Short People

Considering that I reach a towering 4’8” I imagined that this post about dressing short women would be bordering on mindless for me.  But as a very close male friend of mine pointed out, men have body image issues too.  As I began to research how to dress short men, this problem became increasingly apparent.  Not only do men also have body image issues, but they have fewer options.  While fashion advice directed toward women at least sometimes focused on emphasizing positive body features, men’s fashion advice seemed to boil down to how to fake your body into looking like the tall lean muscular v-shaped ideal.  The concept of embrace yourself didn’t exist in men’s fashion, as far as I could tell.  Thus men are left with the options of, obtain the desired male build, or don’t bother trying to be fashionable.  While less emphasis is appearences for men than women, the range of male bodies that are considered attractive is much narrower.  Men face their own set of pressures pertaining to their appearances, however unlike women, they lack the privilege of being able to admit to insecurity. This may arise from how men are typically discouraged from revealing any insecurity, or from how body image issues are simply assumed to be 'woman’s problems'.  Body image issues are certainly not only a 'woman's problem' though.   Statistics about men with unhealthy body image issues vary widely due to limited research and understanding.  Those statistics that I could find indicate that 10 million American men, and 20 million American women will have an eating disorder at some point in their lives.  Despite men being a significant portion of the population with eating disorders, male body image is studied much less than female body image.  A 2011 study showed that 40%-60% of elementary school girls fear they are getting too fat.  However the National Eating Disorder Association itself failed to provide a matching statistic on elementary school boys.  The time has come to actually address male body image issues, and undermine the stigma associated with them, only then can they actually be dealt with.  So today, we will include men in our discussion of body positive ways to dress.

Honestly, I love being short, it allows me to quickly move through crowds, and ensures that I can be in the front at any event without offending fellow spectators.  Despite what society may tell you about tall people being more successful overall, being short is neither a bad nor unattractive trait.  Unfortunately, clothing is designed for taller people and may often fit poorly or in an unflattering way.  Here lies the problem for short people, stubby, not short looks bad.   Clothing not properly scaled down just makes short people look stubby.  As long as you use clothing to assert that your body is indeed proportional, you will never appear short standing on your own, more importantly, you will not look stubby. 

Eli is feeling monochoromatic right now
he is also feeling like a proportionally sized
human being

For those of you presenting as men, you will want to keep material close to the body.  Excess material will make you look like a small child in his father’s suit, and it takes very little extra material for it to be excessive on your smaller bodies.  The solution is narrow cut clothing.  Dark slim cut jeans and dark colored corduroys with their subtle vertical stripes, are both slimming and lengthening.  Again you do not need to be taller, but you do need to invert the illusion of stubbiness that comes with a small body.  Aim for pants that fit higher over the hip bone than ones you typically encounter, the slightly raised pant line gives extra length to your legs.  There is a rather disturbing trend of pants ending just above the ankle, do not venture down that path.  The reason you want a slim long pair of pants is because it allows you to utilize your entire height and actual body shape to show that you are perfectly proportional.  Clothing that breaks up the line of your body, such as pants the stop above the ankles break you into tiny stubby pieces.  You are certainly more than tiny stubby pieces of person.  Conversely make sure your pants aren’t so long as to bunch up at your ankles, this screams to the world “my pants are too long because I am small.”  

The bright v neck shirt and dark pants
call attention to Eli's torso, which is
floating some undisclosed distance
above the ground

Moving up to the torso you will want to either continue the long vertical line you established with your pants, or  call attention to your upper body with brighter colors or small prints.  The bright colors will draw the eye up away from the ground and show off your appropriately proportioned torso.  If you are into prints, make sure to wear small ones.  As you are smaller than most, you must scale down the size of everything, including the patterns you wear,  to avoid looking like your clothing intends to devour you.  If you prefer to rock a sleeker look by continuing the long lines you established with your pants, opt for a matching or complimentary dark shirt.  Some interesting dark colors to wear when monochromatic black and grey get boring are, ox blood(dark red), mustard (dark yellow), Navy and Olive (dark yellowy green).   Vertical stripes are a given option; I shouldn’t even have to mention this, but try to wear subtle ones if you opt for vertical stripes.  Many people know vertical stripes are meant to create the illusion of height, so they may ‘catch’ you trying to look taller.  Shirts should be a light material, again too much material is bad.  Button downs, and v necks are best.  

