In reading about the “Ashley Treatment” I have come across this statement:
I had a girlfriend in middle school (ages 10-13) who I know was given the pill because she was already 5’10" tall at age 11. However, according to this quote it sounds much more common than I am familiar with. It sounds more like it was used to keep girls from getting over 5’5" rather than over 6’.
So in the petri dish of my experience, I know of one girl that had this sort of treatment. How about you? Tossing off a comment like this in an article without me being able to scream CITE! is frustrating and I truly wonder if it was such a common non-issue.
I’ll wander off and mentally throw this into all the other stupid shit done to/by women until I can know that it wasn’t just so that Little Susie could get a date for the prom, assuming she didn’t wear her glasses.
I’d never heard of “The Ashley Treatment” until your post, but the links are interesting. Re: your question, I didn’t have a brain problem or anything like that, but I was given hormones in the 60s to force my period to start earlier. Via X-rays of my hands, they determined that I was supposed to grow to up 6’ 3". At the time I started the treatment, I was 5’ 10". I am now 6’. The concept is that once your period starts, you stop (or slow down) growing in height.
I had read a magazine article about it, and asked my mother if I could do it, so that’s how that got started.
Given the background that I was relentlessly taunted throughout my chlidhood for being tall, and I felt like a freak, this process really made a big change in my life and in my happiness. However, now that I’m an adult, I don’t think there’s wrong about being a 6’ 3" woman (my cousin’s height)
I’m trying to google it now but this was on NPR this week about a 9 year old little girl who is severely handicapped, and the parents gave her massive doses of estrogen (doc prescribed) to stunt her growth so they could carry her around and take care of her easier as she aged.
see here
That’s interesting. Do you regret the hormone therapy? Because while there is nothing really wrong with being 6’3" as a woman, I wouldn’t want to be that tall personally.
No, I don’t regret it at all. I am still a tall woman and I enjoy being tall. During my pre-teens, teens and twenties, I think that mentally, being “tall” rather than “extremely tall” made a big difference to me, given all the teasing I endured growing up. How would I personally feel now (at age 51) if I were 6’3"? Probably fine (although it would be even more difficult to find clothes that fit).
That is precisely the story that sparked the OP’s question, but as I read it the OP is interested in the all-too-brief mention made of using estrogen therapy on otherwise healthy, normally-developing young women without any disabilities (except a fear they would grow too tall). The article you pointed people to doesn’t seem to discuss that.