iStockphoto.com
As part of a series called The Good Listener, NPR recently ran a piece titled “Are Tall People Obligated To Stand In The Back At Concerts?” in response to a Facebook post by an individual (presumably of the shorter variety) who complained:
“I was recently at a show of the unseated variety when, to my dismay, a very tall and wide chap with a head boasting the approximate dimensions of a cereal box stationed himself directly in front of me. I spent the whole (crowded) show craning to one side or another so that my view was not entirely obstructed. I wished this gentleman to be banned from concert-going forever, or at least to be forced to view the show from the back row of every venue. My question is: What obligation does the big/tall person have to his or her fellow concertgoers with regard to obstructing the view?”
Cranium sizes comparable to breakfast food containers aside, tall people are not a rare species at musical performances and other cultural events in which many people are gathered together to look in one direction and view a single stage. Many of these concerts are general admission, meaning that the floor is open to standing room exclusively, and that space is filled on a first-come first-serve basis, regardless of physical stature. And that’s that.
The idea that everyone should be able to have equal and unobstructed lines of sight towards the front of the venue is a nice one, though ultimately utopian. While a short concert-goer wishing to relegate a fellow fan and peer to the back of the bus so-to-speak (or worse, have them “banned from concert-going forever") for a better view based on a characteristic they cannot control is at best idealistic, it’s at worst incredibly self-entitled and unfair. Shows aren’t an inherently oppressive economic system you need to right with compensatory measures; you do realize you can just show up earlier and wait in line like the rest of us, right?
I am about 6’4” and I enjoy being close to if not in the front row. I have been known to arrive to the venue long in advance to secure such a position. Anyone who does that earns their proximity to the action, and anyone who waltzes through the crowd halfway through the first song, feeling as if they deserve to be ahead of you because they never grew out of their high school height, does not. The only thing they should be at the front of is a list of the worst people ever.
I’m not trying to pass this generalization off as fact, it’s merely been my experience (and of course there are plenty of exceptions), but concert-goers of a smaller stature are almost always the most intolerably inconsiderate individuals in the crowd. Whether they are shoving themselves in between and in front of my friends and I, blowing smoke up into my face, repeatedly fist-pumping into my nose, standing directly on my feet for an extra lift for an extended period of time (when I asked her to move she pretended as if she hadn’t noticed she was literally climbing on top of my body), or even just subtly trying to make me feel guilty the entire time, the sense of cavalier entitlement coupled with a raging Napoleon complex is far more obstructive to one’s enjoyment of a night out than an eager fan who simply has to wear a longer size of pants.
And most of the time, short people do better in life than we do anyway: they fit in car and plane seats more comfortably, they can find clothes that fit them without much effort, and they're even likely to live longer than us. My head never even makes it in photos. Let us have this one.
"Don’t you have a heart?” you may be asking. “Why do you hate short people? They can’t help it!”
Well, yeah. If you’re nice to me I’ll probably just let you in front of me anyway by choice. Specifically, if you’re the adorable elderly woman who came to see Paul McCartney at Lollapalooza a couple of weeks ago, I was more than happy to hold your sign for you and help you get closer to our hero.
Everyone else? Come wait in line with me from the beginning, we'll stand together.