Blog Post #12: Short = Smart; Tall= Beautiful and Dumb???

In school, particularly English and History classes, we have learned to draw from the fiction we read at the time to gain a better understanding of what was going on at that time. It even helps us better understand things like social norms or what is considered attractive for its time. It is because of this that I have been wondering, what would people in the future draw from our fictitious works, more specifically our cartoons? When analyzing cartoons of the 20th century that I watched growing up, I came to the following conclusion: children’s cartoons in the  20th  century reveal that apparently we think that short people are smart, or vice versa, and tall beautiful people are generally dumb.

This idea becomes apparent in many popular 20th century cartoons. For example, the character of Dexter in Dexter’s Laboratory is a genius who is drawn as abnormally small and stout compared to other people his age.  His older sister, Dede, is considered beautiful and is animated as very tall, but her personality is very whimsical and child-like.  Another show with the same general premise is “Pinky and the Brain,” a short from the show Animaniacs. In it an abnormally small mouse named Brain keep hatching plans to try and take over the world, much like a mad scientist. People also regularly comment how ugly Brain is. There is only one problem with his attempts to take over the world. His friend, Pinky, a tall very dumb mouse keeps ruining everything. While Pinky is not necessarily handsome, he is considered better looking than Brain. This is not just a recent phenomenon. In the 1960s show Scooby Doo, Velma is the smartest member of the gang and coincidentally one of the shortest. Daphne, on the other hand, is beautiful and by no mean contributes really to any of their “mysteries.”

So what does this say about the 20th century? Apparently, we associate height with (a) being attractive and (b) being not necessarily the brightest. What type of stereotype is this? Height understandably can go with beauty because models have always been tall, but beautiful should not equal dumb. Plenty of beautiful people have been considered geniuses. In fact, Playboy had the most beautiful genius pose on its cover. Moreover, why is everyone who is smart, short. People like Albert Einstein was actually about average height by today’s standards, being about 5’9″. Bill Gates is around the same height. This is by no means short. People need to realize that despite the fact that cartoons are for entertainment, they may be sending the wrong messages about our culture to people in the future. Is this the message we want to send?

Dexter and Dede

Pinky and the Brain

Velma (orange sweater) and Daphne (purple dress)

Beautiful Genius

ETA: I commented on Brenda Weber and Gerard Thomas’ blog.