I am quite small. Not as small as my Nan (4'8", makes a great chin-rest) or my mother (4'11", wears kids' clothes). I'm 5'2", I think, or 157cm. And last week I thought about this twice.
First, I saw a female comic on stage and thought, "Blimey, she's tiny! Really small. It must be quite odd being that small". Then later, I met her and realised we were the same height. It started me wondering whether people were surprised at my smallness.
Next, I bought some weighing scales. Not just any weighing scales, though: these did everything except answer the door, and you could probably program them to do that, though the person at the door might be a bit disconcerted. They told you your muscle mass, water content, body fat and BMI - but they didn't tell you what these amounts meant.
So I had to Google up charts for all these categories, entering my height and weight to see if I was healthy. And, in the process, I discovered that I am the height of your average 13-year-old. Yes, 13-year-old. I am, literally, 13 Going On 30. I'm not a grown-up, I'm a grown-not-enough.
Lastly, the scales featured a button with a bone on it, and I asked my friend what this was for.
"Oh," he said airily, "that's for weighing your dog".
I believed him until I read the instruction page called "measuring your bone density".
37 comments:
Nan (4'8", makes a great chin-rest)
Lulz....that is small.
I'm on the other end of this. The last time my height was measured I was between 6'3" and 6'4" (depending on my chiropractor I guess).
In a world designed for 5'9" people, this makes things uncomfortable. My feet hang off the end of beds, my head touches the ceiling of a lot of cars, and I routinely crack my skull on lights that hang from the ceiling.
Add to this that I wear size 14 or 15 shoes and that my feet ALWAYS get in the way and you've got a decent picture of what a goofy dude I am.
On a serious note, being that small you should keep a close eye on your bone density and hopefully you are mindful of osteopenia and osteoporosis. I used to think it was only for old people to worry about but I have osteopenia and I'm 23. I had an infection which wasn't found for years and robbed my body of nutrients while I was growing and left me with low bone mass.
You look taller on the TV.
I remember when a pair of scales answered the door, I said: "can I come in or should I weight here"
I would have totally believed the dog weighing, but I am very gullible. Who was the small comic?
x
> Ariane
I laughed out loud at the 'dog weighing' thing.
As a fellow 5'2"er, I have to say people probably are surprised by our size (or lack of). I've had friends describe me as "the little one" and even people saying "You're so little" when they meet me. I haven't quite figured out how to respond to that.
"...for weighing your dog"! Along with answering the door (nice gag, Josh, you should run that one past a comedy writer), I wonder if the scales could be programmed to measure gullibility? Having said that, it's a well known fact (among tall men) that gullibility is inversely proportional to height and hits a tipping point (ok so I bought the Gladwell book yesterday) at, ohh, about five, two and a half".
Of course the issue we're all skirting around here is this. Why, Ariane, did you buy a set of high-tech scales? Perhaps owning scales was the one piece of "advice" you could remember from the lost Anthea Turner DVD? I think we should be told.
Small is environmentally sound. Less food, less space, less fuel, less road wear, less lycra. You could sell carbon credits to larger friends. You are the future.
Derek: Blimey, you're a tall man! (Not as tall as regular commenter Graham though, who comes in at a neck-stretching giraffe-esque 6'5").
Sorry to hear about your osteopenia - my Mum has osteoporosis so I'll definitely be careful re. my bones. By the way, when you said you had size 14/15 feet, I thought "Those are ginormous! Those are like dinosaur feet!" before realising that you're in the US and you're talking about a UK size 12/13...
Slurper: Thank you. Telly can be misleading, though I believe the camera adds weight too.
Josh: Ka-boom-tsch!
Catie: You and me both, kid. The comic was Lucy Porter, who was wearing slight heels so is in fact shorter than me, but the story still stands.
Kia: Yes - and you're even slighter than me! 7 stone if I recall? There was a woman at My Family who used to call me "little one" and pat me on the head. (She wasn't much taller than me, so maybe she did it to feel tall?)
Phil: Thanks for the laugh, I needed that. I bought the scales because I thought I'd put on weight. It turned out I hadn't, so they made me feel happy. That along with the dog-weighing facility has got to be worth £50...
Tobias: That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day! Admittedly, no one's said anything to me all day, but that's no less true because of it.
