I remember the first time I ever heard about leg lengthening. It was in 2009 and I was about to enter the final year of my twenties. I was surfing early YouTube and checking both my MySpace and Facebook accounts (remember those days?). Barack Obama had just entered the White House and people all over the country were panicking about their finances. I have zero idea why this appeared on my feed, but a news story popped up about some Indian-American student in Florida paying $80,000 (yes, you ready that correctly) just. to become two inches taller? Really? Did some kind of medical breakthrough emerge that would allow people (read: shorter guys) who already passed puberty the “privilege” of growing taller still? Is the “curse” of being short now a thing of the past? Not quite. Read on.

Introduction

First off, if you’ve been reading the blog posts on this site, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being short. If you ask most short people, I would imagine, after interacting with thousands of shorter men and women in this space (maybe we can call it the compact-o-sphere?), being short is almost never the issue, it’s how people are treated because they’re short that might drive someone to explore such a procedure. Still yet, when I came across the newsbyte, this gentleman, who was in his first year of medical school was tired of it all. Whether it was a photo-op or not, the clip ended in a shot of him and his new girlfriend who plainly said (verbatim), “I don’t think I would date ____ if he were shorter than me”. This guy was now about three to four inches taller than she was, and she knew him before the procedure.

What a mind screw that was. Even at that age, I thought to myself, who has $80K to drop to do such a thing. Now, I wasn’t interested in this surgery for myself, but in the procedure for my own knowledge. Well, learning about it did it for me. They intentionally cut bones in your legs, put on an external metal fixator, have you turn rods one millimeter a day for close to two months (i.e. two inches). You have to be careful, as infections can occur at the sites where the pins of the fixator make contact with your skin, and then all of this is followed with months of physical therapy. Who has the time for this? What if you’re a career guy? What if you can’t take more than two weeks of vacation from your job? Then, what will you tell people when they try to figure out how you grew at 28, 32, 41, or whatever.

Okay, so that is how long ago my discovery of this was. Things have changed significantly since then. At this time, it appeared that a number of doctors (enough to count on one hand) offered such a procedure. Now, doctors all over the world provide this. The technology has gotten better. They can insert rods into your bones. This is still not a quick in and out surgery. You have to be monitored for months and you may not be back to normal for a year or two. Yes, all for a few inches. The price of this procedure today, at least in the United States falls in the $80K-$130K range.

Going back to the rabbit hole, around this same time, I came across forums where people discussed their journey. From discussing what drove them to the procedure. For many, it was the feeling of inadequacy, exhausted from constantly being underestimated, being rejected from the vast majority of women they approached or being mocked by women they didn’t approach. Some of these posters were as young as nineteen and as old as sixty. Who at sixty years old, would still be bothered by this? Well, on this forum you found hundreds who were most likely quiet about this in the real world. Some were even married! Go figure.

Okay, with this long introduction, I am in no way disparaging the recipients of said surgery. Even as successful as I have been as a compact gentleman, every one of these sentiments echoed by the people on that forum I have experienced in some form? So why them and not me? I do not say this to put down anyone, but I am okay with who I am and really could care less what others think (most of the time). I have worked hard for my lot in life and know too many taller individuals who may be winning on the social scene (more like won when they were younger, but now not so much), but are not feeling as at peace and as accomplished as myself. Still when I read about the many who are now a bit more open with preparing for and going through the journey, I usually say to myself, “ I get it”.

How It Became A Thing

The surprising things are the facts from research. Leg Lengthening was developed by Soviet Doctor Illazarov in 1951. This means the procedure is nearly eighty years old, though originally, it was intended to correct leg deformities, not for cosmetic purposes. The procedure predates silicone breast augmentation, which is now a common procedure for women by about eleven years (Timmie Jean Lindsay was the first woman to receive silicone breast implants via surgery in 1962). It also predates Gastric Bypass surgery, the de facto procedure to force weight-loss (before Ozempic became the holy grail) by about fifteen years. I make these comparisons because these tend to be the most talked about sources of female insecurity, envy and dysmorphia.

