BERKELEY, Calif. – “Hey! My eyes are down here!” teased your mildly shorter-than-average friend, Roland Smalls, after seeing you look over his head at something behind him.
“Ha ha, nah I’m just messing with you. Don’t stress, it’s really not a big deal,” Smalls continued. “I’m like, super confident in my masculinity, so I don’t take it personally when people try to reduce my character to some meaningless metric like my height. Besides, even if I was bothered by it, which I’m not, I have a ton of other things going for me. I cook, I have good style, I read, I go to the gym, and I’m super charismatic! That’s why I don’t bring it up, I like to let my other qualities, which are way more important anyways, speak for themselves.”
Smalls’ friend, Norm Alheit, shared his thoughts as well.
“He’s all caught up on the idea that his height is holding him back, but if anything it’s his insecurities,” said Alheit. “He also gets really excited when he sees short male actors on TV, talking about how important representation in the media is for short kings like him. Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure that’s the entire reason he started watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; Danny DeVito is one of his heroes.”
With more thoughts on the matter was Emily Tall, who went on a Tinder date with Smalls last week.
“We went out for a coffee on Friday, and I didn’t even notice the height difference until he pointed it out himself,” Tall remarked. “At first, things were going really great! We were totally hitting it off, but eventually our conversations just kept turning into him talking about how hard it is to find someone that would date a guy who’s under six feet. I’m all for having meaningful conversations about the harmfulness of toxic male beauty standards, it was just a little hard to listen to knowing that he has never, and will never, experience the crushing weight of the laughably unrealistic societal expectations that I have to deal with every day of my life, you know?”
For the record, Smalls is 5′ 8.