Here is a rare excuse to add bulkier material.  The white
stripe provided by the shirt under the button down creates
a lengthening vertical line, in spite of the heavy material
in the flannel.

If you are cold, or wish to wear light colors once in a while, you can wear an open dark slim cut jacket with a light shirt underneath.  This creates one long line through your torso that elongates you, it can also be slimming if you desire that effect as well.  If you want to wear a sports jacket or cardigan, look for ones with fewer buttons and only do the bottom ones, this will make your torso look longer and call more attention to it.  Aim for jackets the closely match the color or hue of your pants to maintain the long vertical line you had been working so hard to create.  

Isn't he snazzy with his bright collar
peeking out to say "Hello, I am on a
proportional person!"

If you want to wear snazzy accessories like scarves, wear them somewhat loosely so that they do not hang close to your neck, otherwise you get a stubby sad neck.  The scarf or shirt under your jacket can be the bright point in your clothing.  It will call attention to your gloriously proportional torso and secretly make the eye move upward.  For suits you need to adjust everything down to match your body.  Instead of leaving an inch of space between the lower end of the suit sleeve and the end of the shirtsleeve, leave half an inch of space here.  Instead of two inches of space above the ankles, only leave one.  Opt for the skinny suit and skinny tie if you are built for it.  If not just make sure your blazer matches your pants and falls just below your butt.  Avoid bow ties and visible belts and they break you into little chunks.

The dark jeans and cropped jacket help me look proportional
even when trapped in a shopping cart.

For those of you presenting as women, there is less pressure to be tall than there is on men.  As with men you will benefit more from trying to look proportional than trying to look tall.  All of the advice to men still applies to you.  Wearing dark matching colors will make your body look long, allowing you to take full advantage of the height you have.  As with men, narrow cuts, minimizing excess fabric, wearing smaller prints, and putting brighter colors higher up on your body will all undermine the dreaded illusion of stubbiness.  Anything high-waisted is your friend because it raises where your legs appear to start.  This is especially useful for shorts and short skirts.  Shorts and short skirts are comfortable in hot weather, but break up your legs.  Opting for their high-waisted counterparts avoids this effect.  Conveniently miniskirts will typically not appear notably short on you because all of you is small.  People have the interesting tendency to think you are wearing longer skirts than you actually are, so you get a bit more leeway on wearing short skirts, while still appearing professional,  than your taller friends will.  In general, you want to stick to skirts and pants that reach to your feet, or those that stop at mid thigh, or even just above the knee in the case of business skirts.   Tea length skirts, capris and anything between mini and maxi length will break you up.

The high waisted shorts and bright scarf work together
to sassily restore my height and call attention upward.

The high low skirt adds legnth and
moves in an interesting way when you walk.

High low skirts can be good as long as the high part is actually very high and the low end reaches toward your feet.  Whether you are comfortable in high shoes is up to you.  I have a deep love of high heels and wear them a few times a week.  For those of you that want to wear heels, invest the money in a comfortable pair, and practice walking in them.  Walking will be much easier if you aren’t dying of pain the whole time, and you will look much trendier if you aren’t perpetually flat on your face.  You typically want to conceal the heels under a pair of matching pants or a matching skirt.  Nude heels, ones that match your skin tone will subtly restore length to your legs when you are wearing skirts and dresses that break them up.  Or course you can also just get awesome attention grabbing heels and show them off, they won’t create an illusion of length but they will still be fabulous, so it’s worth it.

No matter what you are wearing, it is important to invest in properly fitting clothing.  This may mean going to a taylor to get things hemmed differently so they fit properly.  Or it may mean buying clothing from the petite/ children's department.  You should not feel uncomfortable doing this, the clothing is likely cheaper than it would be in the adult department, and it may look better on you because it actually fits.  what matters is that you are happy with how you look, not where your clothing came from.

I hope this gave some of my fellow short people ideas on how to look awesome without pretending to be tall.  Let me know if you liked any of my suggestions, or send me pictures of you wearing my suggestions.