My old room mate once told me that there was a test to see if someone was a “little person”.
The test was to try and have them clap their hands above their head. Apparantly “little people” physically can’t do this.
This doesn’t exactly sound scientific, is there any chance of this being true?
MtM
Little People as in "Darby O’Gill & the Little People " ??
You need to understand a distinction here. A person who is much less than average height who has a normally proportioned body is called a midget. How much less than average height is a slightly arbitrary distinction. The organization Little People of America doesn’t let anyone over 4’10" join, for instance. A person who is much less than average height and has limb distortion is a dwarf. Limb distortion means that arms and legs are considerably shorter in proportion to the rest of the body than you might otherwise expect.
I was just trying to be PC by using the term “Little People”.
So it sounds like dwarfs can’t clap their hands above their head, and midgets can.
Is this correct?
MtM
Not by the folks at the Little People of America website:
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around:
It would be useless and tactless to do such a test on an adult, but not necessarily on a child, if you were a parent, pediatrician or someone else with a legitimate interest.
It’s my understanding that a genetic test will determine if you have a mutation that causes dwarfism. You usually don’t need to ask a person to clap their hands over their head to determine if they are a dwarf. It’s obvious that they have a limb and head distortion
Your old roommate is in error. The situation he describes is only typical of some more common types of dwarfism. Generally, anybody roughly 4’10" or shorter at adult height qualifies as a “little person”.
Well, IIRC, very young children can’t clap their hands over their head either. (Babies’ heads are so huge proportionally to the rest of their body, and this evens out gradually as children grow.) So, I don’t think it would be a very good test…although it might be an indicator that a child is not growing normally if they can’t clap their hands over their heads at an age when most of their peers can.
I was going to jump in on the “midget” issue but other people beat me to it. There are people out there who don’t mind it, there are a WHOLE LOT more people who do, so it’s a term best avoided. To some it’s as bad as “nigger.” I can’t say I’m terribly fond of “little person” either, but it’s better than “midget.” “Dwarf” is fine with me and with most LPs I’ve run into, but not all. I don’t buy into that “people-first” BS myself. Of course “vertically challenged” is a joke, though I’ve seen it used seriously here and there.
sigh All right. I am 4’2". I have a VERY rare condition, the most obvious manifestation of which is severe scoliosis. You can look at http://www.idiom.com/~cecilie/ for the best description I’ve ever seen of it (I’ve got SMD) plus stuff about a couple of other related conditions.
And “midget” bugs the HELL out of me. In my experience, when people were/are making fun of me, that’s the first insult called.
Perhaps recently the term “midget” has come to be considered offensive, but that is a more or less recent thing. I’m 4’11" incidentally, not short enough to join the Little People of America, but short enough that I have had “midget” and other things yelled at me while walking down the street minding my own business. I learned in grad school at two different universities to stay away from the area next to the campus bars on Friday and Saturday night because some drunken jerk would feel that it was his right to insult me. I think that I would have found “dwarf,” “little person,” or “person of short stature” just as insulting as “midget.” The point was that I was minding my own business, not asking anyone for an accessment of my height. Incidentally, I was one of the founders of the short rights movement back in the early '70’s. Take a look at page 61 in The Height of Your Life by Ralph Keyes. One thing that I find slightly annoying is the first time any new doctor I see asks me if there’s some medical condition that caused my shortness. I have to patiently explain that my father is 5’5" and my mother is 4’10", so I’m not that far from the height that would be expected. I’m short because of my genetic heritage, not any medical condition.
I’m six-and-a-half feet tall.
Indoors, I am usually physically unable to clap my hands above my head.
There’s a ceiling in the way.
I suppose I must be a ‘little person’.
I’m about 5’0-5’1 (5’3-5’4 about 99% of the time because of my shoes) and I still get called midget. I know lots and lots of girls around my height though, and for some reason I think it’s far more accepted for a girl to be this petite than it is for a boy.
Interesting, according the the LP of A website, the Latin pop singer Shakira is one inch away from joining…;).
I think for LPA’s purposes you have to have a medical reason to be that short, so if you just come from a REALLY short family, even if you’re 4’10" you don’t fall under their definition.
And yes, midget being offensive does seem to be a recent thing, but I wonder if that’s largely because people are finally being TOLD that it is. And while on I’d rather be called “midget” in an honeslty insulting way instead of “person of short stature” in a syrupy-sweet patronizing way, I only speak for myself. You might want to avoid it unless you know the person in question doesn’t mind it.
“honestly”
:smack:
Vixenation writes:
> I’m about 5’0-5’1 (5’3-5’4 about 99% of the time because of my shoes) and I still get called midget.
I read this post several times before I realized something. Vixenation, are you a woman? If you are, not only are you not a midget, a dwarf, a little person, a person of short stature, or any other such term, you’re not even particularly short. The average adult American female is 5’ 4.0". The average adult American male is 5’ 9.1". You are only three and a half inches less than average, so I wouldn’t call you anything except slightly shorter than average. I get really ticked by people who make a big deal of people being shorter than average, but who don’t even seem to notice that other people are much taller than average. On another thread someone (a male, I think), who said that they were 6’ 5", was talking about a singer that they saw on TV and remarked that she was “incredibly short.” In fact, this singer is 5"1". So a guy that was almost 8" taller than average was calling a girl who was 3" less than average “incredibly short.”
I think as well that people generally are very surprised to find that midget is less offensive than dwarf, and that little people is actually a PC term. I would probably have guessed “little people, dwarf, midget” in order of most-to-least offensive, if I had not learned differently on various TV shows.
Wendell Wagner, yes I am a woman (19 years old). I guess when the average height of your female classmates from junior high to college is about 5’7-8, you tend to look much shorter. 
Did you also grow up among Dutch descendants, Vixenation? I grew up in a communty with many Dutch descendants–6’ women were not uncommon in that town. I was always a shrimp growing up…one of the shortest people in my class, until I moved to Minnesota in 9th grade. We had to line up by height for a class picture, and I automatically filed towards the short end. It turns out that I actually fit right in the middle. I was about 5’3" then and am 5’6" now.
My mom is 5’ tall. She works with many women of Asian descent, and she says she’s taller than many of them. So, yeah, 5’ tall does not equal “midget” or “little person” at all, especially for a woman. I think people are just teasing you :).