In the current social and new media spaces, just the idea of a man undergoing this procedure is typically met with vitriol. “Accept yourself”. “All of that for just a few inches”. “Enjoy being crippled from now on”. “Your kids will still be short”. Seldomly will you find this backlash with the same intensity directed toward breast augmentation, gastric bypass, Ozempic usage, hair transplants, Brazilian but lifts, or pick your cosmetic procedure. “Hey, your kids won’t inherit that new nose either?” might be the appropriate response.  This is not to say that there isn’t any strong criticism toward other procedures, but not quite with this gravity. View posts on social media or or comments in online articles for the latter. You’ll find plenty of critics, but also many defenders. This does not seem to be the case with LL. Almost unanimously will you see disappointment, shunning and shaming. The same people with this attitude will be the first to scold the patient for going in this direction and will find a way to insult him for his height on the same post.
 

The Ugly

About ten years ago (sheesh, it’s been that long), I read an article in the magazine Medium about an Indian American woman who mourned for her genius brother who went on to work for some big tech companies after college because he passed on due to complications from cosmetic leg lengthening. I remember being a bit unnerved because while she recognized that being under average height plagued him, and that she used to clown him for his height, and that she flaunted her monolithic height preference, she still managed to blame his “patriarchal views” and “misogyny” for his own death. She then painted herself as the victim (of said patriarchy) for the majority of the article, i.e., the death was a minor footnote, her blaming him for her own problems was the bulk of the writing. Yuck.

Well, yes, complications can arise from this procedure, and death is a remote, but rare possibility. This seems to be the faux-source of a lot of the harsh criticism of LL. I have to say, “So?!”. There are no overall stats to track deaths from the procedure, however, data from pooled cohort studies show a zero percent fatality rate. Severe complications include nerve damage, hardware failure and bone healing. The percentages there are five percent on the low end. How about other cosmetic procedures? Capsular Contracture (hard scar tissue squeezing an implant) affects around 19% of breast augmentation patients. At least once or twice a year, I read news reports of people dying on operating tables from Brazilian butt lifts (modern estimates 1 in 14,900). Overall complication rates from LL fall in the 35% with the majority of them being infections near fixature pin sites. BBLs on the other hand have a complication rate of 38%. What is the point of these comparisons? It is not to disparage those who undergo BBLs, breast augmentation, rhinoplasties, etc. Rather, all surgeries have complications risks. All. Period. Full stop.

But LL isn’t a BBL. It requires months to recover, and as pointed out earlier, a year or more to return to complete normalcy. There is always a possibility of some issue down the line. On that note, there are plenty of stories about implants rupturing years down the line. You get my point. You need your legs man (you need your other body parts too, but how will get walk to the train if you’re out of commission due to complications?) It’s why orthopedic surgeons get paid so much.

Back to prices. I will not endorse any surgeon in this writing, and my mentioning of any are strictly because they appeared in articles and news videos I came across when listening to LL patients tell their stories. One name that kept coming up was Dr. Dror Paley. He was the surgeon that explained in details all of the required components (appointments, tests, etc) that went into a successful procedure in that video that I saw way back in 2009. One thing I remember is hearing him say that all patients had to go through a psychological examination. He also mentioned that (I’m paraphrasing here), that he offers this procedure because he is trained, and that if he didn’t offer it, someone else would, who might not have the expertise and background. It felt like a warning. 

The New Ones

Almost a decade after that 2009 video, height as a preference and the mocking of shortness took center stage in new media. From Pop The Balloon clips, trends on Tik-Tok (the “height difference I deserve” trend ring a bell?), female posters on women’s forums mocking shorter men, podcasters giving a platform to have many women share their disgust at the idea of entertaining a shorter guy, and influencers boasting about the advantages to being taller (i.e. more money, more promotions, more options in the dating market). It’s not surprising then, that as an answer to this movement, you began to see a myriad of content responding to this, be it reaction videos by men not affected by heightism observing the phenomenon from the outside, complaint videos from shorter guys, blog posts discussing feelings of ostracization, men having episodes (the so-called “bagel guy”, and YouTube’s own “Kent” come to mind), and even less surprisingly, men seeking LL as a solution, but in a now overt “mainstream” kind of way—"this is the way, and I’m going to let the whole world follow me on my journey!”. The number of vlogs chronicling the LL process from start to finish were becoming more common, where just a few years ago, these discussions would take place on the private anonymous forums I highlighted earlier. Before I discuss those “new ones”, I want to talk about some notable and borderline viral “mental health” and mocking episodes.

