Summit 1 Video Script
UNIT 4
TV Documentary: Selling Them Short
PART 1
Lynn Sherr: Imagine a world where nothing fits.
Where pants are too long.
Craig: The crotches are down to here, the seat’s
down to here, the pants are up to there.
Lynn Sherr: Where elevators are filled
with giants.
Rob: You kind of get cramped. And you know, it’s
kind of hard to breathe sometimes.
Lynn Sherr: Where driving a car means your feet
don’t reach the pedals.
David: You have to fumble down here, and some
have bars underneath and some have these little
electronic things on the side you have to figure
out.
Lynn Sherr: And where you can’t see the movie
screen, let alone find a date to take there.
1st woman: I don’t care hair color, eye color, skin
color—they need to be tall. Sorry.
Lynn Sherr: Welcome to the world of short men.
Ralph Keyes, 5′7 , wrote a book about height.
Ralph Keyes: We just assume anybody we’re
looking up to has power . . . has power over us.
Lynn Sherr: We put Chris and Debbie, colleagues
here at ABC News, in front of our camera,
posing at different heights. Half the shots
showed Chris as the taller of the pair.
Chris: The air’s kind of thin up here.
Lynn Sherr: In the other half, Debbie was taller.
Then we gave the photos to students at
Fairleigh Dickinson University, and asked them
to tell us a story about what was going on.
When Chris was taller, the adjectives used to
describe him were mature and respected. When
Chris was shorter than Debbie, they called him
submissive, childish, weak. Andrea McGinty,
who runs a dating service in Chicago, knows all
the tricks. We asked her to help us construct an
experiment to test just how willing women are
to date shorter men. And we found three brave
volunteers. Stu is the shortest. How tall are you?
Summit 1, Second Edition
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Page 1 of 3
Stu: I’m 5 foot. And 5′5 with the Afro.
Lynn Sherr: Rob is 5′3 . He prefers taller women.
Rob: I kind of enjoy it. I mean, I think there are
some serious advantages to being a little bit,
having a woman who’s a little bit taller.
Lynn Sherr: David is getting married this fall.
David: She is 5 feet tall.
Lynn Sherr: And you are?
David: I am 5′6 .
Lynn Sherr: Oh, well.
David: Giant, right.
Lynn Sherr: We recruited other men about the
same age as David, Stu, and Rob, but taller. We
asked them all to dress in jeans and a sweater,
then we did something cruel. We put them in
lineups, five at a time, behind a two-way mirror.
The men couldn’t see or hear what was going
on in the next room. That’s where we invited
groups of women to look at the men and choose
a date. In this case, we wanted to see if anyone
would pick 5′3 Rob. When Andrea told us
women like doctors, we gave him an M.D. Their
choice?
2nd woman: Andrew.
3rd woman: I would say Matt.
Lynn Sherr: No Rob. We piled on some more
assets. We said, besides being a doctor, he was
also a best-selling author and champion skier
who just built his own ski house.
Andrea McGinty: Does that affect your choices?
4th woman: He’s still short.
Lynn Sherr: Then we gave Rob a promotion. We
made him chief of staff at a prestigious hospital.
Andrea McGinty: Who would you pick, Kim?
5th woman: Andrew’s probably the closest to who
I’d pick.
6th woman: I’d pick Matt.
7th woman: Jeffrey, the pilot.
Lynn Sherr: What would it take? Now we said
Rob was also a gourmet cook who loves
children.
8th woman: Oh, definitely I would take him in a
minute, then. Height, no problem.
Summit 1 Video Script
7th woman: I wouldn’t, because I would think I
don’t want short, little kids. I was thinking that!
Lynn Sherr: Well, at least someone liked Rob. But
if it was this harsh for him at 5′3 , what would it
take to get a date for Stu at just 5 feet?
PART 2
Lynn Sherr: What would it take to get a date for
Stu at just 5 feet? First, we made him an up-and-
coming actor.
9th woman: No.
10th woman: No.
11th woman: Not.
Lynn Sherr: Then we said Stu had made millions
by age 25.
12th woman: No.
13th woman: No.
14th woman: Not for me.
Lynn Sherr: Nothing worked.
