routes than before.

Manchester bus driver dismissed for being ‘too short’ given job back after appeal​

A woman who was dismissed after she flagged that she was “too short” to drive safely due to a bus redesign has been reinstated, the bus operator has said.

Tracey Scholes, one of Greater Manchester’s first female bus drivers, who is 5ft (1.52m) tall, said Go North West’s changes meant she could no longer reach the pedals on the new model of bus used on her route without a blind spot appearing when she leaned backwards to use the wing mirrors.

After raising concerns with her employer, she was initially suspended and later dismissed with 12 weeks’ notice.

The 57-year-old, who has been a bus driver for 34 years, made a final appeal for her job on 11 January.

The bus firm said it was glad that Scholes had accepted a deal to drive other buses, and described her as a “valued and long-serving driver”, stressing that Scholes would now keep her job “after she decided to accept an offer to drive different buses as per a proposal made in September”. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...r-being-too-short-given-job-back-after-appeal
 
Dinklage on a short fuse as he takes umbrage at live action Seven Dwarfs remake

On Monday, Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage was a guest on Marc Maron's podcast, where he expressed his feelings about Disney's live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

"[Y]ou're still making that fucking backward story of seven dwarves living in the cave. What the fuck are you doing, man?" he said to Disney execs by way of Maron's show.

Disney was listening. Yesterday afternoon a Disney spokesperson told Deadline, "To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community. We look forward to sharing more as the film heads into production after a lengthy development period."

https://boingboing.net/2022/01/26/d...g-with-members-of-the-dwarfism-community.html
 
Now, when you saw that film as a child, did you think Snow Whites buddies were

A) Unusually small humans

or

B) An Unusual version of Humans who were normally small?

I went for B.

But Disney did address the still controversial problem of a Dwarf who has no beard....
 
It's one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations. The dwarves in Snow White live in a house, they just work in caves. Which is what the mythological beings that they are do. They are not 7 people with dwarfism. Whereas when the movie Snow White & The Huntsman was released, it was criticized for *not* having the dwarves played by people with dwarfism.
 
ramonmercado said:
Dinklage on a short fuse as he takes umbrage at live action Seven Dwarfs remake

On Monday, Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage was a guest on Marc Maron's podcast, where he expressed his feelings about Disney's live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

"[Y]ou're still making that fucking backward story of seven dwarves living in the cave. What the fuck are you doing, man?" he said to Disney execs by way of Maron's show.

Disney was listening. Yesterday afternoon a Disney spokesperson told Deadline, "To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community. We look forward to sharing more as the film heads into production after a lengthy development period."

https://boingboing.net/2022/01/26/d...g-with-members-of-the-dwarfism-community.html
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I think his point was that Disney's makeover included changing Snow White to a swarthy Latina, whilst still treating PORGS (people of restricted growth) as figures of fun. I can see his point and maybe the animated version should be left alone and regarded as a product of its time.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Yes... I think the clue to her appearance is in her name...
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Exactly.

Disney just doesn't seem to get the Zeitgeist at all.

They obviously thought they'd made the obligatory token nod to to wokeism by changing the heroine from someone with the legendary snow-white skin to a swarthy actress, but still thought it would be cool to stoke up the comedy factor by chuckling at people of restricted growth.

Schneeweißchen is a German legend from over 2 centuries ago and plays on sensitivities that no longer exist.
Keep it as an historical curiosity but please don't try to semi-shoehorn it into a 21st century mindset, which will satisfy no-one.
 
GNC said:
I wonder how this will affect the new Lord of the Rings TV series?
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Haven't seen any cast lists yet for the new LOTR.
The Witcher has a broadly similar heroic fantasy vibe to it and the dwarfs in the TV series were played by genuine people of restricted growth - like the excellent actor Jeremy Crawford.

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Jeremy Crawford
 
It strikes me that a rightfully very successful actor is risking alienating the community of actors with dwarfism from a source of work for many much less successful actors with dwarfism.

It has to be the dwarf communities discussion, obviously, but as has been said, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs isn't about a princess who hasn't had enough sun and her seven mates with dwarfism, or even her seven mates who are below average height for humans. It's about a princess and her seven friends who are of a race of ostensibly supernatural, subterranean, non-human beings. That may not always be clear because the magical nature of mythical dwarfs, as essentially subterranean elves, isn't a big part of the story, but in some ways it's not much different than ewoks or the goblins of Gringotts, except that mythical dwarfs look human. I can understand why some portrayals of the dwarfs of Snow White and the association with actors of restricted height, particularly in panto season, could annoy them somewhat, but to begin with the facts, 'dwarf' had a meaning from folklore first. In fact, it's often struck me as odd that the community of people with dwarfism prefers a word associated with often sinister, frequently hideous, goblin-like mythical beings.

But they don't own the word. If Wizards of the Coast ever decides to remove dwarves from their D&D races for fear of offending anyone, I can assure you you'll still be able to play a dwarf at my table.
 
PeteByrdie said:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs isn't about a princess who hasn't had enough sun and her seven mates with dwarfism, or even her seven mates who are below average height for humans. It's about a princess and her seven friends who are of a race of ostensibly supernatural, subterranean, non-human beings.
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Not sure they were intended to be supernatural beings.

