The little people

Dwarfism is short stature resulting from an abnormal medical condition.[...] It can be caused by over 200 distinct medical conditions and as such the symptoms and characteristics of individual dwarfs vary greatly. In the USA people who are affected by dwarfism are often referred to as Little people.

(Wikipedia)

In the picture, the Filipino couple Martina (68,6 cm) and Juan de la Cruz (73,7 cm), who were considered the tiniest living couple of their time. For comparison - 70 cm would be the size of an average baby of about 8 or 9 months.

Maybe you have wondered why there are so many dwarfs with apparently big heads and short legs and arms and others, who are just petite?

There are two kinds of Little people: "dwarfs" and "midgets". I write "midgets" even though the Association of Little People of America is attempting to ban this "m-word" at least on TV, as they consider it as offensive as the word "nigger". But, as you will see, in the entertainment industry, not all little ones consider the term discriminating, actually, being a midget can turn them into millionaires!
Due to a genetic disorder, dwarfs are extremely short and have disproportionate body parts. They often suffer from associated problems such as nerve compression or disproportionate organs. The word "dwarf" is not considered offensive.

Midgets are just short in height. Their condition may be inherited or consequence of a nutritional deficiency (in this case it can be treated with growth hormones in some cases). If they are attractive, they can be extremely sought-after in the entertainment industry. The Don Juan on the left is definitively a good choice...

Nowadays, at least in industrialized countries, it is easier to see short-legged dwarfs than cute midgets.

On the other hand, lots of pictures of vintage petites in elegant garment can be found. Maybe this is due to the fact, that because of the poorer nutrition standards in the 19th and the early 20th century, more people were short in height as a consequence of a lower production of growth hormones during their childhood. In the photograph (http://photobibliothek.ch): The wedding of the century - Charles Stratton alias Tom Thumb (1837 - 1883) marries Lavinia Warren in 1863.

Book recommendation: "Chiquita" by Antonio Orlando Rodríguez (Spanish)


But before I present you some extraordinary entertainers, you will want to know: What do little people do for their living if they are not interested in exhibiting themselves? How is their daily life? I've got no idea. But the scriptwriters of the TV-series "Little people, big world" do. Everything you want to know about ordinary people of the dwarf community and the problems they may experience in a world made for giants:




Let's return to Little people in showbiz. Same as you can hire an Argentinian clown, an Asian stripper or a giant black hulk for gay parties, you can also hire Little people for almost any purpose (I guess there are specialized agencies for some of these purposes...). There are lots of hiring agencies around.
That's what recruiters say:
Are you less than 4'10" in height? Is your short stature caused by one of the more than 200 medical conditions known as dwarfism? If so, we are interested in hiring you. We receive numerous requests each day for Little People. Such requests include hanging out at a bars, dressing up in costumes for holiday parties, entertaining at birthday parties, anniversary parties, and performing on TV shows and commercials.

Some, as the cute lady on the left, are real professionals. Specially midget strippers are highly valued in the entertainment sector. I think we can all understand why...

The movie industry has always paid a lot of attention to Little people and a lot of small actors have gained world fame, such as Verne Troyer ("Austin Powers"). Some of them play roles of seductive and slightly cocky half-sized Don Juans. If you're interested in movies starring dwarfs or midgets, check these:

• "Little people" (1984, documentary)
• Midgets vs. Mascots (Ron Carlson, 2009)
  
• Im Reiche der Liliputaner (F. Goethe, H. Jülich & U. Schultz, 1939)
  

And of course, Werner Herzogs "Even dwarfs started small" ("Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen", 1970) - a quite unpleasant film about a bunch of naughty dwarfs at a kind of orphanage somewhere in Southern Spain or Northern Africa. The man in the video doesn't want to stop laughing in an attempt to overcome the shock of having lost everything.



The most important thing to be successful in the wrestling business is to find the right characters to fight against each other. Disguised hulks, hot chicks in bikini or recently even Peruvian indigenous housewives. But midget wrestlers have always been the stars among insiders.
Check the Half Pint Brawlers - Psycho midget wrestling - for videos and tour dates.

This is America. But unimaginable things happen in other continents. The Cambodian Midget Fighting League (CMFL) was a team of 42 wrestlers. An angry fan claimed that one single lion could defeat the whole group of puppets. The proud president of the CMFL readily accepted the challenge shipping in an African lion for the - legal - event.
After 12 minutes, 28 fighters were declared dead. Read more

!!This is a nice story, but has been reported to be fake (thanks, Alicia)!!

