What are the disadvantages of being short

Like everything in life, being short (aka fun size) has its perks and its problems. But whether or not you like it, you are stuck with your height once you stop growing around the age of 16 or 17, so learn to accept your size and realize that you are 100 percent beautiful the way you are. That said, any girl 5’4” and below will *definitely* be able to relate to these 10 pros and cons of being petite.

Pro: Your crush is always taller.
You never have to worry about your boo being shorter than you even if you are wearing heels. Which means, that if height is important to you, you pretty much have your pick of guys. 

Con: The top shelf is the enemy.
If you’re short, you have most definitely climbed onto the kitchen counter so you can grab that bowl someone put on the highest shelf in the cabinet. And don't even get you started on grocery stores...

Pro: Heels were pretty much made for you.
No kitten heels for you. You can totally rock sky high platforms and still look a reasonable height.

Cons: Clothes are way too long.
Dresses go to your shins. The adjustable straps on tank tops are as tight as they can get. Your jeans have rips at the heels from you stepping on them.

Pro: 24/7 leg room.
Your legs never feel cramped during long car or plane rides because they don’t take up much room to begin with, therefore you can stretch out comfortably.

Con: You have to look up at tall people to talk to them .
After awhile your neck starts to get stiff.

Pro: You never have to worry about hitting your head.
Nothing can beat the sweet revenge that is walking under something that other people have to duck under or risk a concussion.

Con: Crowds are the enemy.
You can never see over anyone’s heads and people always look over yours so they bump into you. And at concerts, you pray that people won’t stand up because you have a hard enough time seeing the stage when everyone is sitting down.

Pro: You are always front and center.
Group photos are great because you are always in the front and your tall friends get banished to the back mwahahaha.

Con: People think you are younger than you are.
You may be an 8th grader on the inside but everyone who doesn’t know you definitely thinks you’re a 6th grader. Don’t worry—you’ll appreciate how young you look in the future.

Calling all petite girls: What’s the best or worst thing about being short? Sound off in the comments!

Photo credit: Instagram.

We want to hear from you! Send us your weirdest body questions here (seriously, we'll answer anything!) and it just might get featured.

But in his new book for young people, Short: Walking Tall When You Are Not Tall At All, reporter John Schwartz of The New York Times approaches the cultural view of height with a jaundiced eye. Many of the so-called disadvantages of being short, he writes, are predicated on selective use of sociological and psychological data by drug companies that market growth hormones. "In the end," Schwartz writes, "a lot of the 'problems' that people associate with being short are created by the same people who say they are trying to fix them."

Truth is, says Schwartz (5 feet 3 inches), being short can actually come in handy. "That sense of starting the race a step behind," he says in an interview, "can be a powerful force for good. I think it can make us short guys a little tougher, a little more eager to show the world what we've got. Maybe, in some of us, it helps us develop a sense of humor -- being able to tell jokes probably got me out of being pounded more than once."

Elena Kagan, 5 feet 3 inches, stands next to President Obama, 6 feet 1 inch, after being announced as a nominee to the Supreme Court. Justice Thurgood Marshall affectionately nicknamed Kagan "Shorty."

Here then, with the help of Schwartz and others, is a list of five upsides to being downsized:

1. Who wants to be average? That’s the question at the heart of the Schwartz book. A longtime science writer, Schwartz parses the research that Cohen and others cite and concludes that it tells only part of the story. "One researcher told me, once you group people by smarts, the pay disparity between tall and short disappears," Schwartz says. "The broader thought is the one I go back to again and again in the book: Averages don't mean diddly."

Average, Schwartz says, "is the big fat middle of the bell curve, the place where the unexceptional people gather. And I've never really liked the middle of the road."

2. Shortness builds character. Being physically smaller, especially during adolescence, when social hierarchies are established, "makes you incredibly astute socially," says Stephen Hall, author of Size Matters: How Height Affects the Health, Happiness, and Success of Boys -- and the Men They Become. In an interview, Hall says, "You pay attention to the changing weather of conversations and situations. You become a good listener and a better analytical thinker. You acquire a social skill set that would have been impossible to acquire if you were a hulking member of the teenage altocracy who always got his way."

He adds, "One of Darwin's most astonishing evolutionary insights is the suggestion that humans, precisely because they were smaller and weaker than their primate cousins, evolved the skills of social cooperation that have made us the successful species we are today."

3. You look younger. In youth-obsessed American culture, looking younger than your years is often considered a positive attribute. And in Hollywood, where aging is a naughty word, shorter actors can play roles in a wider age range. When the website Pajiba posted a list of the Oldest Actors to Play Teenagers, the top five actors -- logging the largest age differentials with their on-screen characters -- were all under 5 feet 6 inches tall. The list: Michael J. Fox (5 feet 5 inches); Henry Winkler (5 feet 6 inches); Gary Burghoff (5 feet 6 inches); Gabrielle Carteris (5 feet 1 inch); and Stockard Channing (5 feet 3 inches), who played 18-year-old Rizzo in the 1978 movie Grease -- when Channing was 34.

Other silver screen luminaries who are 5 feet 6 inches or shorter and seem to have no problem landing major roles include Salma Hayek (5 feet 2 inches), Jack Black (5 feet 6 inches), Hilary Duff (5 feet 2 inches), Seth Green (5 feet 4 inches), Dustin Hoffman (5 feet 5 inches), Jennifer Love Hewitt (5 feet 3 inches), Eva Longoria (5 feet 2 inches) and Sarah Jessica Parker (5 feet 3 inches).

4. Short people can be underestimated. People of short stature, says psychologist David Sandberg of the University of Michigan, "make all sorts of adaptations to the physical and social environment, just as people of tall stature, overweight, ethnicity, race -- you get my point. Unless the person's height is a consequence of a medical condition, which carries its own burdens on development, or the person is so short that height constitutes a physical disability, short people are as creative, industrious, assertive, passive ... as the rest of us. Short people do not live up to their negative stereotypes."

5. You can write a book about it. "Since I wrote this book," Schwartz says, "I hear over and over from friends who say, 'I never saw you as short!' This is pretty funny, since everybody seemed to notice it when I was growing up. I wanted to write the book because there are whole industries now that are telling kids and their families that growing up short is a disadvantage, a flaw -- a condition. I wanted to tell them that if being short is your biggest problem, you're damned lucky."