The original Grimms Schneeweißchen (or Schneewittchen) does use the word Zwerge meaning dwarfs, but in the text, simply describes them as men - "Als es ganz dunkel geworden war, kamen die Herren von dem Häuslein" (when it was completely dark, the men returned to their little house).

Snow White's little men seem to be far more human than the dwarves of Tolkien or D&D fame.

As for our heroine herself, she has "...a skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony, and she was named Snow-white."
Whilst I'm sure Rachel Zegler is a fine actress, she does seem a rather strange choice for the iconic role (although I suppose the hair's near enough).

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blessmycottonsocks said:
Not sure they were intended to be supernatural beings.

The original Grimms Schneeweißchen (or Schneewittchen) does use the word Zwerge meaning dwarfs, but in the text, simply describes them as men - "Als es ganz dunkel geworden war, kamen die Herren von dem Häuslein" (when it was completely dark, the men returned to their little house).

Snow White's little men seem to be far more human than the dwarves of Tolkien or D&D fame.

As for our heroine herself, she has "...a skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony, and she was named Snow-white."
Whilst I'm sure Rachel Zegler is a fine actress, she does seem a rather strange choice for the iconic role (although I suppose the hair's near enough).

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That's interesting, but I think the probable origins of the seven dwarfs are definitely in Germanic mythology. Even in modern fantasy, dwarfs and elves are too often diminished to be fairly mundane 'races' with little of their mystical associations intact. Nonetheless, we're in a time when dwarfs based loosely on folkloric originals have never been more recognisable, and any adaptation of Snow White could really exploit this and give us more interesting beings to demonstrate that we're not just watching short humans, but creatures with mysterious origins and motives.
 
I'm not an expert on early Germanic mythology, but it's my impression that European "dwarves", "elves" and "fairies" originally were conceived (as the Vikings, Celts and Christians entered northern Europe) as normally-sized humans but with inhuman powers, impulses and life-spans. Those who think the stories were sparked by left-over Picts lurking in the countryside also say that the Picts were smaller than their later invaders, for what that's worth. I think that dwarves as grotesque and possibly little people may have originated with the illustrators of books way later when "fairy stories" began to be collected and sold.

Just in terms of jobs, the entertainment industry was always a decent source of jobs for little people - carnivals, side shows, circuses. The Wizard of Oz was a huge employment opportunity. This was not a good thing, but I understand the thought process that asks how deciding to make "the dwarves" larger-sized might be resented by those who were not able to get past bullying to finish an education and didn't have a range of jobs open to them. Or just those who are talented and can't get cast. The solution is just to cast them but we're not there yet, except for those who have managed to reach stardom. The dwarves in Wagner are certainly always sung by an appropriately talented larger sized man. I think that if a little person came along with the proper voice and were offered the role, there would be universal condemnation of shtick casting. The whole ""little=ugly" thought pattern is an issue.

It does seem strange that the folks at Disney only saw the profit potential of kick-starting an ancient performance piece, but at the same time a big loud bell didn't go off at the words "show white" and "dwarf" and they didn't pass it by. They did suppress Song of the South well before anyone else in the industry even thought about that stuff, and were leaders in creating kids' entertainment that did not expect all kids to want to look at what Europeans fantasize about. And I just want to add for no reason at all that my mother's cousin Eleanor was the voice and the art model for the wicked queen in Snow White and Cinderella and was very fond of Mr. Disney even when the rest of the family was picketing him (she also had a recurring role in Beverly Hillbillies.)
 
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has already been rebooted three times in recent memory, once with Snow White and the Huntsman in 2012, then the same year Mirror Mirror, and in 2016 the Huntsman got a sequel. Nobody complained about the dwarves, who were played by non-dwarfism-afflicted actors made to look small in the Huntsman movies, but actual medical dwarves in Mirror Mirror.

Meanwhile, there were Jawas in The Book of Boba Fett last week, presumably played by genuine little people. There's also a sequel to Willow currently filming, featuring Warwick Davies and others of his size playing dwarves. So why pick on the Disney reboot, which will presumably be more like Maleficent than a cartoon from the 1930s?
 
GNC said:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has already been rebooted three times in recent memory, once with Snow White and the Huntsman in 2012, then the same year Mirror Mirror, and in 2016 the Huntsman got a sequel. Nobody complained about the dwarves, who were played by non-dwarfism-afflicted actors made to look small in the Huntsman movies, but actual medical dwarves in Mirror Mirror.

Meanwhile, there were Jawas in The Book of Boba Fett last week, presumably played by genuine little people. There's also a sequel to Willow currently filming, featuring Warwick Davies and others of his size playing dwarves. So why pick on the Disney reboot, which will presumably be more like Maleficent than a cartoon from the 1930s?
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Disney is high profile and risk adverse, I'm thinking more of the the snow white name, but as you can see the dwarves are already a controversy. I believe that the Jawas and Ewoks were originally played by children. I have no personal preference, leaving it up to the people who are affected. I haven't gone to a Disney movie since I was about 10.
 
I am modestly tall (5'6"). However, I have very short legs. This leads to me being unable to do things that people my height with longer legs can do, like riding a horse. I CAN ride a horse, however, I look like a badly balanced pea on a drum. So I ride ponies and, in consequence, I find myself riding with twelve year olds; while all the grown ups go off on their fancy horses and do grown up things. I'm playing sack races and 'let's chase Minnow up the hill' with the kids in the pony section. (Which I always win, because of my innate adult cunning).
 
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