I'd make a major bet that if her and Tom Holland ever get a divorce, she'll change her mind immediately after she finds a taller man

5'6 men need love, but not from her.

Tall men want love, but not from her.

Go figure...

This work explores the phenomenon in which individuals—typically women—direct anger or insults toward short men who have done nothing to provoke them, simply because these men do not offer validation or conform to their expected place within an unspoken social hierarchy.

As we age, we generally aspire to find the meaning of life, the meaning of things, the meaning of norms, and why things are the way they are. From Greek philosophy to Pre-Roman Germanic, Native American to West African oral traditions to even monotheistic religious texts, you’ll find sayings, reasonings, fables, parables and cautionary tales. As we moved into the modern era, science, objective observation and record keeping have mostly taken their place, but used for the same reason, to help solve problems, prevent or prepare for disasters and to explain why things are the way they are. 

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Throughout history, whether that knowledge came in the form of stories, traditions, observations or recorded facts, it was often the seasoned, the older and the experienced who passed it on to those coming up behind them, hoping to shape the next generation into carriers of their knowledge, values and customs.

INTRODUCTION

Let's pivot to another but related and decidedly more modern topic: the "Manosphere"... Oh boy. If there ever was a controversial corner of social media hyper-focused on dating, dating customs and gender dynamics, it's this loose network of self-proclaimed "experts" and modern-day newsbearers spread across countless platforms. Many have built enormous followings by presenting their conclusions as irrefutable truths, often built upon their own personal experiences, a handful of statistics that appear to reinforce those experiences—or assumptions—and then defending those conclusions with relentless conviction against anyone offering a different interpretation or additional context.

Women aren't quite off the hook either. While it isn't called the "Woman-O-Sphere," (yet anyway as of 2026), a complementary force absolutely exists across many of these same platforms. "Sprinkle, sprinkle" ring a bell? The "he needs to make $200K and be at least 6'2"" crowd? “The if he doesn’t send an Uber, there’ll be no date crowd?” Any of those tropes sound familiar? Between channels where the word "narcissist" gets thrown around so often it has practically lost all clinical meaning, and the proliferation of influencers promoting finessing your way into a "soft life" on forums and through videos alike as though it's an entitlement, you might say we have problems on both sides of the court.

Now before we move into the content, you might be giving me the side eye as you read this. You might even say that The Lower View is "Manosphere-Adjacent." That's a fair criticism. We do, in fact, engage in many of the same practices we've just identified. We cite studies, share our experiences and occasionally offer a bit of conjecture. However, what makes us different? For starters, we don't sell $10,000 courses. More importantly, our tagline is "A place where we discuss the experiences of shorter men." We welcome all viewpoints, from the single to the married, the widowed to the underemployed, all the way to the chairman of the board. Our site is open to everyone. We value the opinions of those who disagree with our assertions, and we always make it clear—or at least try to—that the perspectives and judgments expressed in our articles and comment sections belong to the individual writers and commenters themselves. I know you’re waiting for the discussion about the manosphere. We’ll get there, but I want to set it up first with a few anecdotes.

THE TALL OF IT

When I got my first job in college, one of my co-workers was a 6'4" guy. Many of the ladies loved interacting with him, and many of the guys wanted to hang around him. Every other week or so, however, someone in the workplace was absolutely livid with him. At first, I couldn't understand why. That changed after he and I had a verbal scuffle. It was a relatively minor disagreement, but his response was filled with vitriol and pointed insults. He carried himself as though he owned the place and was above everyone else. After that incident, I approached every future interaction with him cautiously.

