Height, Power, and Gender: Politicizing the Measured Body
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HEIGHT, POWER, AND GENDER: POLITICIZING THE MEASURED BODY Laura Butera A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2008 Committee: Marilyn Motz, Advisor Jeannie Ludlow © 2008 Laura Butera All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Marilyn Motz, Advisor In the last couple of decades, feminist research on the body has experienced a tremendous upsurge. Despite the high level of academic interest in bodily issues such as fat and disability, scholars and other feminists have been curiously silent on the subject of height. In this thesis, I politicize height by critically exploring its place within gendered networks of power, informing my arguments with the work of Michel Foucault and feminist work on the body. Positing my argument against the evolutionary biological theory that dominance is the “natural” consequence of greater height, I contend in my first chapter that the association of power with height is a socially constructed phenomenon: taller bodies are institutionally and discursively imbued with power. Grounded within what I term “the mythology of tallness,” systemic heightism – the unequal system of power based on height – privileges the tall body and oppresses the short, while also intersecting with other systems of oppression. Recognizing that heightism cannot be separated from considerations of gender and patriarchy, I devote a chapter each to the tall woman and the short man, both of which are non-normative bodies. I discuss the tall woman’s inadvertent challenges to patriarchy, including her carnivalesque potential, while pointing out their important limitations. Paralleling the short man to the tall woman, I examine the hegemonic punishment of the short male body for the patriarchal anxiety he creates by occupying little space and therefore embodying femininity. I show how this anxiety is manifested in representation, where the short male iv is emasculated and vilified. I also look at the controversial practice of “treatment” of the short boy with human growth hormones to make his body taller. Following my case studies, I deconstruct Western discourses of limb-lengthening surgery in China, a nation currently the focus of Western anxiety. Applying Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, I argue that these discourses construct the West as rational and civilized and the East – specifically China – as the overly consumerist, barbaric, and, most importantly, feminine Other. I conclude by offering several strategies for resisting heightism. v To my Grandfather, Donald Gillmore, who will always be fondly remembered vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to graciously thank my thesis committee members, Marilyn Motz and Jeannie Ludlow, for their guidance throughout the long and arduous process of thesis-writing. Their patience and flexibility with my work habits was extremely appreciated, and I am grateful for their willingness to provide feedback quickly when deadlines were approaching. I am thankful to Marilyn for her careful proofreading of my work, and especially her guidance in rethinking my use of concepts in Chapter Two. I thank Jeannie for her thoughtful and useful feedback, and for sharing her own wealth of knowledge to aid my research and writing. Her book and article suggestions always turned out to be advantageous and wonderfully applicable to my work. While her presence will certainly be missed at Bowling Green State University, I wish Jeannie the very best in her new teaching and administrative position in Illinois. I would also like to thank my father, Sam Butera, for teaching me from a young age the importance of education and knowledge, a lesson which has propelled me in reaching this point. I also wish to thank my mother, Cindy Weisgarber, for her love and support throughout the entire span of my years in college. My thanks to Jeremy Wallach for his advice and encouragement, as well as for his helpful feedback on portions of this thesis. My thanks to Stephanie Plummer for suggesting the notion – critical to my argument in Chapter Four – that China may be the contemporary Western focal point of anxiety. My heartfelt thanks belongs to my cohort of graduate students: Dave Pratt, Julie Rowse, Ben Olson, Mike Lewis, and Justin “J.P.” Philpot. I am indebted to them all for their support on many levels, including academically and emotionally. With them I felt a rare sense of community and solidarity, and their company was invaluable in making the graduate vii school experience manageable and also fun. Lastly, I would like to thank my partner, Brian Blitz, for his calming words when the stresses of graduate school became too much, for his undying faith in me and my work, for his insightful feedback on several of my chapters, and his support in all areas of my life. I wish him the very best of luck as he begins work on his own thesis, although, given his talents, I know he won’t need it. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF HEIGHT ........................................... 6 The Social Constructedness of Height: Measurement, Identity, and Power.............. 7 The Mythology of Tallness ........................................................................................ 11 Institutional Biopower ............................................................................................... 13 Heightism: (Tall) Privilege and (Short) Oppression .................................................. 19 Intersections of Heightism ....................................................................................... 21 Discursive Constructions of Height ........................................................................... 24 CHAPTER II. “THAT’S A HUGE BITCH!”: THE TALL FEMALE BODY .................... 28 The Threat of the Tall Woman ................................................................................... 29 Limitations to the Tall Woman’s Challenge .............................................................. 33 Taming the Tall Woman ............................................................................................ 41 CHAPTER III. SHORT MEN .............................................................................................. 50 The Short Man, Representationally Speaking ........................................................... 59 Growth Hormone Therapy and the Short Boy ........................................................... 68 CHAPTER IV. DISCOURSES OF CHINESE LIMB-LENGTHENING SURGERY IN THE WESTERN MEDIA .......................................................................................................... 74 China: Locus of Western Panic .............................................................................. 76 Woman-as-Nation and Nation-as-Woman ................................................................. 88 CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION: PRAXIS ............................................................................ 97 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 103 1 INTRODUCTION Since I was a young child, I have been keenly aware of height. Because I was a short girl, my father made jokes about me manufacturing cookies in a tree, a reference to the Keebler Elves. I was nicknamed “Little Laura,” clearly a moniker derived from my stature. However, according to our pediatrician, my younger sister – who is five years my junior – was destined to become tall. When this prediction came true, suddenly she was indeed taller than I. Following this epic event, I endured annual comments from infrequently seen relatives who inevitably exclaimed, “Your sister is taller than you now!” Despite my sister having been taller than me for several years, my relatives could not resist pointing out this obvious fact ad nauseum. Their comments seemed to be based in an assumption that height somehow always functions hierarchically by age: the oldest child should be the tallest. Thus, being older and shorter appeared to them a comical paradox. I also sensed, embedded within their seemingly innocent observations, an implicit negativity associated with my being shorter, as if I had somehow failed, had stood idly by while my sister surpassed me in height. The other jokes and nicknames contained this same hidden message: my shortness was somehow wrong. Years of teasing, in addition to many a frustrated attempt to reach a desired object from a cupboard just out of reach (invariably necessitating a perilous climb onto a counter), had left me sensitive to the issue of height. It was this awareness that set the stage for a serendipitous collision of two separate revelations. First, I was becoming conscious of the social control and production of the body while enrolled in a Theories of Othered Bodies course. Second, I noticed a peculiar trend as I walked across my college campus. As I strolled down the slim sidewalk, I would often find myself in the direct path of another person coming from the opposite direction. Suddenly, I would find myself locked in an unintended game of chicken; who would be the one 2 to move? I realized that the odds were almost never in my favor. Anyone taller than I, regardless of any other factor (gender, race, etc), automatically expected that with my five-foot- three-inch body, I was obliged to step aside. The taller individual