It's interesting that you considered Lucy Porter to be very small. I often feel the same thing in reverse - I'll see someone in the street and think 'What a lanky git!' only to pass them and find that I'm taller. What does that make me?
Giraffe-esque, apprarently.
I have just confused Lucy Porter with Dawn Porter, and thought " I never realised she was THRAT small". I now realise that she isn't.
I always wonder whether you five-twoers and your diminutive kindred are looking up my nose. In my head, though I know it faintly ridiculous, shorter people see me like the a Borrower would. Well... a giant Borrower maybe... something to that order - hmm... yeah.
Small is good; nose hairs, 'bats', less so.
Isn't going on the scales just a way of confirming in numbers what you're already looking at? Weighing oneself is a dangerous phenomena.
Graham: Come on, you know the giraffe is my favourite animal. It's the animal I always use in analogies. You can't get "higher" praise than that, surely...?
Dave: Your fingers have just invented a new word. I think "thrat" should be used when you need to say "that" really strongly, for proper emphasis.
Anonymous: On the contrary, nose hair is very good. I won't go into why because you might be eating breakfast, but it really does serve a valuable purpose. It's okay from an aesthetic viewpoint too, as people whose noses I can look up are mainly men, who are meant to have a nose hair (sadly women aren't allowed the luxury, even though we do). Feel better now?
Hi Ariane! Believe it or not, I used to teach you at the University of Westminster (not under this name of course).
Glad to see you are doing so well and have kept your wit!
H McC
:)
Hello again Helen! I remember you well - you were a great teacher! Though I'd have loved to have had a Mrs McCookerybook, I don't think your time teaching would have been as fun...
Many thanks for the kind comment, and I'll look at your blog now.
I feel a complete twrat.
I am suitably reassured, thankyou.
Suddenly my name has become case sensitive, this is an exciting turn of events within your little blogging universe.
(Wasn't being willfully Anonymous before, it wasn't my nose hair shame or anything, just forgot the name box.)
Stuart: Thank you. Do I know you in real life, or do I just know that you are (a) tall and (b) have nose hair?
Dave: So you shrould!
I went out with a young lady for 2 years who was 5ft tall. When we split up she told me she was actually 4ft 11 and had lied. I still know not how I should have responded...and did I actually make her shrink but she did not want me to feel bad?
I never knew that extra inch was so important.
Sorry to hear about your osteopenia - my Mum has osteoporosis so I'll definitely be careful re. my bones. By the way, when you said you had size 14/15 feet, I thought "Those are ginormous! Those are like dinosaur feet!" before realising that you're in the US and you're talking about a UK size 12/13...
I wish your mum well. The women in my family have had trouble with it and I know that it caused them a lot of pain, especially my great grandmother who developed a bad hump in her back.
Plus, you have a very obvious reason for fighting it Ariane, it makes you shorter.
Out of curiosity I checked my sneakers for the size and they are size 15 in the US and size 14 1/2 in the UK. So, sadly, I do have clown feet across the pond as well.
No, I don't know you, I meant only that my Anonymous posting was anomalous to my usual, named posts. Should I be accounting for myself in some way? I feel as though I should be accounting for myself :)
Ariane, I think your mother and Nan would have appreciated the female table tennis legend, Deng Yaping. This Chinese superstar was a very lanky 4'11"!
I like what my mother comes up with; twenty-odd years ago she told me that consciousness is not constrained by my height or my weight (or even one's colour). My mum is only 5'4" tall, so, I can guess why she'd come up with something like that. :-)
Anyhow, what can be discerned from your writing is that there's something beautiful within you [oh darn, i think i might sound like a hippy]. So far, the manifestation of this inner beauty hasn't been hindered by your height. Keep it so...please...and please don't torture yourself with high heels.
Evidently, good things come in small packages. :-P I have no idea what height I am - I think it's somewhere between 5'3'' and 5'4''... or it's the latter... I can't believe I'm taller than you! How bizarre.
I thought you were 5'7'' for some reason. No idea why that figure in particular!
I second Muhamad - I hope you are not part of the 6-Inch-High Club. My sister is 5'8'' and she loves skyscrapers! Madness.
