Body positivity is such a strange concept to me. There’s efforts to reclaim words while simultaneously calling them bad if used as an insult. Ideally, people wouldn’t be offended by someone describing their body with common descriptors, but socially there is so much value attributed to certain body types that it’s almost impossible to avoid having an emotional response of some kind to various descriptors.
For example, It’s not bad to be fat, but calling someone “fat” is almost universally considered a bad thing. The same definitely seems to go for the idea of being “short.”
I’m asking this question because I can’t put my finger on why but something seems to be different about the use of the term “short” from the use of the term “fat.” I think that part of it is how, to me at least, the term “fat” is so generic and hard to nail down to a discrete definition, implying that the word really doesn’t have a clear connection to reality. On the other hand, height is a single-dimensional number. You either are above a certain threshold, or you aren’t.
I recently learned that May 6th to May 10th is “short king week” because it’s 5’6" to 5’10" which then prompted me to search for the origins of “short king” and apparently the person most-credited with popularizing the term is Jaboukie Young-White who claims the term was meant to include all men under 6 feet tall. The average adult male height is 5’9" leaving men considered roughly average to be called “short” which is still considered an insult by many.
I dunno. As a term that was intended to champion body positivity compared with how the term is actually used, what do you think of “short king?”
I hate those pseudo feel-good tokenism bullshit, like “dad-bod”, or “short king”. Since they were said with good intentions, now I’m going to have to pretend that I appreciate a cactus slapped on my face.
Edit: Should’ve mentioned my height - it’s 5’6". I’ve been fat-shamed since I was a child, and it continues even to this day for being between normal and over-weight. I have social anxiety, I hear whispers towards me, and when there’s a loud laughter from some group in public, it puts me in a panicked state.
Your comment made me re-think this a bit, because I happen to know that the origin of “dad-bod” wasn’t patronizing but a word used by some straight women who find this body type attractive in men. I wonder if “short king” may have initially been used by people who were attracted to the attribute in men and wanted a nice sounding way to describe it. I’m totally with you when these phrases are used like you described, but I wonder how many people using these terms are genuinely attracted to the attributes they’re pointing out.
It was used by magazines that thought a dad body was an actor of his roid cycle.
What does that mean? “an actor of his roid cycle”?
Typically action star actors like Chris Hemsworth roid to get their body ready for a role and then after the movie is shot they cycle off and are a fatter and deflated but still muscular. People then see that body and think its a dad bod. A true dad bod is someone who does not have time to work out and therefore does not have massive shoulders and arms.
off* his roid cycle
Brilliantly put. It’s downright insulting nonsense.
I’m with you except that I aspire to a dad bod. It’s probably not in the cards, but I’m trying lol
My city’s most common tagging these days might be “dadbob”. I see it everywhere.