Being Short in the Workplace
And Never really feeling grown up.
The picture of adulthood to me is height. I remember looking up to my mother and thinking she was huge and powerful when I was little, I remember looking up to everyone and feeling they were my superiors, and now at 28, an adult, with my own car and house and savings and money, and job and hobbies, I still can’t shake the feeling of child-like-ness because I am short. Waiting for an adult-er adult (or taller adult) to help me with something.
Because when I look up to my peers around me, who are 40y+ men who tower 6 foot I can’t help but feel like a baby.
I think this is why women wear high heels in the workplace.
It’s the patronizing tones, its the jump to get the only glass down from the cupboard, its staring at someones chest when you are looking straight ahead. Its feeling intimidated by someones physical size when you need to tell them they are being a douche-bag to you and only being able to verbally say it through a round of tears.
I really don’t want to feel like a baby when I’m far from it, I am a young woman who is desperately trying to be respected, and without putting on some silly heels and playing dress up I’m at a loss on how I can do that without actually doing what I’m doing, which is working hard, meeting deadlines and begging for more work. But for some reason it never arrives on my desk. I don’t think I’m trusted to do it.
Journal of Applied Psychology found that each inch of height above average earns an extra $789, because with height = status. Taller women are seen as authoritative, intelligent and independent, where as shorter women are seen as more nurturing and locked into gender biases. It can stem from childhood too, the bigger and taller children are usually seen to for guidance, but as a scout leader who has coached a 4ft child to climb a climbing wall and a 3ft 6 child to climb the same wall, it wasn’t about the height but the sheer determination of the smaller younger child that prevailed over the taller one.
And also his ability and strength to weight ratio- but look at me now, I’m thinking of a way that the younger child had some unfair advantage over the taller one. WHY? Because in our head, lenght = strenght.
There are ways that I try to demand respect that sometimes come across rude, like walking into a room and looking at someone who is currently having a conversation of their own, to ask them a question. I probably blatantly interrupt, but they do the same to me so alls fair in asking questions, how should they be able to get away with it and not me? Or I just don’t seem to get the recognition I deserve, Yes I have a permanent job but there has been so many times I have helped other departments and never actually received any thanks for it. I haven’t been invited to the meetings even though I help the department many times and I also got the data available ready for the project. I feel like a minion, because I am short.
Also my manager infanticides me all the time. I talk to him about a movie I watched and he mentions the age difference, like I am much younger than him, he acts like hes the same age as my grandfather yet he’s the same age as my dad. There is NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT YOUR AGE mann, leave it alone. I wonder if he would do this if I was taller.
At the minute I feel like I’m fighting a loosing battle, I can’t seem to come off as a man would without looking rude and aggressive, if I flip it and be nice and sweet I’m child and need to be protected and therefore I’m not respected. All I wanna do is earn money, enough to build a solid life on and go home. That’s all I want, I don’t want a fanfair but when I do something that helps this business along I wanna be able to have the courage to ask my manager for a raise because I deserve it without being spoke down to or intimidated because I am short.
Currently my manager is off sick, with a poorly throat that he will somehow blame on me because I like to chat. I can talk all day and still manage to meet my deadlines and get my work done, others aren’t this lucky and their level of concentration is deeper and easier to break than mine, when I ask him a question he looks at me like I have just asked him if the “sky is blue” and like I am a baby bashing my sticky fingers all over the keyboard. His looks could poison you if coupled with the right words, but for some reason I feel like I could deal with them better if I was taller, and he himself is not the tallest of men its just for some reason he despises I take the last chair in the meeting room and when I ask for more work he barely gives it me.
He’s off sick at the minute and because he has shown me NOTHING, I am at a loss of how to update his/our files. I want him to come back and be like, “Oh thanks Nat for updating those files, I can now concentrate on the budget”, would he have given me the work if I had more gravitas, more height and status.
I think so.
