Video 4
Lynn Sherr: Imagine a world where nothing fits. Where pants are too long.
Craig: The crotches are down to here, the seat’s down to here, the pants are up to
there.
Lynn Shern: Where elevators are filled with giants.
Rob: You kind of get cramped. And you know, it’s kind of hard to breathe
sometimes.
Lynn Sherr: Where driving a car means your feet th5n’t reach the pedals.
David: You have to fumble down here, and some have bars underneath and some
have these little electronic things on the side you have to figure out
Lynn Sherr: And where you can’t see the movie screen, let alone find a date to
take there.
1st woman: I don’t care hair color, eye color, skin color—they need to be tall.
Sorry.
Lynn Shern: Welcome to the world of short men. Ralph Keyes, 5’7”, wrote a
book about height.
Ralph Keyes: We just assume anybody we’re looking up to has power.. . has
power over us.
Lynn Shern: We put Chris and Debbie, colleagues here at ABC News, in front of
our camera, posing at different heights. Half the shots showed Chris as the taller
of the pair.
Chris: The air’s kind of thin up here.
Lynn Shern: In the other half, Debbie was taller. Then we gave the photos to
students at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and asked them to tell us a story
about what was going on. When Chris was taller, the adjectives used to describe
him were mature and respected. When Chris was shorter than Debbie, they
called him submissive, childish, weak. Andrea McGinty, who runs a dating
service in Chicago, knows all the tricks. We asked her to help us construct an
experiment to test just how willing women are to date shorter men. And we
found three brave volunteers.. Stu is the shortest. How tall are you?
Stu: I’m 5 foot. And 5’5” with the Afro.
Lynn Shern: Rob is 5’3”. He prefers taller women.
Lynn Shern: Rob is 5’3”. He prefers taller women.
Rob: I kind of enjoy it. I mean, I think there are some serious advantages to
being a little bit, having a woman who’s a little bit taller.
Lynn Sherr: David is getting married this fall.
David: She is 5 feet tall.
Lynn Shern : And you are?
David: I am 5’6”.
Lynn Sherr Oh, well.
David: Giant, right.
Lynn Sherr We recruited other men about the same age as David, Sw, and Rob,
but taller. We asked them all to dress in jeans and a sweater, then we did
something cruel. We put them in lineups, five at a time, behind a two-way
imirror. The men couldn’t see or hear what was going on in the next room.
That’s where we invited groups of women to look at the men and choose a date.
In this case, we wanted to see if anyone would pick 5’3” Rob. When Andrea told
us women like doctors, we gave him an MD. Their choice?
2nd woman: Andrew.
3rd woman: I would say Matt.
Lynn Sherr: No Rob. We piled on some more assets. We said, besides being a
doctor, he was also a best-selling author and champion skier who just built his
own ski house.
Andrea McGinty: Does that affect your choices?
4th woman: He’s still short.
Lynn Sherr Then we gave Rob a promotion. We made him chief of staff at a
prestigious hospital.
Andrea McGinty: Who would you pick, Kim?
5th woman: Andrew’s probably the closest to who I’d pick.
6th woman: I’d pick Math
7th woman: Jeffrey, the pilot.
Lynn Shern What would t take?Now we said Rob was also a gourmet cook who
loves children.
8th woman: Oh, definitely I wouldtakehin in a minute,: then. Height, no
problem.
7th woman: I wouldn’t, because I would think I don’t want short, little kids. I
was thinking that!
Lynn Shern Well, at least someone liked Rob. But if it was this harsh for him at
5’3”, *hat would it take to get a date for Stu at just 5 feet?
Lynn Sherr What would it take to get a date for Stu at just 5 feet? First, we made
him an up- and-coming actor.
9th woman: No.
JOth woman: No.
11th woman: Not.
Lynn Sherr: Then we said Stu had made millions by age 25.
12th woman: No.
13th woman: No.
14th woman: Not for me.
Lynn Sherr: Nothing worked.
