The Film
S&M SHORT and MALE is a feature documentary that reveals, for the first time, what it’s truly like to be a short man and to be discriminated against because of your height. You’re probably thinking… “Are you serious?” Yes, indeed, we are. Almost as soon as the film begins, we learn that 99% of sperm banks will only accept donors who are at least 5’11” and that the importance of a man’s height to a woman changes as a function of where she is in her menstrual cycle. “Most short statured people are just resigned to their fate of second or third class citizenship,” declares Joe Mangano, a heightism activist in the US.
Women are even asked to pick their ideal date from a line up of five men, and most picked #1. You guessed it; he was the tallest of the line up! Coincidence? Director Howard Goldberg—also a short male—takes it upon himself to travel from New York to Beijing, meeting short men across the globe, to explore what all this means.
He joins NOSSA – the National Organization of Short Statured Adults – and helps distribute flyers to a less than receptive sidewalk crowd at Times Square. NOSSA is trying to sensitize the normally sized population to the reality of “heightism”. They’re also trying to attract new members … but it’s difficult. At filming, NOSSA had only 27 members worldwide. “There’s not much pride associated with [short stature]. Some people view it like… who would want to join an organization like the National Organization of Ugly People? […] Some people, that’s how they view short stature,” explains Matt Campisi, short man and president of NOSSA. Joe Mangano adds that “heightism is so pervasive, no one even notices it’s there.” University of Rochester economist Dr. Steven Landsburg admits that economists have long been aware that short men earn less than taller men. The average height of a Fortune 500 CEO is around 6 feet (roughly 3 inches taller than the male average). “It’s quite striking, the difference in wages between short and tall people,” Dr. Landsburg states, “it is, averaging over a lot of research, about $1000 per year, per inch […] which is quite a lot. It’s comparable to the sort of differences that we see on the basis of race and of gender.” Are people really biased against shorter than average men?
	Discrimination expert Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a psychology research leader at Harvard, uses something called the Implicit Association Test to show that “the vast majority of us harbour deeply rooted negative feelings about shorter men.” The IAT is a widely respected on-line tool designed to quantify sub-conscious bias. Over 1700 people took the IAT for height. Dr. Banaji analyzed the results and concluded that “height bias is in your face…it’s as strong as other very important biases such as race bias or gender bias.” Furthermore, results are consistent across all age groups, gender, and ethnicities. Even Howard himself fails the test and is forced to confess -- “I’m a self-hating shrimp.”
So what’s a short guy to do? Howard visits the guru of elevator shoes. Bob Martin, president of Richlee Elevator Shoes, used to be a six footer until he began shrinking at the age of 60. Now he wears lifts in order to stay part of the six foot plus club. It doesn’t take long to convince Howard that he too should join the ranks of other Richlee customers such as Robert Kennedy, Humphrey Bogart and Ferdinand Marcos.
Next, Howard opts for a clothing makeover at Beverly Hills’ foremost fashion center for the vertically challenged. Hollywood stars like Jason Alexander love to shop at Jimmy Au’s for Men 5’8” and Under. And Mr. Alexander isn’t alone. Even though many sneak in unnoticed through the back entrance, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Martin Short, and Martin Sheen, to name just a few, all buy their duds at Jimmy’s.
We even get a chance to hear about 5’4” actor Anthony Alessandro’s experience seducing the much taller Kim Cattrall in a hilarious size-oriented episode of Sex and the City! But, we also meet boys and men of all ages who are taking some pretty drastic measures to change their situation. In Chicago, Howard spends time with Graham, a 3’5” seven year old boy whose parents made the difficult decision of giving him shots of growth hormone everyday. His mother expresses that “the fact that the FDA has approved this is putting more pressure on us as parents. Gosh, society thinks that he’s not going to be tall enough and they are even saying that he should be treated for this! I mean, there it is, right in your face. Society does judge you on height.”
	When we hear 19 year old Akash Shukla’s story, we realize how far some men are willing to go. Two years ago, Akash decided to undergo limb lengthening surgery, with his family’s full support. In excerpts from the family’s home movies we witness firsthand the arduous process of surgery and then recovery, -- the physical and emotional pain. Some might say, it is an awful lot to go through for a 2.5 inch increase in height. But to Akash, it was worth it.
These stories make Howard wonder – when are we going to stop dealing with the victims of the bias and deal with the bias itself? Jiang Tao, a law student in Beijing, did exactly that. In China, height matters so much that want ads include height requirements. When Jiang Tao found out that he was ineligible for a job at the People’s Bank of China because he was 3 centimetres too short, he decided to fight back. He sued the Chinese government for unequal treatment of its citizens. For the first time in modern history, the concept of equality was debated openly in a Chinese court of law. The bank repealed its height requirement, and today China leads the world when it comes to protecting the rights of its shorter citizens. In S&M SHORT and MALE, what begins as an almost tongue in cheek examination of a gigantically small non-issue, magically blossoms into a touching story of human struggle. The struggle of living short and male in a world where too often bigger is seen as better.