Fortunately, this was only an exceptional event. In Asia, were a lot of handsome and talented midgets can be found, a lot of them turn into great dancers and showmen. Look at this one:




A final reflection: sometimes, I wonder how I would feel if I were an elephant, of great size and power, being dominated by tiny little humans. Let's imagine for a moment a world ruled by the Little people - that's how an elephant must feel. This funny video sketch makes you realize that our supremacy can't be taken for granted.



Never forget: it was Frodo, not Gandalf, who saved us from the dark forces.

Some useful links:

• Little people of America on Facebook
• Midget strippers
• Little people dating network
• Rent a midget
  
• Hire a midget
• Puppet, the psycho-dwarf
• The midget manifesto
  

Click here to see the video about "Bridget the midget", a fantastic pregnant midget stripper (see photo below).

Plastic surgery

When I was 17, plastic surgery was considered an invention for brainless, rich American women. That was over 10 years ago. Nowadays, it's part of our society. A friend is getting a nose job, uncle Tom got some hair implants for last year's father's day and grandmother Abigail has been saving money for the last 2 years to get her turkey double-chin removed. I have some ideas about what I'd get done if I just had the money: I definitely need to change my armpits - they just don't go with the rest of the body. And of course the usual program: get some nice tits, full-body hair removal, tummy tuck, arm liposuction and ear reshaping. And I want my little daughter to look half Korean. It's just more fashionable than simply being white. I'm just kidding.

I think nowadays it's perfectly ok to improve one's physical appearance. I mean, not actually changing it, only fixing some little defects or even handicaps. But why would a good looking person want to completely change in shape, color and size until turning into an unnatural looking freak? On the right, good old Donatella Versace.
Some people just don't know when to stop. Their problem is that they never run out of money. And the surgeons don't stop them. And they should.

The best example is Jocelyn Wildenstein (left), the World's scariest celebrity by plastic surgery. She was born in 1940 in Switzerland and was a real beauty in her youth. She married the billionaire art dealer Alec Wildenstein. After years of marriage her husband started to date other women and Jocelyn decided to attempt transforming herself into one of Alec's beloved giant cats. With the help of plastic surgery. She has received several silicon injections to the lips, cheeks and chin along with a facelift and eye reconstruction to look more feline like. (Remember "stalking cat", discussed in the article "body modifications").



Or poor Michael Jackson. Recently I saw one of his older videos: "Don't stop 'til you get enough". He was so charming, with a truly enchanting smile. He was nothing but a boy, just at the doorstep of real manhood - a maturity he never reached as a man. Instead, he did everything to turn into a gender that had been unknown to the World before.
By the way - have you ever noticed that his sisters Janet and La Toya probably chose the same type of nose when they got their rinoplastia?





I have to say that most of the people who choose the way of plastic surgery try to improve their physical appearance. But as energy can't be created nor destroyed (e=mc2), the patients more than often take the energy for the reshaping of flesh from a poor source of prime matter: their central computer (they turn kind of stupid,that's what I wanted to say).
This is the case of Cindy Jackson, a farmers daughter from Ohio. She used to play with Barbie dolls when a kid, which fueled her escapist fantasies, as she admits. She dreamed of a happy and glamorous life for the doll and herself. In the late 80ies she was left with an inheritance and started her journey from homely young woman to a Barbie look-alike. She is the record-holder for having more cosmetic surgeries than anyone else in the world (over 30 procedures): facelift, 3 mini facelifts, 3 eyelid surgeries, upper lip lift, liposuction on her knees, thighs, abdomen, waist and jaw-line, 2 nose operations, breast augmentation etc etc.
But what is more incredible is that a friend of her, Tom Whitfield-Lynn, felt inspired by Cindy and decided to transform himself into Barbie's boyfriend Ken. In Ohio farming communities, everything is possible...

Breasts of course. Half of our female friends probably have thought about changing size or shape of their bust. Some eccentric individuals don't just get a boob job done (not to be mixed up with blow job) but voluntarily accept to permanently carry to melons in front of their chest. This is possible thanks to string breast implants which continue to grow after they are surgically implanted and can result in abnormally large breasts. Due to a number of medical complications, the device has been banned in the European Union and the United States. In the photo, Maxi Mounds, an American adult entertainer. Each of her breasts weighs 10 kilos!
I try to imagine how she deals with certain situations of everyday life: putting her shoes on, entering an elevator, eating without seeing the food on her table etc. And there is the problem of the shifting of her center of gravity... I imagine her trying to pick up some coins she has lost, losing her balance, landing on her mega-boobs and bouncing away like a rubber-ball...

