On Being Short: Men, Masculinity, and Not Measuring Up

A heady and provocative personal essay collection that challenges the constricting assumptions around gender and hierarchy that shape society

When Jess Row was eleven, his parents took him to an endocrinologist because they were concerned about his short stature. After the doctor prescribed a new treatment involving the use of human growth hormone, Row began a crash course in human hierarchy and the implications of being considered “pathologically short.” This is the jumping-off point for a singular essay collection examining masculinity in America today, gender dynamics in marriage, and Row’s own experience parenting two queer children.

In one essay, Row uses the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings to analyze male hysteria through the biblical story of Noah’s son coming upon him naked. In another he dissects Shel Silverstein’s often abhored children’s classic The Giving Tree to better understand his 1980s childhood in which his mother was the primary earner and his father took on most of the domestic duties. Later he recounts his experience as a high schooler besotted by veganism and the straight edge anarcho-punk scene with its fantasies of purity and bodily control. Finally, taking full account of his own “inceldom” as a college student, he assesses how unresolved rage and the toxicity of gender roles have led, inexorably, to our political moment.

On Being Short is a powerful but never despairing critique that further establishes Row as a formidable cultural critic.