Heightism

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Interesting read:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5675139/Paul-Simon-admits-short-5-foot-three-height-eclipsed-success.html

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Quote from: wants2growtaller on November 23, 2018, 09:30:14 PMWow. this article was written in such a negative bias. The author of this article portrayed Paul Simon as a short men who has an inferiority complex. The author completely downplayed the struggles, prejudice and discrimination that Paul simon faced. He also downplayed the negative impact that height prejudice has on people expecially short man. Even his bullet points highlited in  a very subliminal way the superiority of tall height and the so called inferiority of short height.
Yes I see what you mean.  They make out that he is petty and wanted to be taller so he could dominate others.  They basically framed it as him having short man syndrome.

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Quote from: ThatGuy on November 23, 2018, 10:11:24 PMDo you need to have some sort of condition to become a 5'0-5'3 male?
Short man syndrome is pop psychology:

The phenomenon of appearing overly aggressive or assertive. This may be a reaction after repeatedly suffering height discrimination (heightism) in the workplace, in relationships with women, or elsewhere during socialisation.

Basically if you stand up for yourself as a short man you get described as having Short Man Syndrome.

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I agree with myloginacc.  There is evidence that even now poor sanitation, contaminated water supplies do impact height.  Quotes from the reports http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/the-toilet-gap-how-much-of-differences-across-developing-countries-in-child-height-can-sanitation-ex and https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/09/india-children-stunted-growth-unsanitary-conditions-50-million:
Households in India are less poor, on average, than households in Sub-Saharan Africa, but children there are shorter. Stunting is common even among relatively well-off families in India. However, widespread Indian stunting is not due to genetics: Indian babies who move to developed countries in early life grow much taller.

I also agree there are a lot of factors involved including:

• Genetic
• Epigenetic - this is interesting because epigenetic changes can arise out of environmental changes such as famine - these effects express themselves in grandchildren and not direct children.  This is because a maternal grandmother affected by famine will have exposed the eggs developing in the foetus of her yet to be born daughter to epigenetic changes that express themselves when the daughter itself later produces children.
• Nutrition
• Healthcare
• Sanitation and Hygiene
• Possibly gravity but in a very small way

I also agree with Ivan that in the west we are probably going too far in terms of cleanliness - resulting in more and more autoimmune diseases.  Basically we a have powerful immune system with nothing to attack other than our own bodies.

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Quote from: myloginacc on November 24, 2018, 02:45:22 PM...

Do also bear in mind that even height heritability varies among human populations. The Dinka are most likely more affected by malnutrition and disease, in terms of how it impacts their height, than a Finn.
That's really interesting.