The buzzy new romantic drama Materialists by Korean-Canadian filmmaker Celine Song is stacked with celebrities like Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal. But it also features a twist that had my jaw on the floor.
Harry, the handsome, well-heeled and obscenely eligible bachelor played by Pascal, is covering up the fact that he had leg lengthening surgery to add six inches to his height. “It’s the legs, isn’t it?” he asks when matchmaker Lucy, played by Johnson, breaks up with him.
It’s not the first time a man’s stature has come up as a dating issue in TV and film. (Who else remembers when Sex and the City’s Samantha dated a hedge fund manager who shopped at the boys’ department in Bloomingdale’s?) This on-screen obsession is reflected in the real world, too, with Tinder currently trialling a new feature that would allow users to filter matches based on their height.
But the real-life rise of leg lengthening surgery is perhaps the bleakest and most dystopian expression of this apparently harmless preference. Once only administered as a medical necessity, it was first pioneered by a Russian doctor and taken up with enthusiasm in China as a cosmetic operation in the 2000s, where job ads still openly list height requirements. Now it’s become increasingly popular in America and Europe, with one market research firm estimating that the industry will be worth £6.4bn by 2030. Even in 2020, the BBC reported that almost every clinic it spoke to had seen a year-on-year increase in clients opting for the painful procedure, which can cost up to $250,000 (£186,100) in the US.
The idea behind leg lengthening is simple, the execution less so. Your legs are broken and metal rods are inserted into them, which are slowly and agonisingly forced apart over a period of months. Bone matter grows into the newly acquired space, eventually leading to a few extra inches. Health risks include joint problems, blood clots, difficulty walking or nerve injury.
Then there’s the lengthening itself, which often involves turning a metal key into the rods to gradually pull them apart, like you’re a victim in a particularly nightmarish Saw sequel. One Guardian journalist following a 5ft 6in man who flew to Turkey to have the op described the process as resembling “mediaeval torture”.
Let me preface what I am about to say with some possibly vital statistics: I am of perfectly average height. I’m a little over 5ft 5in. I will never know the trials of being a shorter than average person, let alone a shorter than average man. The facts are sobering: according to GQ, they are paid less and have fewer romantic prospects – and I don’t begrudge anyone opting for anything they perceive to optimise their chances in the hellish modern dating landscape.
But I’ve dated across the height spectrum, including more than a few short kings and tall queens, so I feel uniquely qualified to weigh in on the desirability of height. It simply shouldn’t matter. Some of the most roguishly charming men I’ve met have only stood a few inches above my eye level. I accept that I may be an outlier in this, but I firmly believe that charisma doesn’t come with a height cut-off – otherwise Tom Cruise would never have made it as a movie star.
What the explosion of interest in leg lengthening shows, however, is just how far tyrannical body ideals have permeated the mainstream for people of all genders. When I was growing up in the Noughties, teenage girls and women got it in the neck from all sides of the media. If you weren’t reading about Rihanna’s 25-minute underwear workout or celebs piling on the pounds in the press, you were being ordered by TV’s Trinny and Susannah to minimise your thunder thighs.
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The problems were manifold – you had to fix your waist, hair, skin and/or boobs – but the solution was simple. All you had to do was follow the advice of women’s mags and part with a bit of cash (okay, quite a lot of cash) to emerge a brand new you. And if you didn’t want to do it? Well, what are you: lazy, poor or both?
Now men are getting a taste of just how crushing these social pressures can be – and I feel sorry for them. Once upon a time, you had to simply live with the height you were blessed with. Now technology has shown that there’s actually a new horizon for you to aim upwards at.
I’m sure that the men undergoing this leg lengthening surgery have found it personally transformative, but I can’t help but question just how far we are now encouraging people to go in the pursuit of our twisted beauty standards. When any person happily goes through excruciating pain for an inch or two of height, it says more about the society that idolises it than the person breaking their bones to get there.
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