So membership in the LPA was a lifeline for many people who, like many deaf people and many gay people, were alone in their families. I joined when I was 6. Four decades of activism seem to have worked. A lot were not educated. Now, parents are less likely to send a dwarf child off to classes for the retarded.
Dwarves are far more likely to be lawyers, engineers and other white-collar sorts.
But, she adds, only some 10 percent of the country's little people are in the organization, and there are many who still grow up in isolation, treated like freaks or morons. A study published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 1990 reported that men over six-feet earn starting salaries 12 percent higher than shorter men. A study by Linda Jackson and Kelly Ervin of Michigan State found that people rate tall men more attractive, accomplished, fit and masculine than short men. They rate tall women as being higher-class and more physically attractive than short women. These prejudices against short people are redoubled in the experience of dwarves, who are even shorter and who look different.