Andrea McGinty: How come nobody
picked Stu?
15th woman: He’s too short.
Andrea McGinty: He’s too short?
Lynn Sherr: We asked if there was anything we
could add to make Stu irresistible.
15th woman: Maybe the only thing you could say
is that the other four are murderers.
16th woman: Right, are convicted of some crime.
17th woman: Child molesters.
16th woman: Rapists.
15th woman: Psychotic . . . Exactly. And then we
would say, “Oh, OK. Hello, Stu!” I mean,
nothing bad towards him. He’s got a nice smile;
he’s cute.
Lynn Sherr: But no takers. So we replaced Stu with
David to see if 5′6 made a difference. We
brought in one last group of women. When they
all picked this fellow, we told them he’d been
unemployed for two years, but that our David
was a chief surgeon.
18th woman: I guess it would be David for me.
Lynn Sherr: Two took David right away. But Tara
chose Jim, whom we’d made a high school gym
teacher.
Summit 1, Second Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc. Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.
Page 2 of 3
Andrea McGinty: Would it change anything if I
told you that David, besides being a chief
surgeon, had just published a book, that he was
a gourmet cook, loved kids, and extremely
wealthy?
Tara: I’d switch to David real quick. I mean, let’s
be realistic. I’m going to bag the gym teacher
now.
Lynn Sherr: So what’s going on here? You had to
make those short guys almost like God to make
them desirable, right?
Andrea McGinty: We finally made them God, and
that’s when they chose.
Les Martel: And this surprises you?
Lynn Sherr: It obviously doesn’t surprise you.
Les Martel: No.
Lynn Sherr: Yale psychologist Les Martel is 5′5 .
Les Martel: It goes back to caveman times. We
simply judge people, particularly men, based on
their height, on their size, on their physical
presence.
Lynn Sherr: Why is that? We asked several of the
women to come back and tell us.
7th woman: I feel short men make great best
friends because they’re very enthusiastic, caring,
because they have to make up for their height.
Lynn Sherr: But you have no interest in going out
with someone shorter?
7th woman: No.
19th woman: I’m just attracted to taller men.
I’m only 5′5 myself, but I just . . . I just like tall
men.
Lynn Sherr: I have to tell you, and it breaks my
heart to tell you this, it turned out that being
short was not good. Does that surprise
anybody?
Rob: I don’t think so.
Stu: Absolutely not.
Lynn Sherr: Tell me what you were thinking while
you were standing out there with the taller
guys.
David: Sure aren’t picking us.
20th woman: You want to look up into his eyes,
and you want it to be like a movie.
Summit 1 Video Script
David: There’s a stereotype in society that says
when you find your mate, the man is bigger and
the woman is smaller, you know, Tarzan, Jane.
And we didn’t get to speak, so . . .
Lynn Sherr: Well, you didn’t get to speak, but we
spoke on your behalf.
David: Oh, thanks.
Lynn Sherr: And we made you doctors, chief
surgeons, best-selling authors. Stuart, we made
you a venture capitalist who made millions by
the age of 25. You were a gourmet cook, you
loved children, you had ski houses that you
built all by yourself. Sometimes all this worked,
but most of the time, fellas . . .
David: It didn’t do a darn thing.
Stu: It didn’t do a thing.
Rob: Well, I guess that says something about
people.
Lynn Sherr: What does it say to you?
Rob: Maybe the average person isn’t giving us the
credit that we deserve.
Summit 1, Second Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc. Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.
Page 3 of 3
Lynn Sherr: Does it bother you?
Stu: You know what it’s like to maybe hurt. I think
you know what it’s like to, you know, maybe to
have more setbacks than taller people.
Lynn Sherr: David, you’re nodding your head. Do
you think that’s true?
David: Sure, oh yeah. Growing up you take a lot
of abuse, you know, always being the short one
and getting picked on and name calling.
It happens.
Barbara Walters: What has happened to these
three nice guys from the early experiment? Any
women in their lives?
Lynn Sherr: Well, Dave, whom we told you was
getting married has gotten married, so he’s . . .
that’s all fine. Stu and Rob are still available,
however. Women of America, tall or short,
they’re out there.