Sometimes, the scalpel can give hope. Controversy brews over plastic surgery used in children with Down Syndrome. On the left, 29 years-old Julio Camblor, 10 years after he decided to undergo aesthetic surgery.
It is a challenge for the aesthetic surgeon to make good-looking people more handsome. But it is even more rewarding to "normalize" people who are isolated because of their ugly facial expression so that they may be reintegrated into a group of friends from which they may have already anxiously withdrawn. Children with Down's syndrome are frequently concealed from the public by their parents. The children suffer from two disadvantages: Their mental abilities are limited and they have ugly facial features. (statement of a surgeon)

I can completely understand the motivations of parents of children like the five-year-old British girl with Down syndrome, who has undergone three aesthetic procedures. The only thing they want to achieve is to make their and their daughter's live more bearable. Normally, the operations that are chosen for individuals with Down syndrome are the following:

• Shortening of the tongue to stop it from protruding and make the patient look less deficient
• Removal of folds of skin from eyelids to reduce the mongoloid appearance traditionally associated with Down syndrome
• Pinning back of ears to prevent them from sticking out
  

Of course these physical changes should always be followed by a complete stylistic change: haircut, contact lenses, clothing etc.

Talking about eyelid surgery: the most common surgery in Asian countries is the westernization of the eyes. Chinese, Japanese or Koreans complain about their sleepy and sick looking eyes and get them "opened" or "rounded", even at very tender ages (performed in children and ocasionally in newborns, specially if they have been adopted in a Western country). See some examples of eyelid surgery in this video.
Hispanics living in Europe or the US choose operations that make them look less indigenous or Latin (rinosplastia, cheekbones, eyelids) and lower their ethnic stigma.



Hope can also be given to transsexuals. Female facial proportions are completely different to male ones. The case of the woman in the video shows how many operations have to be programmed to achieve the desired result, which, in this case, is the feminization of a male's features.





Last but not least, the odd case of Korean Hang Mioku, a woman addicted to plastic surgery who has been left unrecognizable after her obsession led her to inject cooking oil into her face.


See you next Monday with the last post of the "extreme bodies" series.

Rare diseases

The blue people of Kentucky

A large family known as the Blue People lived in Kentucky until the 1960’s. They didn’t suffer from any serious illness nor did they die young. They just had blue skin. The (simple recessive) trait was passed from generation to generation. Their only pain was being blue in a world of whites, blacks and in-betweens. The doctors suspected methemoglobinemia, a blood disorder resulting from excess levels of methemoglobin in blood. Methemoglobin is blue and is a non-functional form of red hemoglobin. A researcher injected them methylene blue (seems like a paradox) and within a few minutes, the blue color was gone from their skin – they changed color!

Fish odor syndrome

Due to a mutation of the gene FMO3, people who suffer from Fish odor syndrome have an excessive excretion of trimethylamine (TMA) in urine, sweat, breath and vaginal secretions. Their problem is that they smell like rotting fish. Since the 1970 only about 200 cases have been described.
The chemical TMA, responsible for the revolting odor, is the same that can be transiently present in vaginal secretions during menstruation (you know, that fishy smell during the period).

This inborn metabolic illness is usually discovered when fish is introduced in a baby's diet. The liver cannot metabolize the TMA, which is produced by intestinal bacteria from the chemical choline, present in fish, egg yolk, legumes and other food products.

The psychological suffering of the patients is enormous - it's difficult to lead a normal life, specially for teenagers. The body smell is so offensive, that social contacts seem to be almost impossible. Some people choose jobs where they can be on their own. Others start to smoke to disguise the fish smell. But fish and smoke together...
The unnatural body odor can be reduced avoiding foods that contain cholines.

Acromegaly

This disease most commonly affects adults in middle age and can result in severe disfigurement and premature death. The body produces too much growths hormones. But unfortunately not all parts of the body increase in size. Enlargement of only hands and and feet is very common. Also the jaw and other facial bones can be affected, giving the patient's face a rather unintelligent aspect.