As time went on, he instigated several more disputes with both me and other co-workers. One thing I couldn't help but notice, however, was his social genius. First, he never behaved that way around management. Second, he had an uncanny ability to navigate situations so that he never got caught. If someone confronted him or reported his behavior, there was always an alibi or a perfectly crafted explanation that his supervisors seemed eager to accept. It frustrated everyone to no end. His circle of admirers would eventually disappear one by one, but because it was retail and employees were constantly coming and going, every new hire would eventually fall under his spell for a while. I worked there for several years, and just before I graduated—roughly two years after I started—he finally received a verbal thrashing and a formal write-up from management. My question was always: what took so long?

There was another co-worker who stood nearly as tall as he did. Before he got married, some of his friends described him as quite the ladies' man. Then his wife cheated on him, and what followed was a brutal custody battle that cost him tens of thousands of dollars. By the end of it, he looked dead behind the eyes. Height, popularity and success in one area of life don't make someone immune to terrible circumstances, nor do they make them an authority on relationships, judgment or life itself.

There was yet another man who worked in there who stood at about 6’3 if I recall. Understand that in a lot of retail jobs, a large portion of the workers tend to be quite young, so there can be immaturity amongst the staff. Many of the female co-workers would gossip heavily about how “annoying” this 6’3 guy was. They would smile to his face and babble the moment he was 3 feet away. They would comment negatively on everything from his scent to his clothes to the way he talked. Just horrible stuff. As far as I knew, he was a pretty cool guy, but not to the ladies. They roasted him every chance they got. Who knows what they said about me when I wasn’t around!

Now, of course, these are anecdotes, and none of these situations represent the lives of all tall men. That's precisely the point. What I took away from those years in retail wasn't that tall men have it easy or hard. It was that being tall doesn't make someone infallible. Height, popularity, wisdom and success are all different things, and possessing one doesn't guarantee the others. Likewise, having a trait that much of today's social media culture treats as “coveted" doesn't make someone an authority on relationships, judgment or life itself.

With that fairly long introduction (apologies!), I want to discuss, without further delay, why shorter men in particular need to be wary of the general manosphere.”

ENTER THE SPHERE

The first time I encountered the word "Manosphere" was around 2014. Back then, it was largely a loose network of blogs that were hyper-critical of women. The common thread was hard to miss: "all women are...", "all women must...". You get the idea. Many of the articles and comment sections were filled with resentment, and some comments bordered on outright cruelty. Eventually, many of those same ideas made their way to YouTube, where creators adopted a similar formula but reached much larger audiences.

One of the first creators in this space I came across was a guy named Richard Cooper. An entrepreneur who apparently found considerable success in business, Cooper often spoke about his divorce and used those experiences to warn other men—frequently from behind the wheel of his car. Cooper, who has self-reported as 6'4", was known for phrases like, "Women wait at the finish line and pick the winners." Divorce, family court and child support became recurring themes in much of the content I was exposed to.

Later in the decade, creators began investing heavily in professional cameras, lighting, microphones and studio setups, often spending thousands of dollars to increase the quality of their productions. The presentation became slicker, the audiences became larger, and the influence grew with them. One team in particular that exploded in popularity was Fresh and Fit. We're going to land here for a bit because their trajectory—and their constant appearance in headlines—was one of the motivations behind writing this article.

Myron Gaines (Fresh, né Amrou Fudl) and Fit (né Walter Weekes, a.k.a Fresh Prince CEO) purport themselves to be “high-value men”. Similar to Cooper, they are also hypercritical of women, spend most of their time discussing hypergamy, and teach men how to level up in the face of their supposed laser-focused intentional social climbing female counterparts. Unlike Cooper, they regularly invite women on their show (who they stylize as “girls”) and aim to destroy their egos and denigrate them at every opportunity, even when some agree to appear in “good faith” (truth be told, many who appear do so to increase their own social media following, but that is not the focus of this article). Okay, you get it. But Myron, who stands at 6’3 was caught in two major scandals (many more than that, but two that are worth discussing) in the last couple of years. The first involved him contacting a model and then telling her that she would be doing herself a “favor” by getting intimate with him” (she made it clear she wasn’t interested and leaked the text), and the other more recently where his supposed “long-term” girlfriend left him for a man she met at a rollerblade event one weekend.

