Elephant Man Analysis

This Mutants reading finished the piece about growth. Armand Marie Leroi talked about how other factors effect height and how what a pygmy population might be misidentified because of this. He discussed the Medieval fad of castration in order to increase height. Next Leroi discussed some abnormal growth disorders such as the one portrayed in the movie “Elephant Man.” Finally, he noted some pattern between height and characteristics that are seemingly effaced by it. Clearly, from this reading and the previous one height and growth play a dynamic role in how we live our lives. Height does not only effect of live, but the condition of our life affect height. Leroi details that the environment may partially determine how tall you are through gene expression. Additionally, nutrition and healthcare-or lack thereof during- the childhood can have huge effect on height. Its strange to consider that height can be altered- people almost exclusively view it has a genetic lottery of your parents. This goes to show how difficult it can be to disentangle variables sometimes- we assumed that
Firstly, it completely goes against my intuition that castrated people wind up being taller. Secondly, it’s appalling to the length people go to entertain and to get taller. The Italian and the Greeks were willing to cause self harm and sacrifice their manhood this simply baffles me. But still today people are willing to go to ends to appear taller. For example, many men wear shoe inserts, girls wear high heels, people will wear certain designs that make them appear taller, I’ve even meet people who stretch every day so they could get taller! It seems like insanity- nobody spends this amount on trying to change foot size or head size. But then again it is not that unusually considering how important height as become socially. Ultimately, height plays a significant role in everyone’s