I’m barefoot and six feet tall – and I scrape door frames when I’m wearing good heels. Every man I’ve dated, slept with, or married has been shorter than me.
Guess what? For the most part, they were attractive, intelligent, and certainly not slow when it came to sex.
However, I always felt uncomfortable when we took pictures together.
I would bend my knees a little to make up for (and fail) the gap. It’s supposed to sound silly, but I grew up being brainwashed into believing that standing next to a smaller partner makes him look a little less masculine, so if you love him, you shrink to improve his status.
Pictured: Janet and her partner Peter. Janet Street-Porter explains that she was brainwashed into believing that she would look a little less masculine if she stood next to a younger partner.
I opted for unassuming low heels instead of the cheeky shoes I prefer, and my 9-foot size felt like big fins.
How pathetic! If someone loves you, they should accept your height difference and don’t expect you to wear flats. A tall woman will never stand up.
Either way, it turns out I’m decades ahead of the latest-gen Z trend: social media is flooded with posts praising “Short Kings”—men shorter than 5 feet 8 inches. The hashtag #ShortKing, created in 2018, has been viewed more than 340 million times on TikTok and Twitter. Choosing short is definitely in vogue, so much so that social media is flooded with posts praising “Short Kings” – men under six feet sdfs Janet StreetPorter and her partner Peter Spanton live in what’s been called “Short King Spring”.
The truth is, most of my guys didn’t care about my height, or at least they found my public recognition (and not knowing) more challenging.
On the other hand, their lack of stature has always been a very sensitive issue. Most of my four husbands would claim they were the same height as me (totally a lie), at least two inches taller if anyone asked.
However, I chose my partners because they were stubborn, intelligent, and able to handle me. Height was not part of the equation. I was never intentionally rejected because of my height.
Pictured: Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner. Janet says it’s a big turn off to stop being seen as a date that “kings” refuse.
In fact, there are some scary men who look for tall women because it turns them on. I was once wearing an Alexander McQueen leather jacket with high heel boots for an artistic opening on the floor, and a man in a nice suit (wrong side of size 50) came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go back home. He said he could sit down and admire my “extraordinary stature”. I politely declined. I wore some really high heels and a gorgeous designer dress at a party for a year at the Cannes Film Festival, only to lure in very short men who offered me drinks (and more) up to my waist.
Of course, height doesn’t matter once you take off your clothes in bed. Yet men are conditioned to think that longer is better, a sign of success, strength and confidence.
Pictured: Tom Holland with Zendaya. Movie stars regularly add an inch to their actual height to look a little more masculine
Legend insists that shorter men are more aggressive and like to throw their weight around. And some high-profile short men – such as former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone (5 ft 2 in) – have a reputation for being belligerent and controversial. Three times married, Bernie’s last two wives (Slavica and Fabiana) rise above him.
Do short men really have a splinter on their shoulders? Putin is routinely surrounded by much larger henchmen, but there is no question as to who holds sinister power. President Macron is a short, taller woman in high heels, but despite her ridiculously cocky appearance, she looks cool.
The Hollywood elite, of course, takes arrogance to a new level. Movie stars regularly add an inch to their actual height to look a little more masculine. They’ve been photographed carefully to hide their true height – it’s remarkable how rarely female stars as tall as Elizabeth Debicki (6 feet 3 inches) appear above their male counterparts. Her stature was highlighted in The Night Manager, but she played a very neurotic girl rather than a traditional love affair. She would play Diana and Dominic West (6 feet) for Prince Charles in The Crown, but don’t expect that difference to be highlighted, quite the opposite.
Social media is flooded with posts praising the “Short Kings” – men under one and a half metres.
Even the biggest male stars seem to have extremely thin skin when it comes to height. Tom Cruise always wears high shoes to add extra inches in public – extraordinary considering his success. Nicole Kidman is married to two much shorter men: Cruise and (like Cruise) country singer Keith Urban, who wore heels on the red carpet. Fortunately, Keith seems to have gotten the modern message that the short film is in vogue and dropped it at the last Academy Awards.
Meeting these real stars in real life can be a little shocking. I remember meeting Matt Damon at a private dinner and being somewhat surprised to find the Jason Bourne thriller star under my eyes as he shook hands. She claims to be 5 feet 9 inches tall.
But a new generation of stars is ditching this limiting mentality and embracing their roles as “Short Kings”. This change calls for some bold models and their (larger) partners, especially Tom Holland (5ft 8in) and Zendaya (5ft 10in), who met while filming SpiderMan. They look extremely comfortable posing on the red carpet, their hair in heels and they often joke about their height difference in interviews. Last December, the Netherlands “found” an Instagram post claiming that short men are more sexually active than taller men.
Pictured: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. Janet says the truth is short men are guilty of the same faults as tall men.
At the Academy Awards, singer and actor Joe Jonas (5ft 7in) looked utterly happy next to his wife, Sophie Turner (5ft 9in), dressed in a flamboyant dress to match her gorgeous red Louis Vuitton gown.
Going from being seen as a waste to being “king” is a huge turnaround. Could it be that Gen Z is not interested in old stereotypes about power and ego?
Perhaps a less prominent person recently added to the #ShortKing pantheon is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is often referred to as a model of modern masculinity. Even though she’s not that tall (5 feet 7 inches) aren’t we impressed by her simple demeanor and excellent communication?
In the past, choosing a shorter mate than yourself was often seen by your friends as a bit awkward, as if you couldn’t get any better. But being a very tall woman, adolescence was still a period when I felt awkward. So I quickly learned to ignore what people thought of my love life.
In a way, I applaud the #ShortKing movement as a well-meaning attempt at rebranding. But it is absurd to go too far and greet vile men as “kings”. The fact is that short men are guilty of the same flaws as tall men.
But according to a study published in the Journal of Biological Psychology, women are twice as likely to choose long-term men for dating than long-term partners.
Maybe we always knew shorter guys were more reliable (long before Short Kings were a thing).
Source: Daily Mail