Donavan Sharpe, another manosphere creator, who found his fame in the years leading up to the explosion of Fresh & Fit, spent years warning men about single mothers and instructing men to speak to women harshly, with directives and constantly referred to them as “sl-ts”. After some of his detractors did some digging, they discovered that his girlfriend was in fact… a single mother. He later went on to marry her in a very unconventional marriage ceremony. Donavan stands at 6’1. The man who preached the importance of being fit, became the very opposite of fit”. Yeah… “high-value” … Lol.

Now the aim here isn’t to be superficial. The aim isn’t to disparage or assault their character. Rather, to point out the contradictions and revelations. There are so many more examples. Coach Red Pill, who passed away in 2025 had a similar format to Cooper who we described earlier, but went further with even harsher rhetoric and racist rants. He stood at 6 feet. Then there’s Sneako, a character standing at 6’2 who has been outright banned from Australia. You have Andrew Tate, a former kickboxing champion who had his comeuppance in the space in the early 2020s. He has faced criminal investigations and charges related to human trafficking and other allegations. These are “High-Value Men”? All are well above six feet, at some point made well over six figures, and at some point, were in great shape (the third six: a “six pack”). Based on the facts, these men struggled with some or all—greed, the ladies, the law, discipline, money, self-respect and insecurity. Aren’t these the attributes that society tells you a shorter guy supposedly lack? Not I, and not many that I know. This is not to say that they struggle because they’re tall, we’re not making blanket statements here, but rather that just because you’re tall does NOT mean that you’ll have all of these things in the bag. Just because you are short, does not mean that all of these things are unattainable.

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BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE

This brings me to Aba Atlas of the YouTube-famous duo “Aba and Preach.” Aba is of particular interest to me in this article because some of his early success was due, in part, to a video about heightism—a video that, to my estimation, became his first million-view video, at least the first one I can recall, helping propel the duo to the forefront of popular online culture during the mid-2010s, specifically in 2016.

In the video, titled “The Hypocrisy of Women Not Wanting to Date Short Men,” Aba criticized what he saw as a double standard: women could be highly critical of men's preferences regarding certain body types, behavioral traits and chastity, yet some would absolutely destroy men over the subject of height. His point was that height criticism could roll off the tongue so casually and without awareness that the person delivering it was committing the very kind of superficial judgment they might otherwise criticize in men.

I remember scrolling through the thousands of comments, many of which cheered Aba on for being bold enough to challenge the prevailing social discourse. What particularly stood out to me was Aba's pinned comment at the time, in which he insisted that criticism of the video wouldn't affect him personally because he was 6 feet tall.

The exact comment read:

“FYI I’m 6 feet tall so I’m not a manlet. I’m only stating my height because folks seem to believe I made this video because I’m ‘butthurt’. Far from it, I honestly don’t feel strongly about this issue I’m just [a] curious dude who likes to poke fun at shit.”

[Corrections made for grammar in his original comment.]

Well, well, well.

Fast-forward ten years, and Aba himself found himself in a pot of scalding water when several women accused him of having unprotected relations with them, subsequently getting them pregnant and then asking them to terminate the pregnancies. The accusations began emerging one after another.

Many of Aba's fans had come to appreciate what they viewed as his level-headed approach and relatively bias-free, “high-IQ” commentary. Others frequently praised his apparent support for women and his understanding of the importance of recognizing their emotional states and allowing them to process their circumstances in their own way.

Aba addressed the accusations in several videos, where he acknowledged and poked fun at his own irresponsibility when it came to using protection. Many of his detractors—including Myron Gaines of Fresh & Fit, whom we discussed earlier—used the opportunity to go scorched-earth on Aba, accusing him of hypocrisy for criticizing manosphere creators for their openly polygamous approach to dating while allegedly enjoying quite a variety of women behind closed doors.

My point here is that Aba, whom I and many others came to appreciate for his “high-EQ” commentary, is not immune to the same contradictions and poor decisions that he has criticized in others.

