ArcaMax

When I was 16 and applying for my driver's license, I had to provide my height. No one was behind me with a measuring tape, so I slipped an extra inch onto the form, cementing my official frame at 5-foot-1. That inch, even just on paper, pushed me closer to Jennifer Aniston's height of 5 feet, 6 inches, a factoid I'd read in my mom's "People" magazine and had come to believe was the ideal length of a woman.

Whether that's accurate about Aniston doesn't matter. The internet clocks her at 5 feet, 5 inches now, so maybe she lied on some form, too.

What mattered was the idea. Six inches more, and I wouldn't have to fight for my life in the cement block halls of my high school, flopping like a fish in the crush of bigger kids, teetering on the heels and platforms I wore religiously. Six inches more and friends wouldn't pat me on the head like a puppy or use my skull as an armrest. Six inches more and I would transcend the humiliation of "cutie-patootie" into the coveted plane of "hot."

I wonder what teenage me would have thought upon learning that swaths of short people are being stretched in Florida, just hours from where I live. The vertically challenged are flocking to West Palm Beach from all over the world, into the care of orthopedic surgeon Dror Paley. Patients pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their bones broken, infused with nails and pulled apart by the millimeter as new tissue grows.

In the late 1990s, limb-lengthening surgery was not something the average person flitted off to get. Plastic surgery was reserved for that tabloid lady who turned her face into a cat. The rare girl got her nose or boobs done over the summer, but there was no proliferation of injectables, no "preventative Botox." Certainly no one I knew was having bones lengthened.

Even if the technology had been this advanced back then, and even if my parents had the money, they never would have signed off. But I would have fantasized. Surgery would cure all my perceived problems. It would turn me into Rachel Green striding leggily around the streets of New York in little black dresses, inexplicably in love with Ross.

This week, I watched "Materialists," an A24 romantic ... comedy? It's more suffused with ennui than laughter. Height is a theme, particularly the social capital it carries for men. Here's a spoiler, so turn back now if you don't want it, though it's not hard to see coming.

Pedro Pascal's character is a "unicorn" on the dating scene, a rich guy who is also kind, gorgeous and mature. Seemingly perfect. We find out his secret halfway through the film -- he's had his limbs lengthened. Yes, by that magical number of 6 inches.

"You're just worth more," he explains to his girlfriend in a poignant scene.

The movie treats the surgery not with ridicule but with compassion. Likewise, I wouldn't harshly judge anyone for having the procedure. Plenty of patients do so to even out limbs or ease issues with dwarfism. And, really, anyone should be able to do what they want with their bodies under safely regulated conditions.

Changing your appearance has never been more accessible and tempting. I've dabbled in cosmetic procedures from dental work to eyebrow microblading. I've considered lasers, wondered if CCs of this and that could sharpen my jaw or shave inches off my waist, but I've held off for fear of, well, the unknown. A monolithic Instagram face? Side effects? A hamster wheel that's impossible to hop off?

Each moment I've survived the impulse to tweak myself has clarified that differences make people interesting, real, an antidote to the smoothing effects of AI. It took me 20 years to stop wearing heels every day, to call myself "fun-sized" in an endearing way, not a belittling way. Even now, I secretly believe I'll be taken less seriously if I wear flat shoes to a meeting. The doubt will never fully go away.

But teenage me with her soft frontal lobe would be stunned to learn that it's not that hard to move through the world as a short woman, especially a white, conventional-looking one. That everyone at some point wants a different body.

No, I will never clearly see the stage at a concert. I will be carded for alcohol until I am 85. I will gain 5 pounds and it will look like 20. Oh, well. So many things mean more.

My license still has the extra inch, though. I like knowing it's there if I need it.

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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