INSIDE THE MINDS OF THE SHORT MEN WHO GET THEIR LEGS BROKEN TO ADD 3-6 INCHES OF HEIGHT
THIS IS A PRETTY EXTREME WAY TO GAIN CONFIDENCE.
Some short men are so insecure about their height that they’re quite literally allowing doctors to break their bones during surgical leg-lengthening procedures.
As GQ reports, the excruciating surgery can involve a year of “relentless, ambient” pain during healing — though the orthopedic surgeons who do the leg-lengthening often give their patients pain medicine, per a man who got it done, which raises its own questions about medical ethics.
“They fill you with enough painkillers that it’s bearable,” said John Lovedale, a man in his mid-40s described by the magazine as being “built like a saguaro cactus” and looking something like “a brolic Neil deGrasse Tyson.” Lovedale, who was five-foot-eight-and-a-half prior to getting the surgery in the fall of 2021 and now stands about five-foot-eleven-and-a-half, told GQ that he stopped taking the medication earlier than he was supposed to out of fear of becoming addicted.
Described as a handsome and successful father of three, the cosmetic leg lengthening surgery recipient said that although he was not far from the average American male height of five-foot-nine, he was still striving to be above average.
“I noticed that taller people just seem to have it easier,” Lovedale said, reportedly while laughing. “The world seems to bend for them.”
As the report notes, that assessment is not wrong — a 2009 study of Australian men found that men tend to make about $500 less annually for every inch shorter they are than their taller counterparts.
To make the world bend to him, then, Lovedale allowed his legs to be broken.
While limb-lengthening surgeries have been documented in one form or another going back to the 19th century and initially were used as a treatment to help people who had mismatched limb lengths, cosmetic leg lengthening is a relatively new field that has, per GQ, experienced a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although many short kings have expressed a desire to be taller, the steep cost of the surgery — roughly $75,000, in Lovedale’s case — paired with the brutality of the procedure itself and the lengthy and reportedly “excruciating” healing process makes for a hell of a barrier to entry.
In order to make patients taller, doctors like Kevin Debiparshad (or “Dr. D if you’re nasty,” per GQ) use the surgical equivalent of large handheld drill, which is aptly named a “reamer,” to break the recipients’ bones and hollow them out so that nails can be implanted in them. Those nails are technically what add to the patients’ height, but they must also undergo intensive physical therapy to build enough muscle to support the additional length.
The whole procedure sounds fascinating, if not somewhat macabre. What’s perhaps more interesting, however, is why anyone would take on such a huge medical and financial cost to experience the world as a tall person, rather than figure out what it is that makes them insecure about their height in the first place.
TECH PEOPLE SEEM TO LIKE IT
Self-conscious tech workers are reportedly taking extreme measures to add a few inches to their height by forking over six-figure payments for painful leg-lengthening operations.
Kevin Debiparshad, the head of the Nevada-based LimbplastX Institute, said workers from the tech sector comprise a significant chunk of his patients for the cosmetic surgical procedure.
The operation reportedly costs $70,000 to $150,000, depending on how many inches the patient wants to “grow,” as well as thousands of dollars more in follow-up costs, GQ reported.
“I joke that I could open a tech company,” Debiparshad told GQ. “I got, like, 20 software engineers doing this procedure right now who are here in Vegas. There was a girl yesterday from PayPal. I’ve got patients from Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. I’ve had multiple patients from Microsoft.”
The leg-lengthening process requires a painful procedure in which a doctor breaks the femur in each of a patient’s legs and inserts extendable metal nails. The nails are gradually extended over the next three months by one millimeter a day – eventually making the recovered patient several inches taller.
Femurs
The procedure involves breaking the femurs and inserting surgical nails.
Tech workers reportedly comprise a significant portion of the patients getting leg-lengthening operations at one clinic.
Getty Images
The surgery also carries a lengthy recovery process that includes “relentless” pain that stretches the nerves, muscle and tissue of the legs to an “almost excruciating degree,” according to GQ’s report.
One customer, identified as a 23-year-old, Chicago-based software engineer named Alan, said he underwent the procedure after developing a deep insecurity about his height. A girl who he had a “a super big crush on, like, roasted me for it.”
Alan spent three months recovering from the procedure and went from 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-9.
Another patient, a New York-based options trader named Bryan, also indicated he got the operation to improve his romantic life.
Microsoft
The doctor, Kevin Debiparshad, said “multiple patients” of his work at Microsoft.
“A lot of times I would get rejected,” Bryan told the outlet. “I was, like, swinging 100 and, like, [connecting with] four or five.”
The standard operation adds about three inches of height, but patients can add up to six inches if they are willing to have the same surgical nails implanted in their tibias. Cash-strapped customers are allowed to cover the costs in installments.
Despite its painful physical and financial effects, Debiparshad said his clinic has no shortage of patients.
The Harvard-educated surgeon said patient counts have effectively doubled since remote work came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic. Debiparshad claimed up to 50 patients per month visit his offices.
The roster of patients isn’t limited to the tech sector. Debiparshad told GQ he has performed the procedure on CEOs, actors, physicians, a nurse, a YouTube star and even a news anchor.
The patients are often, but not always, wealthy and share a desire to feel better about themselves.
“A lot of patients see it as an investment in themselves, and not necessarily romantically,” Debiparshad said. “Stature is such an important part, I think, of who you are and how you perceive the world and how the world perceives you. Being able to alter that is so impactful.”