Sadly, the elfin Jorgie just missed out on winning Dancing on Ice last night in favour of some Eastenders slaphead. Said slaphead appeared, suspiciously, to be quite a good skater already at the beginning of the show whereas little Jorgie was like Bambi on ice at its inception.
Her achievement to get to the standard she did was all the more remarkable, therefore, given her total lack of initial skating skills.
Jorgie is one of those short girls (just 5' 2") who looks perfectly in proportion so you only notice how tiny she is when she is next to someone of normal size. Agent Triple P had a girlfriend once who was 5' 2" (actually we had several) and was similarly proportioned. She didn't much appreciate being called, "small", "tiny", "dinky" or all the other things she patently was. She got particularly cross if we said something like "give me your little hand" fulminating that she "was not a child or a dolly". Emotionally and intellectually she had a point but, sadly, Agent Triple P is sizeist.
We know we shouldn't be and, nowadays this is less of an issue with us with women (although, that said, most of our women have been of above average height - the tallest being a rather awesome rower and cellist who was 6'3"). With men, however, the discrimination remains. We don't trust small men on the basis that their lack of height will have negatively effected their personalities. They also get cross because they never get served at bars first.
We are reminded of a particularly excellent example of the seventies comedy show The Goodies where the late, great Philip Madoc (who died this month) played a South African border guard who was discriminating on the basis of how tall people were: "apart-height". Brilliant!
Dinky? Moi?