Thom: I'm not going to stoop to innuendo about inches (I'm 5'2", I don't need to stoop - ba-boom!) But your ladyfriend probably thought 4'11" sounded too small, much like the man who once left me a voicemail explaining how to recognise him, and announced, "I'm six foot six. No, forget that - I'm six foot five. Six foot six sounds too scary!"
Derek M: Thanks a lot. Sorry to hear about your great-grandmother. And you don't have clown feet, I was only joking (I feel terrible now!)
Stuart: You need to account neither for your nose hair, nor your height, nor your anonymity/not knowing me in real life. I just happen to know a few Stuarts, and wondered whether you were one of them. I Am Not Holding You To Account!
MJB: Thanks for your comment. Deng Yaping sounds fantastic, not least because of her anagrammatic name.
Muhamad: You are lovely, and I like what your mother said too. My (slightly too strident) views on high heels can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/09/consumeraffairs.fashion
... though I do wear them on occasion, mainly because I tend to date tall men and it's nice not to always be looking at their armpits.
KJB: Many thanks. I definitely thought you were taller than me! Maybe you thought I was taller because I'm older?
Oh... I quite want to now. Can we not pretend that I have, and that, if not satisfactory to you, I was at least to myself? Is that a satisfying solution? Maybe I should tell you if it was a satisfying solution...
Multiple Stuarts, naturally! I had thought this: I know there are more.
Honestly, you don't look that short or small... I'm pretty sure I didn't think that the other day. Hmmmm...
I'm getting a lot of entertainment out of this comment section.
First I find a hilarious little cartoon on Muhamad Lodhi's blog about "Conventional Logic" vs. "Religious Logic", which I will save and perhaps do a blog entry on.
Now I'm reading KJB's blog and I don't know what to say. This is EPIC ranting if I have ever seen it! I was planning on writing an entry on feminism (of which I consider myself one) but I may reconsider it in the fear that KJB might stumble upon it (I'm kidding...sort of). :D
BTW Ariane, there is no reason to feel bad. I make fun of my clown shoes all the time. Everybody I know has some nickname for me related to my feet. I could have been a Hobbit in LOTR with no modifications (other than the hair).
Correction, I meant to say that I consider myself a feminist. lol
How odd that you know my cousin (Helen McC.) It's a small blogosphere.
Stuart: It was very satisfying, and you're the only Stuart who counts. (Is that any good?)
Sunny: I can't be that hulking, or I'd have crushed you! Er, when you lifted me up for the group photo, I mean. Yes.
Derek: I'm glad you're enjoying it, and no, I didn't think you considered yourself an entry on feminism! KJB is very cool by the way so don't be scared.
Brother Tobias: That is strange! London is relatively small isn't it? Often I click on a new friend's Facebook page to find that we already have several friends in common.
That little cartoon I found on Muhamad's page inspired me this morning so I wrote a piece on it. I think I'll go ahead and do feminism next but I'm going to read more of KJB's stuff (and others) before jumping in. This blogging stuff gets addictive as a creative outlet.
I hope you are feeling better and beating the flu. You must be tougher than me if you are getting on the computer and functioning in any capacity while having it.
You make it hard for me to disagree, and so I won't :)
LOL. I am only 4'11 - and that's REALLY 4'11. I often say 5ft. It just sounds better.
Was talking to a colleague the other day, she is also tiny and I had been thinking 'she's tiny'. She said she is 5ft (as did I) so in fact she is probably the same height as me. I do wear heels though (sorry) and she doesn't, so can't be blamed for thinking I was taller.
LOL at weighing dogs! I don't own scales, too depressing.
Blimey, ButterflyWings - you truly are tiny, and I feel like a fraud now! I'm nothing special in the small stakes. Do you ever think we should get cheaper clothes just because there's so much less material involved? Or am I just being 'materialistic'? (ba-dum-tsch).
Like Butterflywings, I am also 4'11" and often say I'm 5' - sounds better and doesn't make me sound like a dwarf!
I once complained to a friend about how I looked like "such a midget" and her response was (with a straight face), "are you an actual midget?"
I often get people patting me on the head/using me as an arm rest or comments such as "come on, stand up" when I am standing and so on. I just let those comments go over my head.
Lol! I am reading this after very long. I'm not much taller than you, Ariane!
I can't believe somebody's reading my blog!
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