Heya playa, heightism is a conversation that has recently come back to the surface, especially
with the spread of the viral video at Bagel Boss where Chris Morgan kinda flipped out
and got super upset at a woman behind the counter because he thought she was making
fun of his height.
So, today as a tall person I'm 6'1", I want to talk about my perspective on heightism,
on people who are shorter getting upset because of their height and feeling disadvantaged
in this world and what we can do, what everyone else in this world can do to handle these
type of situations and how to approach these type of people.
For those of you that are new here, my name is Josh and every single week I make videos
sharing tips, ideas and stories teaching you how to be your best self.
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Now just a bit of backstory here, this isn't the first time that Chris Morgan has got upset
at someone behind the counter and flipped out on them because of height related issues.
This has happened before, he has a video over on his YouTube channel.
"I come in here to get a coffee and to get a donut... you don't say how you doing?
The first thing out of your mouth is what's my height?".
I do want to dive into the Bagel Boss video, kind of break it down, watch it with you guys
and kind of see where I think the issues actually lie.
Alright so I got the video loaded up here, let's watch it together and kind of do a walkthrough
play by play.
"You degrade women, why is that ok?
Degrade... why is it ok for women to say oh you're 5 feet on dating sites, you should
be dead.
That's ok?"
Ok, let's pause it right there.
There's two pieces to that that I kind of want to dive deeper into.
The first one being when the woman asked why is it ok to degrade women, now Chris kind
of just ignores and blocks out this question and dives deeper into well, I'm doing this
action because this is happening to me and this is a defensive mechanism that a lot of
people use.
When they get called out for something that they do, they tend to justify it for themselves.
They tell themselves well, I'm only doing that because this thing is happening to me.
It's possible that removed from this situation, if you were to just ask Chris on any normal
given day "Hey, is it ok to degrade women?" he'd probably say no but given that he's already
upset, he's already angry.
The video starts with him already being angry at what happened, yea he's gonna justify any
reason he has.
No matter what anyone says he's doing or accuses him of, he's just going to deflect it and
kind of focus on his own hurt.
Now if it is true and people are making death threats towards him, that is not ok.
I would think though that it's more than likely that the type of threats he's receiving are
along the lines of "you're so short, your genes are never gonna pass on" or "you're
so short, no one's ever gonna wanna be with you and you're gonna die alone".
Those type of comments which really dive deep into his character which attack him as a person
and the person usually saying those type of things isn't really aware of how they're affecting
someone else.
So if he is receiving those type of comments, I can understand where he's coming from but
like I said, his reaction doesn't justify the the answer to the initial question, is
it ok to harass and attack women just because women give you death threats or women make
fun of your height.
"Who said that to you here?
Nobody.
Women in general have said it on the dating sites.
You think I'm making that sh-- up?
Everywhere I go I get the same f--king smirk.
With the biting lip."
Ok, let's pause it there and kind of break that down a little bit.
So in this situation, the woman he's talking to asks him who's making these claims?
Who's saying these things?
And he kind of diverts it and says women in general.
This is a bit point I think we need to think deeper about.
A lot of times when we're experiencing something in person, it can kind of trigger and bring
back past hurt and for Chris I think that's a shining example with his response.
When he's asked hey who said this, he say's women in general, this idea that he's experienced
it for so many years for so long kind of comes out in this moment.
It comes out in the moment where he just feels like the person behind the counter is doing
this specific thing that's triggering that type of response from him.
And the main issue with that is that it doesn't give an opportunity for a person to handle
the problem that they're experiencing in the moment.
By reflecting on past trauma and bringing in all these other issues, you make it so
convoluted and grand that there's no way you can tackle the challenge that's in front of
you.
Instead, you just feel so overwhelmed by the hurt that no, it's impossible to handle.
This is something I've come across a lot in having conversations with people that are
short or from the incel community or from MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), a lot of
times you ask them simple straight forward question, what's the specific situation you
encountered and how did it make you feel but they tend to bring in lots of random statistics,
and things going on and headlines and all these other things that kind of fill the whole
conversation with a laundry list of things that aren't specifically relevant to what
they're experiencing because it makes it easier for them to justify their feelings.
And I know what this is like, if you're a guy that's short it can be easy to say well
look, women love tall guys and they're always choosing tall guys, women have never choose
men just because women don't like me because of my height and maybe you find something
else about yourself that women don't like you for.
And you start pulling out all of these reasons, you start beating yourself down to the point
where you feel like you're insignificant but spoiler alert guys, that's not true.
Now one of the important things that he mentioned is that the woman kind of covered her face
and kind of smirked, kind of looked at other people and things like that.
When you're dealing with your own insecurities, you tend to be hyper aware of what other people
are doing.
You tend to focus on the little body cues and social dynamics of it all simply because
you're nervous and worried that people won't accept you for who you are so you're constantly
trying to make sure that hey, are they giving off any signals at all that mean that I'm
just lesser of a person?
And the other people in the store said no, the woman was just smiling, he was kind of
reading too much into it but I do want to be a little bit realistic here, I've seen
this too.
I've seen people do this all the time.
Whether it's a homeless person on the street where people just kind of look at each other
like woah, that guy is weird or a short person or a person that's just kind of dressed kind
of funky or is just doing something that's out of the ordinary.
People tend to look to other people for this communication, kind of sense of connection
where they say like hey look, you and me are both normal in this situation with this weird
person, let's look at each other, let's pass looks to each other just so we can kind of
confirm that hey, I'm not alone in this experience.
