Today, Explained - I wish I was a little bit taller

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

I wish I was a baller. I wish there was a doc who’d break my legs, I would call her. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and edited by Sean Rameswaram, who also hosted. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today Explained, Sean Ramos for him. Usually we do the credits at the end of the show, but today, for reasons, we're going to start with them. So today's show was mixed and mastered by Paul Robert Mounsey. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard. Amanda Llewellyn helped with the recording, and the episode was produced by Miles Bryan, who happens to be the tallest producer at Today Explained.

Miles, say hello to everyone. Hello. This is important because today's show is about short people and short people believe that tall people have it made in the shade. Miles, is it true? They're unfortunately right. I think life is much easier being tall. I feel like everything I've wanted or tried to do has been slightly easier because I'm six foot three and not five foot three. Today's show is about a bone breaking procedure shorter men in America are going through to be just a few inches taller and how COVID-19

made it much easier to get the procedure. That's coming up on Today Explained. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with Bet MGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about Bet MGM. Download the app today and discover why bet MGM is your basketball home for the season raise your game to the next level this year with bet MGM a sports book worth a slam

dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA bet MGM.com for terms and conditions must be 19 years of age or older to wager Ontario only please play responsibly if you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario My name is Chris Giamali, and I'm an articles editor at GQ. Chris, you wrote an article recently that kind of stopped or broke the internet. I can't tell which. Tell me, what was it about? What did you want to tell the world with this piece of writing?

Yeah, so I've long been fascinated with this procedure called cosmetic leg lengthening. Basically, it's this super gnarly surgery you can get done where they break your legs and it results in you gaining anywhere from three to six inches of height. And I'm guessing a lot of people in our audience just heard that this was a possibility for the first time. You break your legs to gain a few inches of height. Yeah, that's correct. It's like the most gruesome sounding plastic surgery I've ever heard of. I first stumbled upon it like, you know, 15 years ago, because I'm a short non-king myself, and Googled how to be taller as an adult and stumbled upon it. So this procedure has been around for a long time,

but actually in the last five years or so, they've made huge technological advances in it where you can get it done very discreetly. And you could basically lie to everyone in your life that I fell down and broke my hip in the bathtub and they would be none the wiser that you actually got it done. Is there some sort of procedure where you break your hip and then get two to three inches taller or something?

You know, what's really interesting about it is one of the responses I saw to this article was that people were like, I would totally notice if you came back three inches taller. But I don't know that's true. You know, like sometimes it's like one of your close friends gets a haircut and you can't really tell. You're like, something's different about you. I'm not sure what it is, but something's different for you. And it's like, oh your close friends gets a haircut and you can't really tell you're like something's different about you i'm not sure what it is but something's different for you and it's like oh they got bangs like we think we're more perceptive than we are and you know what's interesting about a lot of the mostly guys who are getting this procedure done is they're not telling anyone that they're actually getting it so they they're just showing up, coming out of the work from home COVID era now, suddenly three inches taller, which is wild. Who's getting this surgery?

There are now hundreds of guys in the US alone who are getting it done every year. One thing that's important to note is the procedure is ridiculously expensive. It's an elective surgery, so you're not going to be covered by insurance. And the base model, which basically entails getting your femurs broken, costs $75,000 alone. And so which guys out there can afford that? So all sorts of guys, a lot of tech workers, people from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, PayPal, you name it. It seems you know, it seems to be spreading a little virally throughout the tech community right now. A lot of CEOs, often shorter men,

who are looking for a little bit of stature. A lot of trans men who want to feel more like themselves. Some actors, there's a news anchorman. Basketball players are actually getting it too. Whoa. You kind of lose the fast twitch muscles that are required to actually play sports. Like maybe you're going to be a little bit taller or something,

but you know, have those Kevin Durant legs all of a sudden, but it doesn't necessarily give you the skills or the explosiveness that you sort of need to succeed. So it's really risky if you're an athlete looking to get it done. It sounds like a modern convention, but how long has this kind of procedure been around? Tell me where this comes from. You know, like all cosmetic procedures, it sort of started off as a way to solve real

problems. Like say, you know, you had a deformity or, you know, your left foot was shorter than your right foot or something like that. And, you know, like boob jobs and Botox and all that kind of stuff, it's sort of found its way to people who just want to look like a hotter version of themselves. I guess that's inevitable with any of these sort of elective surgeries. And it's more gruesome than all the other ones, but I kind of suspect that it's going to be normalized within the next five to 10 years. Tell us about the procedure. I believe you witnessed a procedure. I met up with Dr. Kevin Debevarshad, who's at the Limb Plastics Institute in Las Vegas. So I'm Dr. Kevin Debevarshad. I'm an orthopedic surgeon with a fellowship training in limb deformity and limb lengthening surgery. He let me into his operating room, which was hilarious because there's this patient who's passed out, his junk is taped off, and he's

