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.

Unbelievable, but believable at the same time.

ITV news follows several men (recognizable in the LL circuit from their social media postings) and a few doctors and assesses the growing number Leg Lengthening patients along with their reasons for getting the procedure.