Whether or not that happened in this situation, I can't really confirm but I do know these
type of situations do happen.
I'm somewhat of a tall guy like I said, I'm 6'1" so I've seen short people get looked
at weird.
I've seen people kind of smirk and laugh at them and kind of make eye contact with other
people like look at this weirdo.
But that's a major issue I think a lot of people kind of have to realize that they're
doing.
Look, there's nothing wrong with people trying to connect with things that they feel uncomfortable
or weirded out about.
It's a normal part of human life.
The problem and the challenge here really lies in how Chris handles these situations.
Being on the receiving end, knowing that other people are looking at you in a mocking type
of way how do you respond in a way that you can feel more secure with yourself.
Now another key piece to this video is when someone else steps in and tells him to just
shut up.
A lot of times when you're dealing with insecurity and hurt or when we're angry, when someone
comes in and tells you and commands you to do something, yea, you're not really going
to respond to that in kindness.
You're not really aware at that point.
I think it's safe to say at this point in the video he is totally in his zone, he is
in his world where he's upset and he's hurt and nothing anyone else can say to kind of
try to facilitate the conversation towards him calming down is really gonna happen.
I think there's a different approach that needs to be had.
What people unintentionally do in these situations is actually escalate the problems by telling
someone to shut up and stop talking, you're not gonna get them to stop.
Instead what you actually need to do is interrupt the pattern of what's happening.
A pattern interrupt would work something like this.
Imagine this person is going off about their height and yelling at people and fighting,
imagine if someone just started singing a song in the middle of it all.
And everyone else just started singing along too.
Imagine if people just broke out into "Sweet Caroline" in the middle of the store.
What do you think would happen?
Because that's something so incredibly random, you're breaking up the pattern.
In his mind he's going to think "What the heck is going on?" and he's going to start
to forget about the fact that he's angry about the height and start wondering why are these
people singing?
Trust me that would have been a different kind of viral video.
Our ego tends to take over when we try to control the situation by telling someone what
to do and he even mentioned control to an extent here, he says "You're not God or my
boss or my father" which seems to me like Chris is a person that responds very well
to authority that he respects.
And the fact that you're an outside person telling him what to do, you're not an authority
he respects.
And the reason why Chris tells the guy hey let's step outside is because that anger has
nowhere to go.
It's been bottled up because his actual concerns haven't been addressed.
The fact that he feels this person smirked in this kind of way and everyone dismissed
him for it, yeah, he's gonna turn to fighting because he needs to let that aggression out
somehow.
Whether it's him throwing something on the ground or him storming out of the place, either
way he's gonna find an outlet for it and it's not going to be a healthy one.
"Shut your mouth, you're not God or my father or my boss.
Dude, you wanna step outside?
You wanna step outside?
Huh?
I'm not scared of you pal."
He get's in the guys face and then someone else tries to control him and tell him what
to do and of course his anger reacts.
"You shut up too.
Go ahead and attack me" Tackled him!
And then there's a fight as is expected.
Ok, the guy tells him you don't talk to people like that and we need to break this down.
This is exactly what I'm talking about, another guy steps in and tries to be the authority
in this situation telling him what to do.
Now he's already backed into a corner, he knows he has nowhere to go, everyone is against
him and all he can do is kind of lash out.
It's either he just storms out of the place or he gets into a fight with someone.
He only sees two options for himself here because his insecurities are driving his thought
process.
Not actual reason.
And even though I think he's 100% wrong in how he handled his anger, he turned it towards
aggression and rage, imagine how the situation would have walked up to him, put their hand
on his shoulder and said "dude, I get where you're coming from man.
It's not easy.
Listen, don't worry about these people here, you're a little upset man, let's go outside,
let's cool off".
Imagine if someone approached him like a person and tried to kind of deescalate the situation
by bringing him out of it.
Sometimes that actually works because when the person who is angry and upset and hurt
feels like there's someone that connects with them and understands their struggle and their
hurt they're way more willing to be trusting of that person so imagine if someone had been
a person that he could kind of open up to and share that and talk about it and kind
of say his angry piece.
Even though he was 100% wrong, even though the way he treated the other people was wrong,
even though his perceptions of the situation may have been wrong imagine if someone talked
to him like he was just another person.
If they pulled him out of the store, if he got his bagels and left without... as the
video kind of plays on which we... we're not gonna kind of go over it here but he gets
upset, takes the bagels, leaves, walks out of the store imagine if someone had walked
out with him, deescalated the situation, how do you think things would have played out
differently?
In my mind, there's a larger discussion about short guys and dating that needs to happen
here, in fact I dive more into it and talk about short guys and dating in this video
over here but ultimately we have to remember this.
Every single one of us wants to be loved for who we are, we want to feel like other people
accept us for what we bring to the table.
And when people mock us for being short, people make fun of our height or any of our characteristics
it can make us feel insecure.
The real challenge comes in how we deal with those insecurities.
Do we lash out and be aggressive towards other people or do we recognize that the people
making fun of us for what we're dealing with are suffering in their own way because they
don't have the skills to be compassionate enough to communicate with us.
Chris is just one example of a guy who feels slighted by everyone else simply because of
something they have no control over: his height.
For other people it's the fact that they can't grow facial hair or the fact that their face
might not look as good as they want it to.
Either way guys, if you feel down about yourself and you feel like no one loves you for who
you are check out this vide over here because I think it will be super helpful for you in
taking that journey forward into accepting yourself.
On that note guys, I'll catch you next time.
As always, love and peace.