in the middle of the room and they're blasting music. And I kid you not, like it was ushers my way that was playing right when I entered. And I was like, dude, are we at the club or are we in a surgery room right now? Like it was it was kind of like that. You know, we need, you know, a little bit of background. We don't like complete silence and that kind of stuff. A lot of surgeons listen to some music to kind of keep themselves entertained as they kind of do the same procedure they do every single day, every day of their life. The surgery basically goes like this. So the patient is out for the whole thing and the doctor starts a break in the femur by making a couple of incisions in your leg using a device called the reamer,

which is basically this handheld drill that has like a two foot long drill bit in it. And he inserts it in the leg to start the break and starts drilling a hole down the center of the bone so he can insert the nail inside. And when he pulled the reamer out, like I kid you not, it was like Jack Nicholson taking out his comically long pistol from when he was playing the Joker in the first Batman movie. Come on, you gruesome son of a bitch. Come to me. I was just like, this defies the laws of physics. Like that went to another dimension. I don't know what you were drilling, but it somehow fit in there.

Then he inserts the nail into the leg using a guide wire and some x-rays. And like, you know, there's people chattering all around him and they sort of move with the mechanical efficiency of an F1 pit crew. Like it's so orchestrated, so perfect and really, you know, well done. Funniest part of the surgery is once the nail is inserted and screws are inserted in place, he has to break the leg entirely. So he inserts something called the osteotome, which is basically this razor sharp chisel into the leg and starts hammering. And Dr. D is like talking to me casually the whole time, like he's hanging a picture frame. He's like, sometimes it takes one break to do this. Other times it takes 10 and he's just hammering the leg. And I was like, bro, I think you should be

looking. You don't, you don't want to be throwing no-look passes while you're doing surgery right now. But he's the best in the world at this thing. He could probably do this in his sleep. And he completed the whole right leg alone in under 38 minutes, which I thought was insane. Okay. And left leg 38 minutes too? Yeah, they kicked me out for that. Something in the COVID protocols didn't allow for 39 minutes or something, I guess. But yeah, I watched one leg and I feel

like I got the picture from there. Were you around when the victim regained consciousness? The patient, no, he woke up, he looked like a mannequin stuck in the back of a garbage truck the whole time. So I was like, this isn't a real person. Like they staged this like the moon landing or something for me. But no, I wasn't around for that. Woke up two hours later, I'm told. Very athletic person, athletic build. And, you know, they wake up in a haze.

And it's when they wake up that the real work can sort of begin. Because it's several months of PT as your muscles, like I kind of compare it to the skin on a drum. Like your bones are lengthening by a millimeter a day, but your muscles, your nerves, your skin are all elongating and being stretched out sort of like the skin on a drum. That's incredibly painful. You have to do a lot of stretching, a lot of massage work, and a lot of, you know, it's a lot of discipline on

the patient's part to make sure they recover properly from it. I don't find the procedure necessarily dangerous. I mean, it's still a surgical proceeding, and there's some risks to be taken with that. But overall, I think the procedure can be done, you know, from start to finish fairly simply and with good outcome and good result. Let's talk about pain, Chris. Everything you just described sounds extremely painful. Yeah, I talked to a lot of guys who got it done. One of them was like, it's like the worst migraine you've ever had, but on your leg and it's 24 hours a day and doesn't go away.

You're trying to sleep, you're in bed. There's nothing you can do that'll make it feel better. So it's just sort of ambient and relentless and always there. I mean, this is gruesome stuff. For a lot of people, probably unimaginable to voluntarily put yourself through this, not to mention to pay something like 75 to 100K to do it. Did you get into the psychology of why people wanna do this so badly?

