In praise of short men: will the rise of 'short kings' spell the fall of toxic masculinity?

Last summer, 24-year-old comedian Jaboukie Young-White coined a new nickname for short men. It wasn’t a jokey name—a put-down poking fun at the little guy—but an honorific: “Short kings are the enemy of body negativity,” he wrote on Twitter, “and I’ll be forever proud to defend them.”

Among the online and enlightened of 2019, taking ownership of one’s identity is the ideal mode of beinG – and those who carry their genuine, multidimensional selves with pride deserve respect.

That includes short dudes, a segment of society who, while not overtly persecuted, are certainly prone to being overlooked.

Young-White’s paeans to short kings encourage us to confront society’s overvaluation of men’s height and recognize the under-6’ guys in our lives whose positive attitudes render them nothing short of regal. A short king isn’t just any male-presenting person of modest stature—it’s someone who has the strength of character to flourish despite contradicting conventional male beauty standards.

As such, 5’7 Spiderman actor Tom Holland is a short king, as are Pulitzer-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar (5’5) The OA trans actor Ian Alexander (5’) and (short) “King in the North” Kit Harington (5’7) who has admitted he allowed taller actors on the set of Game of Thrones to ruffle his hair.

Yet celebrity is by no means a requirement for the title. Any short man can be a short king (including my own 5’7 boyfriend, my match in both height and ginger hair). Young-White (himself 5’9) includes all men under 6’ in his movement, though many of his followers have pointed out the average American man is 5’10, making that number the more accurate cutoff for true shortness.

Young-White decreed last June 21 as the first official Short King Appreciation Day, kicking off what has become a year of public declarations of short king love.

As to whether or not short men really require kudos just for being secure – well, it depends on your perspective.

Even as society begins acknowledging the harmfulness of shaming individuals for physical traits like having acne or being overweight, diminishing the short is still something Meryl Streep can do on premium cable (“I find little people untrustworthy,” announces Streep’s character on the new season of Big Little Lies).

Micheal Foulk, 33, a 5’7 nonbinary comedian from Oakland, has noticed a double standard crop up in conversations about body diversity: “It’ll be like OK … we’re going to agree that we’re not going to be cruel to people that are heavier set or larger-bodied. But if people are short, it’s like, go off sis!”

Sizism is essentially unavoidable on dating apps like Grindr and Tinder, where users commonly forbid men under 6’ from contacting them. Tinder even made a 2019 April Fools joke about launching a “height verification” update that would prevent guys from exaggerating their stature to seem more appealing.

Yet short-shaming isn’t harmless. “There’s a host of studies that show short men are stigmatized in many ways, not only in people’s perception, but in actual real world outcomes as well,” says Joseph Vandello, a social psychologist specializing in masculinity at the University of Southern Florida. “People perceive shorter men as having fewer leadership qualities,” he says, citing findings that majority of American CEOs are over 6’ and voters prefer tall presidential candidates (including, at 6’2, Trump).

“There’s some evidence to suggest in the workplace taller men are paid more… And, with interpersonal relationships and dating, shorter men are less likely to marry than average men,” Vandello says.

All this starts early–even in kindergarten, studies have found, teachers perceive the shortest boys in their class as less academically capable than their peers, contributing to the internalization of a sense of inadequacy that short men can carry throughout their lives.

Height is also perceived to correlate directly with masculinity, meaning short men may be prone to sensing their manhood is questioned by society. As Vandello explains in his and colleague Jennifer Bosson’s research on the concept of “precarious masculinity,” “Because of [the correlation between height and perceived masculinity], a lot of men feel kind of a chronic sense of anxiety and uncertainty about their manhood status.” Insecurity generally manifests in oversensitivity to insult (which may contribute to the stereotype of short men as angry, resentful, over-compensating Napoleons.)

Unfortunately, this hasn’t just been the year of the short king, it’s also been a year of increased media coverage and public awareness of Incels – online communities of “involuntarily celibate” men whose self-loathing manifests in derogatory, in some cases extremely violent, behavior towards women, and a pathological obsession with altering their appearance to fit a narrow definition of brawny masculine beauty.

The dismaying presence of Incels on the cultural landscape evokes a complicated question: How do we talk about bolstering men’s self-esteem at a time when society is interrogating the injustices of male privilege, and the connection between masculine insecurity and violence?

The answer may lay in a reconceptualization of manhood.

“I think it’s an interesting time,” says Brendan Steven, a 27-year-old, 5’5 writer from Ontario. “Many of us sense that our ideas of the masculine and feminine that we grew up with are too constraining. But at the same time, there are such things as masculine and feminine traits and we value them to some extent.” He considers healthy emotional development to be discovering how to interpret gendered qualities in a way that feels good to you.

Like many short men, Brendan recalls an adolescence spent believing masculinity was defined by a set of immutable characteristics—like being tall and imposing—and that by not fitting that ideal he was “kind of cursed.”

But as he grew up, he began thinking about manhood as something he could develop by embodying his values, rather than a blunt appraisal of his physical self. “I think to be masculine, to be manly, whatever that word means, is about doing good in the world. It’s about contributing. It’s about finding a way to serve other people, to be kind, to be strong in defense of those who need strength in their corner. The more masculinity is an idea of service the more I think it is helpful,” he says. For Brendan, manhood involves being confident and emotionally in touch with himself.

Now happily committed to a taller woman, Brendan hardly thinks about his height at all. “Once you get into that sense of self-confidence the height issue kind of melts away,” he says.

For Micheal, the comedian, seeing the term “short king” emerge on Twitter was empowering. “I think that sometimes it comes across as kind of silly, but it’s so important. It was a really big deal to me, especially when it came to weight and height, to be like, ‘I’m very into what I have going on.’ Despite many people telling me not to be.” Now Micheal considers short kingship a badge of pride. “Like, yes. I’m a short king and that is not a negative word.”

Multidimensional interpretations of what is means to be a man are the wings on which the short king soars. The short king embodies the dismantling of the height hierarchy and conventional expectations, his masculinity firmly grounded and personally defined. In the words of Young-White, the short king is valid, hot, enough.