In Materialists, Celine Song’s recent film about vanity in modern dating culture, Pedro Pascal’s character Harry admits pending $200,000 on leg-lengthening surgery in order to add six inches to his height.

Leg-lengthening involves purposely breaking a person’s legs and slowly growing the bones over a number of months.  It’s incredibly painful, and patients require months of daily physiotherapy to learn to walk again.  There are significant post-operative risks, including deep vein thrombosis and fat embolism. GQ has also covered it.

With private treatment in the UK costing anywhere from £50-240,000, many are instead travelling to Türkiye, where treatment is considerably cheaper.  The NHS has warned prospective patients to steer well clear, and last year, Saudi Arabian authorities examined the role that leg-lengthening surgery might have played in a man’s death.

Why would anyone go through such a traumatic and expensive procedure?  Many studies have shown links between taller height and greater self-esteem, and one patient talked of having had a long-standing insecurity about his height, stating that therapy had never helped and that surgery ‘was worth the pain and money to get rid of [it] once and for all’.

Some might dismiss all of this as ‘male fragility’, but research points to varied societal biases against men and boys of shorter height, suggesting that their concerns may be well-founded.

Perhaps most alarming are biases in schools.  One American study suggested that teachers perceived shorter boys at kindergarten level to be less academically capable than their average and above-average-height peers.  Another from Sweden pointed to a strong correlation between height and educational attainment, with 18-year-old men taller than 6’3” being 2-3 times more likely to have attended university than those shorter than 5’4”.

Other studies link increased stature to higher income and success in the workplace, as well as increased social status more generally.  Behavioural scientists even concluded that height was considered an important characteristic for voters when choosing and evaluating political leaders.  We recently saw this play out in the UK, where Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was consistently disparaged by opponents not just on the basis of his policies, but because of his smaller stature.

Dating culture can be brutal.  In June, Tinder announced a feature for premium subscribers to filter prospective dates according to height.  Bumble users could already do this, with a majority of straight women on the platform purportedly seeking men no shorter than 6 feet.  And a GQ piece last month talked of men who were 5’11” – hardly short – being ‘left behind’ by dating apps.

And yet, height is just one facet of body dysmorphia some men and boys are dealing with.  If readers hadn’t heard of people travelling to Türkiye for leg-lengthening treatment, they were probably aware of hair transplants being done there on the cheap.  One British man died earlier this year after commencing the treatment, and another committed suicide in Dubai having commenced an unlicenced hair loss drug.

Other milestones unique to boys can be points of anxiety.  For example, voice breaking, as such a drastic change, is often quite distressing, with momentary cracks in the voice often embarrassing and inviting teasing from peers. 

Then there’s the ‘bulking’ trend of body-building.  One boy interviewed for the BBC described going to the gym as ‘a bit of an addiction’, and nutritionists warn it could lead to problems with eating disorders.  A recent Sunday Times survey of 16 and 17-year-olds also reported that around a third of male respondents ‘said “real men” had to be fit and muscular’.  More encouragingly, data suggested that only 1-in-10 girls agreed.

There’s been some fightback against all of this.  An online trend celebrating so-called ‘short kings’ seeks to reclaim shorter height as a point of pride.  And though Materialists revolves around an in-person matchmaking agency, its point is largely to call out the vanity which online dating has magnified.

Whether it’s height, hair, body build, or any other physical feature, men and boys face all-encompassing body dysmorphia issues.  Unfettered access to social media and pornography are undoubtedly contributing, and politicians should think carefully about calls to strip back recently-introduced online safety protections on that basis.

There has rightly been a focus on the cosmetic standards forced upon women and girls by society – but we mustn’t forget to call out those faced by men and boys.  With some willing to go through such painful – often dangerous – procedures, this is a public health emergency which urgently needs to be tackled.