The development of the symptoms is often slow and gradual. So many people do not even notice the changes in their physical appearance. But a familiar visiting his elderly aunt for the first time after 10 years might be surprised when meeting a bawdy ogre instead of a fragile ancient woman.
The man on the photo is Rondo Hatton, actor, who was exposed to poisonous gas in WWI. Acromegaly progressively deformed the bones of his head, hands and feet.

Fatal familial insomnia

Having family members who have been victims of FFI, means that any day, usually when you're around 40 - 60 years old, your body doesn't allow you to sleep anymore. Your mind dies, and after some months, your body, too.
Fatal familial insomnia is a rare inherited prion disease (a prion is something like a killer protein that affects your brain) that interferes with sleep and leads to mental and physical deterioration until death occurs within a few months or years. Have you ever stayed awake for one or two night? If you remember the physical sensation when you're back at work in the morning - imagine being deprived of sleep forever from now on! Sleep deprivation has also been a common torture method for centuries.
The first symptoms are minor difficulties falling asleep and occasional muscle twitching, spasms or stiffness. Eventually, the sufferers cannot sleep.
The disease has been identified in only about 40 families worldwide, most of them concentrated in very specific regions, such as the Spanish basque country.

Man without face

Many cases of people with massive growths in face and body have been described. One of them is José Mestre, from Lisbon who developed a tumor that took over his face completely. He was born with nothing more than a red-colored birth mark on his under lip. The face started growing at puberty and has now reached a weight of 3 kg. When the tumor was still quite small, he refused to have surgery due to religious beliefs and lack of finances. Now, after 51 years of carrying thegrowing tumor, it would be almost impossible to remove the massive growth and reconstruct the face.

José Mestre was born with a face and lost it. Other’s are born without face and, with the help of modern science, are fighting to reconstruct something that at least reminds of a human visage. In the video, little Juliana Wetmore, who was born with 30 to 40 % of the bones in her face missing.





Odine's curse

Ondine was a water nymph, who’s mortal lover swore to her that his “every waking breath would be a testimony of his love”. The romantic Adonis shared his bed with another lady and Odine cursed that if he should fall asleep, he would forget to breathe.
That’s the great obstacle in the life of people who suffer a disease called “Odine’s curse” (without having cheated on the aquatic and vengeful lady).
People afflicted with this congenital disorder stop to breathe during sleep due to an inborn failure of autonomic control of breathing. For them, breathing is a conscious action – impossible to perform while asleep. Patients require a lifetime mechanical ventilation. But the disease is often not recognized in the first months of life and most of the victims don’t survive infancy.

Foot in brain

About a year ago, a boy named Sam Esquibel was born in the United States. At the age of three days he was operated after what looked like a microscopic tumor had been found on an MRI scan.
The doctors were removing the growth when they couldn’t believe their eyes – they found a nearly perfect little foot and a partially formed second one inside the infant’s brain. They reported that it looked like a delivery of a baby out of a babies brain.
Sometimes, in the womb, a twin begins to form within a foetus. Another explication is that sometimes cells can “get confused” and differenciate into tissues they are not supposed to. But such growth, called “teratomes” are usually much less complex than a foot or hand.



Alien hand syndrome

A pacient suffering from this neurological disorder is unable to control the movements of one of his hands even thought he or she has full sensation in the affected limb. The hand is not felt as part of the body and becomes personified, with a will of its own.
The cause can be a brain surgery or a trauma. Depending on the injury, the movements of the alien hand may be random or have a purpose and may interact or not with the other hand, being dominant or non-dominant.
When the syndrome is the result of a brain tumor, it is possible that the alien hand starts to engage in complex and purposeful behaviors. A case has been described, where, while the patient buttoned his shirt, the alien hand undid the buttons.
Sometimes the sufferer is not aware of the action of the strange limb, until it’s too late. It’s like sharing the body with a naughty stranger. Some patients start to hate their hands because of its unacceptable behavior.





Progeria

Premature senility is a severe genetic condition. It occurs in one per 8 million live births. They usually die at the age of 10 to 15 of heart failure. At that age, the victims have the physical condition of an 80 year old.
Some of the first symptoms is the poor weight gain, a physical growth failure and a localized scleroderma-like skin condition. At the beginning of puberty they usually have the aspect of a fragile, elderly person, with typical symptoms such as alopecia, wrinkled skin or atherosclerosis.
Most of them age eight to ten times faster than an average person.





Human horn growth

Cutaneous horns are rare, keratinous skin tumors with the aspect of horns, wood or coral. Most of them are small, but in rare occasions they can actually look like an animals horn.