Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature and Inner Growth (Paperback)

by Ellen Frankel (Author)
Key Phrases: healthy short children, height prejudice, compression sack, Mount Everest, Dalai Lama, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A touching, tender and at times funny account of a woman's struggle for stature in a 4 foot 8 1/2 inch tall body, Beyond Measure speaks to the heart of soul-breaking attempts to fit an arbitrary and elusive cultural ideal of physical perfection. Being short isn't the problem, Ellen Frankel insists. Instead, the real difficulties lie in the social bias against short people. Ellen shares the difficulties of living short in a world in which stereotypes are based on gender and size. She moves beyond her own experience into the political realm in revealing how pharmaceutical companies--with government backing--are expanding the market for human growth hormone treatment by reclassifying healthy short children as patients in "need" of such injections in hopes of making them taller. She shares the dilemma of being subjected to simultaneous messages that her physical body should be bigger--that is, taller, but not wider--while her expansive spiritual body should be smaller. As a result of too much attention on the external rather than the internal workings of the soul, Ellen flirts with eating disorders and unhealthy relationships with powerful males in an attempt to compensate for her feelings of not "measuring up." In the process, her real self slips farther away. The path out of her dilemma lies in the shadow of the tallest mountain on Earth. It is through a spiritual pilgrimage to Nepal that Ellen discovers her own strength and spirit, and that we are all dwarfed by Everest and beyond measure.

From the Inside Flap
"Delightful and provocative both as a personal journey and as a candid look at how the social prejudice against short stature has been reconfigured as a medical issue."

Alan Cassels co-author of Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients

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Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Pearlsong Press (September 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597190055
• ISBN-13: 978-1597190053
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #185,957 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Memoir with an Important Message, January 22, 2007

By	Jordan D. Rich (Boston, Massachusetts, States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Our world can be cruel and confusing to those look a little different, and it was somewhat difficult for the author growing up. But Ellen Frankel has learned how to adapt and live confidently in her body despite the taunting words of those who are taller. In this touching and informative memoir, Ellen Frankel skillfully illustrates the pressures on so many people who will go to any length simply to "fit in." She reveals her opposition to the unnatural and dangerous attempts to expand height through the use of growth hormones, offering hard scientific data about their negative impact. Ellen explains how "innocent" remarks about height can be hurtful and even takes readers with her on an exciting spiritual trek to Mount Everest. "Beyond Measure" is an excellent book, sure to make us think about the stuff that really matters...that which resides within us.

Jordan Rich
WBZ Radio Boston

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank You For Writing Such An Outstanding Book, January 13, 2007

By	Matthew Campisi - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Thanks for sending me an advanced copy of your book, "Beyond Measure." I just finished reading it today. Words cannot adequately express how happy I am to see the issue of heightism addressed in this way. In your book you clearly explain the realities of this social prejudice. You provide painful examples from your own life, which even the harshest of our critics cannot deny or trivialize. Most importantly, you provide words of inspiration. Words to wake the souls of all who have the good fortune to read it. I am so impressed by your strength and your courage. I will recommend this book to anyone. Thank you for writing "Beyond Measure." You have done not only short statured people, but humanity as a whole, a great service.

Matthew Campisi
Chair/President
NOSSA - National Organization Of Short Statured Adults
[...]

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars life is short, October 1, 2007

By	Linda C. Wisniewski (Bucks County, PA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

On the first page of her memoir, Ellen Frankel takes us to the moment at an arts festival when her eyes meet another "member of the club": someone whose eyes are on a level with hers, someone who "knows" what it's like to be always looking up at others. Frankel, at four feet eight inches, is one of the shortest in any crowd. This book is the story of her journey to overcome the heartache caused by our culture literally and emotionally "looking down on" short people.

Frankel has appeared on CNN, Fox News and in the Associated Press, speaking about her mission to expose size discrimination: the unequal treatment of people because of their height or weight. She is particularly passionate about government approval of hormone shots for healthy children, just because they fall below the curve of what is "normal" height for their age.

The book cites numerous articles and studies on the ways people try to "fit in" by altering their body image. Besides the emotional damage done to short children through unthinking jokes and pats on the head, there is the health risk of synthetic hormone injections which increase height by only an inch or two at most.

Interspersed with the scientific data is the personal. As a girl, Frankel thinks about being a rabbi, but her rabbi laughs at her, saying she is too short and would never reach the pulpit. She is drawn to study Buddhism and integrates that philosophy with her Jewish identity in a graceful manner.

Her sense of humor and self-acceptance are evident in the title of chapter eight: Life is Short and So Am I. She tries to be a bubbly, cute (and short) female but does not feel her own power until she sheds that persona.

"I knew my Achilles heel and how it craved a stiletto," says Frankel. She fells into relationships with tall, important men to feel seen, "special" and powerful. But she knows deep inside that only by speaking her truth and engaging in activities that nourish her will she grow strong.

The journey that is central to the book begins when Frankel and her husband watch the Everest IMAX movie. At first, her husband is reluctant to leave his job for two weeks and go to Nepal, but she convinces him there is never a better time than now. They visit Kathmandu and the Himalayas, Buddhist shrines and death-defying roads alongside cliffs.

Frankel's vivid descriptions of the people and the villages of Nepal are my favorite part of the book. A year later, she returns, this time to climb Everest with a group of fifteen people.

She takes us along as she listens to the soundtrack CD from the Everest film while climbing to a Buddhist monastery at 13,000 feet up the highest peak in the world.

On this return trip, she travels with a married woman who is having an affair and also has an eating disorder. Overly focused on her thinness, the woman uses laxatives frequently to combat "bloating." During the trek, she confides that she is sleeping with their married Sherpa guide.

Frankel spent ten years as a counselor in practice for eating disorders, treating "Women who fought with their bodies because the culture told them their bodies were their enemies--unless their bodies were tall and thin, then they were their best friends."

"You don't have to have an affair with someone who climbed Mount Everest", she tells her traveling companion. "...you can climb yourself. You don't have to live vicariously, offering your body to a man living out your own dreams."

Frankel knows these words are meant for her, too. "I grew into myself" on the trek, she tells us. She realizes she can be strong and confident while short, that these qualities are not determined by one's physical size, because, "We are all both dwarfed by Everest and beyond measure."

This book reminded me of why it's so much more fulfilling to follow our hearts and go after our dreams. I've known too many women who "could have" been and done things but let their fears and other people's expectations discourage them.

Frankel's children have learned by her example to be who they are without reservation. Her book can teach us all to do the same.

[...].