I understand the psychology of going from 5'5 to like 5'8. Like at 5'5, you're sort of, you know, people look at that and say, oh, that guy's short. But when you're 5'8, you're a little bit you know, people look at that and say, oh, that guy's short. But when you're 5'8", you're a little bit closer to the average. And psychologically, that's just such a powerful thing. I think for a lot of the people who get it done, it's more of a confidence thing than anything. My name is Rich Rotella. I'm in my 30s. I've been building an acting career in Los Angeles, California for over 10 years, and I had bilateral femur lengthening, which means I voluntarily broke

my legs to become three inches taller, and it worked. I was born perfectly healthy, but for whatever reason, as soon as middle school hit, I pretty much plateaued, you know, around 5'5". Basically, I've been 5'5 for most of my adult life. And pretty much for the last 20 years, I've always wanted to grow taller. This is something I really want to help people understand. There is a reason that most people, they look at something like, you know, and I'm doing this with a very, very delicate and gentle tone, if you will, but something like discrimination with

racism is very, very obvious, you know, and it's awful, but it exists. But there's also something called height discrimination. If you ask any guy who's 5'7", 5'6", 5'5", or shorter, what it's been like, he'll tell you. He's dealt with career challenges. He's dealt with dating challenges. He's dealt with some self-esteem or confidence challenges. You know, I have the ability to be a leading man, but I've battled with casting about this for now over a decade because they see me as a character actor because I'm shorter. I've stood up in my home here in Los Angeles and I've literally just looked at the kitchen and I'm standing there and I'm like, it just looks completely different. Everything looks smaller and further away and down, if you will.

And so it kind of gives me this confident boost. And then when I'm in the gym and I'm using like a stationary bike so I can actually sit and do stationary biking, I can see my legs in the mirror and it just feels good that I know I did something about it. I think that's probably the most frustrating thing. You know, people can get rhinoplasty, you know, they get a nose job or they get breast implants or breast reductions or they, you know, they get the tattoo. Why? Because they wanted to. So I wanted to grow taller and I finally found a way to make it happen.

That was Rich Rotella. You can decide for yourself how much leading man potential he has over at his YouTube channel. It's Rich Rotella, R-O-T-E-L-L-A. He's on Instagram at Rich Rotella Official. Chris Giamali from GQ told us he thinks this procedure will be normalized in five to ten years. I asked him how he's so sure.

Apparently, they are working on a new kind of nail made of a stronger metal, which will allow patients to be mobile right after the surgery. So basically, you could get the implant inserted and be walking like not long afterward. And if it gets approved in 2023, I think that's what they're sort of aiming for with this technology. I think you're going to see this become a lot more commonplace. You're going to have friends in your circle

and maybe in like five, 10 years who are suddenly three inches taller. And what kind of ethical questions does that raise for the the rest of us who are stuck being five six you know i wish i was a little bit taller i wish i was a baller i wish i had a girl who looked good i would call her wish i had a rabbit and a hat with a bat i wish i was like six foot nine so i can get with Yoshi Cause you don't know me but Yoshi's really fine You know I see her all the time everywhere I go And even in my dreams I can see her with a smile Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family

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She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays.

Terms and conditions do apply. with our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. This is still a matter of the height. Why? How tall are you? 4'6". How tall were you before the accident? Unfortunately, his profile says he's 6'1".

So I can wear lifts. Even with lifts, you're not that tall. No. No. No, we never discussed that. Oh. I thought you were serious, Vincent. I am serious.

I'm not doing that. I won't do that. We're back. Today Explained here with Chris Gaimali, GQ. Chris, at the top of the show, you suggested you had some personal experience with this story. That's what led you to writing about this? Yeah, yeah. You know, like a lot of other short guys, when I was in my mid-20s, I googled how to be taller as an adult. It sort of led me down this dark path where I first discovered limb lengthening. Can we talk about what led you to perform that particular Google

search? In the piece, I sort of described the feeling of being short as a slow onset neurosis. Like you sort of don't ever like suddenly realize you're short. You kind of just like hold on to hope that your growth spurt is gonna hit one day when you're in high school as all your friends get taller. Maybe you get cut from your basketball team. Maybe a taller love interest doesn't work out because of your shortness or something like that. And you you know, I've sort of feel like I've experienced a lot of that stuff in my own personal life and know what it's like to be short. Like there was this brief period where, you know, I was on the dating sites, not even the dating apps, like not Tinder or anything like that. This is like many, many, many years ago,

where when I listed my actual height at 5'6", just got zero responses. It was like crickets in there. And then I started lying a little bit and got up to 5'8", and sparked up some conversations. And, you know, it just really hit me in a very, not even powerful, just it just was like, man, height really does matter out there, whether we want to believe it or not. It was a weird reality.

And, you know, my wife, actually, she's taller than me. She's 5'9", and I'm 5'6". And, you know, it was something in our relationship that kind of always bothered me. Very early on in our relationship, before we ever got together, we were old friends. And I was like, you know what? If I was taller than you, we'd probably be together already. Like I said it like quasi drunkenly as a joke. I've felt bad about it for well over a decade now. And in the piece, her and I sort of had a very honest conversation about that, about what allowed her to get over me not being taller than her.

