The post that was originally called

See, so the way this works, this process of creative regurgitation for the blogger known as Phoenixism…ideas pop into my head all day long. Some days more than others. Since I’m afflicted with the shittiest memory ever, many of my great thoughts perish and never reach masterpiece status. Sad but true…many of my blog posts are aborted for want of memory. As part of a self-designed scheme I hatched to help me cope with my many shortcomings, I began carrying a notebook around. So now when an idea pops into my head I transfer it directly to paper in scribbled and illegible writing.

When I come home I promptly type out the day’s idea load and save it as a draft in my Word Press dashboard. Pure genius. So I think. Currently I have about 45 drafts sitting there, waiting to see the light of cyberday. I think of them as 45 fertilized eggs waiting for a warm and nutrient-rich womb in order to become fetuses and beyond. My precious ideas.

I’ve been kicking one around for some time, and it’s about to finally be fertilized and implanted. My working title has been “short men and fat women.” Catchy titles are my forte.

What’s it about?

Duh.

Short men and fat women. What else? Do you know any? What do they have in common? This is like one of those annoying SAT analogy questions.

Why for one thing, they are not exactly the hottest dating commodities, are they? Even if you have a hankering for one, you probably don’t want your friends to know. They can be a secret treat, a secret desire, but in the world of dating competition they do not garner much respect.

I was toying with the concept for some time, but it wasn’t until this afternoon that I read a post over on Jack Donovan’s blog entitled The Paradox of a Warrior’s Heart and something clicked in my head regarding an idea I had about short men and fat women which had hibernated in the dark recesses of my brain for a long time.

Basically Donovan relates a comment made on one of his posts over on The Spearhead. Essentially, as I detail it here, it is now third-hand, so I’ll attempt to summarize it the best I can.

The comment Donovan publishes in his blog details a lab test in which doves (“peaceful”, non-aggressive birds) are confined to a very small space over time and the ensuing chaos that occurs when they peck each other to death. The very intriguing reasoning behind the behavior of these very timid animals which normally fly away at the slightest provocation? It is because of their evolutionary escape mechanism (wings!) that the birds have not learned or developed a sense of “mercy.” Awesome stuff. I’d never thought of it in those terms, but it makes complete sense and I’ve noticed such behavior in varying degrees throughout the animal (including human) kingdom without formulating a clear articulation of the phenomena. Doves are contrasted with wolves which are fierce fighters not averse to aggression; yet wolves have evolved a behavior trait of surrender involving exposing their neck to the other wolf. This action immediately stops fights from proceeding further. Your typical domesticated dog displays similar submissive behavior, usually in the context of play.

The moral of the story being that aggression breeds a greater sense of passivity than the passivity displayed by creatures whose normal nature is one of passivity. Can’t have the yin without the yang…and a greater level of yin necessarily insinuates greater levels of yang.

Doves, wolves…what about short men and fat women?

Well the focal point of my idea concerns short men (because I am one) rather than fat women; fat women are imported into this theory in order to present a backdrop against which I can frame the thought process initiated by belonging to a generally physically undesirable population.

I asked myself a question: who has it worse in the mating game? Short men or fat women?

Because our human mind is fixated with ranking, ordering…worst, best, smallest, largest. It’s a natural extension of the human cognitive chain. And a thought occurred to me which really has no bearing on the question at hand.

Unnatural behavior patterns and habit precede an obese woman.

Short men precede unnatural behavior patterns and habits.

In this respect, I find the “Napoleon complex” the more fascinating concept here.

I believe it is more likely for unusual behavioral patterns to manifest themselves in short men because the structure and expectations of our modern society marginalize the short male due to its inherent hierarchical assemblage.

Without debating the veracity of a Napoleon complex, I would suggest that it does indeed exist based on common experience. And much of it is owing to what I believe is society’s “dove-ization” of the short male. Short males, bred and trained into passivity and submission in the face of a taller and more powerful force represented by the world at large, have not learned the art of “being in charge” and thus lack the ability to conjure up any kind of “mercy” or masterful sense of benevolent humility.

Indeed, if the world was populated by nothing but short men much of this behavioral eccentricity would vanish in a generation. Our personality is not formed in a vacuum; our surroundings shape it, mold it, scar it…and unfortunately, a short man’s personality is formed amidst a sea of vague derision (and sometimes, not so vague).

I find it interesting that short men who have somehow escaped the Tall Matrix for whatever reason usually aren’t afflicted by height sensitivities. For instance guys who grow up in predominantly Mexican communities (such as myself) where the median height is normally lower than average. Most of the people I went to school with, while being slightly taller than me, were not towering by any stretch of the imagination. Even within my own familial network, I experienced minimal amounts of height differential and I was never conscious of being short.

Astonishingly, I didn’t consider myself short until I entered Cal Poly, Pomona which was predominantly white (and tall) in 1982. Having never experienced or internalized the height factor (as in my lack of it), never exceeding 5’5″ didn’t bother me. However I can very well imagine the effect growing up amongst people who routinely surpass the 6′ mark would have on the evolution of my personality.

And while I never became the “dove” that so many short men are prone to become, I nevertheless retained a realistic sense of my own limitations. Despite this, it was inevitable that I would begin to buy into and become affected by the height matrix as I made my way into the “outside” world as an adult.