Going back to his pinned comment about his own height, there is something particularly interesting in retrospect. Aba wasn't merely aware of the double standard surrounding height; he was also explicitly aware of his own advantage within that dynamic. That doesn't make him responsible for the choices he later made, nor does it mean his height caused any of them. But it does illustrate an important point: understanding a social dynamic intellectually doesn't necessarily make you immune to participating in it yourself.

Consider the super-tall 6'5" YouTube creator Derrick Jackson, who heavily criticized men, developed a large and loyal female following, and was later exposed for cheating on his wife with multiple women. Aba took pleasure in chastising Jackson once the news of his multiple affairs became public.

Yet the two men weren't as different as their respective public personas might suggest. Both were tall men who understood the advantages that could come with physical appearance and social popularity. Neither, however, was immune to making serious personal mistakes.

That's really the point.

The argument isn't that Aba—or Derrick Jackson, for that matter—is a bad person because of what happened. Nor is it that their height somehow caused their behavior. It's that physical advantages, social advantages and even intellectual insight into human behavior don't make anyone immune to contradiction, temptation or poor judgment.

And that is precisely why shorter men should be careful about treating anyone in the manosphere—or anywhere else—as an unquestionable authority on how to navigate life.

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OUT AND ABOUT

On any given day here in New York City, Bushwick, Brooklyn in particular, I can walk down Broadway under the Jamaica Avenue El (The iconic J, M and Z subway lines for those who aren’t familiar) and see tons of men (and women) who are struggling with addiction, nodding off while standing up or lying on the ground. Many more are struggling with housing insecurity and their finances. On social media, in various Facebook groups, you can see men, many of them tall (you can tell from profile photos) nervously posting about unpaid child support, custody situations, what seems to be impossible debt, job insecurity and a mountain of other issues. This is not to say that shorter men do not have any of the same struggles, but from a bird’s eye view, it seems evenly distributed.

Now, I say this not to brag. I promise you that. My life is far from perfect, but I do have a great job, live in a decent place and am living in indisputable peace. I have plenty of friends, had a pretty eventful dating life, continue to date and have not had to deal with all of the issues that our Manosphere brutes have had to endure. I have a great family, travel, have hobbies and do most of the things that others do for their own satisfaction. Many shorter guys on various online forums report the same, even those who (rightfully) complain about the downsides of being on the shorter side. While being taller would be nice because of the added social benefits, being short does not preclude us from attaining social positives and important life milestones. For some things, they may possibly be harder depending on your other attributes, but again, not necessarily impossible. In other words, the main thing one gains from being tall is not being called or dealing with the stigma of being short. It does not prevent us from living an otherwise fulfilling life. The famous Robert Reich (former Secretary Of Labor under President Clinton, 1993-1997 who stands at four foot eleven inches) once said on an episode of ABC 20/20, “don’t let being short stop you”. And you shouldn’t let it. Being a “high value man” shouldn’t in my opinion be your goal. Being in a place where you are doing things you are passionate about (for work and play), respected by others for the value you bring (relationships, the workplace, family, hobbies) are what will make people value you highly.

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CONCLUSION

The internet is full of people eager to tell you why your life isn't good enough and what you need to buy, become, or believe to fix it. As a shorter man, you'll hear plenty of voices telling you that height is your biggest obstacle. My experience has taught me something different. Height may shape some experiences, but it doesn't define your character, your relationships, your accomplishments, or your capacity to live a meaningful life. Choose your mentors carefully—not because of how tall they stand, but because of how well they stand up to scrutiny.

So what are your thoughts on the Manosphere? Wish to challenge our thoughts? Bring it! We welcome it! Chat about it on our forums here... at The Lower View!

Like This Article? Chat About It And More On Our Forum For Shorter Men!

It's all in our heads.

Go figure....

You can find the original Mumsnet post here.

What are your biggest challenges and biggest wins?

Is your experience dating different from shorter men who seem to have more negative interactions with women? In other words, does your facial attractiveness and or physique mitigate height bias?

On the other end, are any of you withdrawn from the dating market and tired of it due to negative experiences?

Finally, when you other guys see you winning, do they get jealous and try to drag you down?