And you're at home right now. Is your wife around? Yeah. Yeah. You want me to get her? Okay. If she's around yeah one sec let me is she busy she's uh holding our baby right now but i could totally go get her

uh it'll take a sec okay amazing hey sean i'm judy judy you married chris thank you for joining us. Is Chris still around, too? I think we need both of you. Yeah, he's right outside the door. Okay. Tell him he can come closer. Chris. Chris, come in.

Arden's the hype man. He's waving a towel right now. Oh, no. All right, we got Chris and Judy on the ones and twos. We got Arden in the background. He's hype man. Thank you for joining us. Judy, Chris was just explaining to us that he himself has been guilty of Googling. I wish I was a little bit taller. But how conscious of this were you when

you met Chris? I didn't know. You know, Chris has always had a pretty big personality. And I remember even talking to friends in college, we all ran in similar circles, about how, like, did you even know Chris was 5'6"? You know, he seems, he's got a presence. You know, I remember going into restaurants and being like, oh, where's my friends? And then I'd hear Chris laugh and I'd be like, there they are. And I'd go find them so it yeah his stature is was secondary to his um outsized personality so you're saying spiritually i'm i'm six four sure babe sick that's what i'm saying when exactly did you discover that this guy in your friend group was was into you You know, he moved to New York from LA and then I followed two years later

in completely different pursuits. We had to kind of become default closer friends because we knew fewer people here. And, you know, it kind of like took off organically from there. I think it was mutual. Probably Chris a little more than me, than me to Chris, but we all caught up with each other eventually. Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't even look her in the eye. She was too hot. It was too much. And then one day, as he writes about in his article, he kind of blurts out this

drunken confession to you. Do you remember that moment, that day? I do, and I remember it differently, slightly. Oh, interesting. He was asking me to be his girlfriend, and I said, no, I don't think that's a good idea. For a myriad, you know, like many, many reasons, including notably that we had so many friends in common, it could get really complicated really fast if we're not careful. And I just didn't really feel like it was worth it. And that's when Chris said, oh, come on, if I were taller than you,

we'd already be dating. And as much of a dick as it makes him feel like, I actually felt kind of like a dick too. I mean, I don't think it was totally invalid for him to say that. I might've been quicker to give it a shot, perhaps. So to be fair to both of you, in that moment, you thought, wait, no, my concerns are about our friend group and our history. But also, you're right. If you were 6'2", we'd probably be married by now.

No, more like I would have maybe given it a shot. Like I was maybe 80% hesitant. Maybe I'd be like 50% hesitant, you know? Yeah, yeah. Still hesitant. Just less. But it worked? Like you took him up on it?

Did that feel like a challenge to you in that moment? Yeah, I thought about it. And I still do from time to time, just less and less every day. It's become really unimportant to me. It took some work, to be honest, because I mean, like, think about all the dumbass tropes you've seen in your lifetime with some like larger woman and some little guy and like it's something to laugh and point at and you know like it was something that i think requires a bit of work and

but i'm i'm good now so you had to reprogram yourself as a little bit of so you did some work for me is what you're saying yes babe i did for love and and yeah i mean like look it i think we all know that it's a superficial thing i think we should all recognize that like this is a looks issue not a personality issue and it's it i mean like we were we've received a lot of messaging over many years about like what constitutes a normal looking couple what's feminine what's masculine etc etc and i think we're defying that to an extent um and like you know part of me was also like okay hypothetically what am i supposed to do with a taller man am i like are we like slow dancing in the living room no are we like doing prom poses in line for a job?

Or riding roller coasters that we're tall enough to ride as if you're a taller man, you know? Yes, that too. But I mean, like these are like what, like it doesn't serve me. I don't know, like hypothetically, what a taller man in my life would do that you don't do. And also, what's the trade-off chris like if you were taller could you be a dick yes maybe right like i don't know like maybe this the package is you how you are and that's just really who i'm in love with oh thanks dog you're welcome man love you dog We had some problems, but we were getting at it. And now the arguments are getting loud. I want to stay, but I can't help from walking out. Let's throw it away.

Just take my hand and understand. If you could see, I never planned to be a man. It just wasn't me. But now I'm searching for commitment and other arms. I want to show you from home. Don't be alarmed. Your attitude was the cause. You got me stressing.

Soon as I open up the door with your jealous questions. Like where can I be? You're killing me with your jealousy Then my ambitions to be free, I can't breathe