Where a little goes a long way

Freya Johnston is surprised to find plenty of smut in John Richardson's study of modern dwarfism, In the Little World
John Richardson: Little World

by John Richardson
257pp, Abacus, £12.99

Is it more offensive to be called "a little shit" than "a shit"? Pondering this question might lead you to consult the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of "little", which states ambiguously that the word is used with "an implication of endearment or depreciation". Less and more offensive, then. Describing someone as, say, "a little devil" might intensify your affection, focus your annoyance, or both - a useful resource when dealing with children.

So Edmund Burke told only a half truth when he said that we "add the endearing name of little to every thing we love"; as Adam Smith pointed out, "little" often applies to people we think are worth less than ourselves. Jonathan Swift designed his vicious, spiteful Lilliputians to upset expectations of the sort of cuteness embodied in Disney's seven dwarfs.

Little Robert Reich, who campaigned to become the "first leprechaun governor" of Massachusetts, cheerfully exploits such uncertainty. As Bill Clinton's dinky labour secretary, Reich claims in all seriousness that he "downsized the agency" and "did more with less". Yet he also quips in his speeches, "I am the only candidate for governor with a real platform". His manifesto, "I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society", combines self-mockery with self-promotion.

Reich has enraged other vertically challenged Americans, who complain that "he isn't a member of any short group". So what does it take to qualify for membership? "Dwarfism" covers around 200 medical conditions, but a height below Reich's 1.5m (4ft 10in) guarantees entrance to the annual "Little People of America" convention. LPA (which boasts over 5,000 members) began in 1957, when the actor Billy Barty invited fellow dwarfs to join him for a gathering in Reno, the casino town known as "Las Vegas's little brother".

On assignment for Esquire magazine at the 1998 LPA convention, John Richardson met "stud" Michael, romancing diminutive Jewish princess Meredith, and "Andrea", whose relentless acerbity - "what brings you to the convention?" "I'm looking for sex" - unsettles the author's sympathy.

Anthony is equally spiky. He tells Richardson: "We're not little people - we're human beings encased in a short-statured body." You can see what he means, although to describe yourself as "encased in a short-statured body" might prove tiresome. It also makes Anthony sound like a Russian doll. One dwarf, joking about the length of time it takes to describe little people neutrally, introduces to Richardson "the first ordained short-statured woman Presbyterian pastor".

These days, other "interested individuals" besides dwarfs are invited to attend LPA shindigs, and Richardson is charmed to see a willowy teenager dancing gamely with a tiny man. He fondly imagines that she is "carrying the good wishes of the large to the small" - as indeed she is, only with rather more gusto than he'd anticipated: "Whoa! That's no Emissary of Tallness kiss! There's some serious tongue involvement going on there!"

Richardson confronts his frequently distasteful reactions to dwarfs with admirable candour; his subjects are witty, restless and combative. But it is always apparent that In the Little World started life as a feature-length article, accidentally ingested a large dose of growth hormone, and ended up as a book. It is sloppily phrased, and has little discernible structure. The book's real shortcomings, however, are its casual statistics (men over 6ft tall apparently enjoy starting salaries 12% higher than shorter men - but are they doing the same jobs?), and, apart from a few gestures towards the past, its lack of historical context.

Richardson might have considered, for instance, the strong 18th-century preoccupation with size. Alexander Pope, the greatest poet of that century, was less than 1.4m (4ft 6in) tall, and often joked about the sexual trials of a pygmy existence. Had he visited the LPA convention, he would perhaps have appreciated a workshop on how to masturbate when you have short arms, or the legend adorning one girl's T-shirt at breast level: "Must be this tall to ride". Pope's equivalent invitation, addressed to a lady who mocked him, went like this:

You know where you did despise
(T'other day) my little Eyes,
Little legs, and little Thighs,
And some things, of little Size,
You know where.

You, 'tis true, have fine black eyes,
Taper Legs, and tempting Thighs,
Yet what more than all we prize
Is a Thing of little Size,
You know where.

Clunky smut tries to ignore the distinction between Pope's peculiar littleness and a general male worry about size "you know where". Since "little" describes Pope in his entirety, as well as male and female genitalia, his whole person acquires an erotic fascination predating what Richardson dubs "the surprisingly popular dwarf porn genre". Its popularity should not surprise: the wish to characterise dwarfs as quirky children has long combined with a salacious interest which, according to Richardson himself, is still much in evidence.

The dwarf male strippers who recently toured Britain as the Half Monty would have met with similarly lusty crowds in Pope's age. For all the insistence on diversity, and the challenge dwarfs present to what is normal, we now satisfy ourselves that things have moved on by labelling such displays "ironic" or "post-modern". It remains the hope, not the conviction, of almost everyone in this book that you can have the same quality of relationship with a dwarf as you would have with anybody else.

Short human stature and lifespan, John Donne argued in 1625, were "a rebuke" God placed in the world, "lest it should seem eternall". A French academic tried in 1718 to prove that there had been a monumental decline in human morality, and thus in human height, between the Creation and the Christian era. Had Christianity not intervened, we would long since have become mere atoms. He found support for his thesis in the Bible (Genesis states that "There were giants in the earth in those days") and calculated the height of Adam at 37.8m (123ft 9in). The taller your stature, the greater your proximity to the divine image.

Equating physical beauty with human worth is a superstition with a long history, one that science has not succeeded in banishing. Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest might soon be perverted into one promoting the survival of the tallest. The gene for achondroplasia, the most common type of dwarfism, was discovered in 1994; it is possible that tests to detect it will soon form part of the routine screening given to all expectant mothers.

Joseph Boruslawski, a Hungarian dwarf who published his memoirs in 1788, would not have been surprised. People, he wrote, "look upon beings of my stature as upon abortive half-grown individuals". A benefactress considered him "a being merely physical, on whom [she] might try experiments of every kind".

Dr Joseph Mengele, the Auschwitz "Angel of Death", shared her opinion. One day, a family comprising a tiny father, a tall mother and their dwarf children arrived at the camp. Their son had also married a tall woman, who gave birth to a child of normal height. Mengele experimented on him until the child died. Meanwhile, the patriarch of the clan desperately sought information about his family. His fellow prisoners told him that he was small enough to creep beneath the fence separating him from the clinic without attracting the guards' attention. He was small enough to wriggle under the fence. The bit about the guards, as he discovered to his cost, was just their little joke.

· Freya Johnston is fellow and director of studies in English at Christ's College, Cambridge

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