Andrea McGinty: How come nobody picked Sw?
15th woman: He’s too short.
Andrea McGinty: He’s too short?
Lynn Sherr: We asked if there was anything we could add to make Stu
irresistible.
15th woman: Maybe the only thing you could say is that the other four are
murderers.
16th woman: Right, are convicted of some crime.
17th woman: Child molesters.
16th woman: Rapists.
15th woman: Psychotic. . . Exactly. Ahd then we would say, “Oh, OK. Hello,
Stu!” I mean, nothing bad towards him. He’s got a nice smile; he’s cute.
Lynn Sherr But no takers. So we replaced Stu with David to see if 5’6” -made a
difference. We brought in one last group of women. When they all picked this
fellow, we told them he’d been unemployed for two years, but that our David was
a chief surgeon.
18th woman: I guess it would be David for me.
Lynn Shern Two took David right away. But Tara chose Jim, whom we’d made a
high school gym teacher.
Andrea McGinty: Would it change anything if I told you that David, besides
being a chief surgeon, had just published a book, that he was a gourmet cook,
loved kids, and extremely wealthy?
Tara: I’d switch to David real quick. I mean, let’s be realistic I’m going to bag
the gym teacher now.
Lynn Sherr So what’s going on here? You had to make those short guys almost
like God to make them desirable, right?
Andrea McGinty: We finally made them God, and that’s when they chose.
Ies Mattel: And this surprises you?
Lynn Sherr: It obviously doesn’t surprise you.
Les Mattel: No.
Lynn Sherr: Yale psychologist Les Mattel is 5’5”.
Les Martel: It goes back to caveman times. We simply judge people, particularly
men, based on their height, on their size, on their physical presence.
Lynn Sherr: Why is that? We asked several of the women to come back and tell
us.
7th woman: I feel short men make great best friends because they’re very
enthusiastic, caring, because they have to make up for their height.
Lynn Sherr But you have no interest in going out with someone shorter?
7th woman: No.
19th woman: I’m just attracted to taller men. I’m only 5’5” myself, but I just.. . I
jUst like tall men.
Lynn Sherr I have to tell you, and it breaks my heart to tell you this, it turned
out that being short was not good. Does that surprise
anybody? Rob: I don’t think so
Stu: Absolutely not.
Lynn Sherr: Tell me what you were thinking while you were standing out there
with the taller guys.
David: Sure aren’t picking us.
20th woman: You want to look up into his eyes, and you want it to be like a
movie.
David: There’s a stereotype in society that says when you find your mate, the
man is bigger and the woman is smaller, you know, Tarzan, Jane. And we didn’t
get to speak, so....
Lynn Sherr: Well, you didn’t get to speak, but we ipoke on your behalf.
David: Oh, thanks.
Lynn Sherr:Andwe made you doctors, chief surgeons, best-selling authors.
Stuart, we made you a venture capitalist who made millions by the age of 25. You
were a gourmet cook, you kived children, you had ski houses that you built all by
yourself. Sometimes all this worked, but most of the time, fellas.. David: It didn’t do a dam thing.
Stu: It didn’t do a thing.
Rob: Well, I guess that says something about people.
Lynn Sherr: What does it say to you?
Rob: Maybe the average person isn’t giving us the credit that we deserve.
Lynn Sherr: Does it bother you?
Stu: You know what it’s like to maybe hurt. I think you know what it’s like to,
you know, — maybe to have more setbacks than
taller people.
Lynn Sherr: David, you’re nodding your head. Do you think that’s true?
David: Sure, oh yeah. Growing up you tajce a lot of abuse, you know, always
being the short one and getting picked on and name calling. It happens.
Barbara Walters: What has happened to these three nice guys from the early
experiment? Any women in their lives?
lynn Sherr Well, Dave, whom we told you was getting married has gotten
married, so he’s. - that’s all fine. Stu and Rob are still available, however. Women
of America, tall or shori, they’re out there.