This question was presented to me the other day and it left me feeling flummoxed.
It’s not that I’ve not heard this sort of question in various guises in the past; I think it just hit me, that regardless of all the good intentions of raising awareness of restricted growth, of making us more visible in society as being ordinary, we will still encounter the second-look because at the end of the day we are different.
And if this is the case – then should we RG people not glory in our difference from the average-joe and enjoy standing out from the crowd? Use our difference to challenge attitudes in the workplace, education, media and society in general?
I think the real answer to this (for me especially) is to do with acceptance.
Wanting acceptance from society. Wanting people, education, the workplace, and the media not to equate our height to our level of intelligence (i.e. not being very bright). Not to equate being small as a reflection of the types of attitudes we have (i.e. being small minded) or to our financial standing in life ( i.e. not being able to amass wealth).
You see for the most part, apart from usually having rather large personalities in order to assert ourselves, we restricted growth people are rather ordinary and quite boring folk. Though, I speak for myself here as someone with obviously far too much time and Internet access on their hands.
As ever, this one presents more questions than there are answers…