Beyond Measure
A Memoir About Short Stature
& Inner Growth
Ellen Frankel
September 2006

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Original trade paperback $18.95 | 264 pp | ISBN 9781597190053 | Adobe PDF, ePub & Mobipocket Ebook  $9.99  | ISBN 9781597190367

PDF of promotional flyer with excerpt | Author info  | Read Pearlsong Press blog posts on Ellen & her book | Beyond Measure website:  www.beyondmeasureamemoir.com | Ellen Frankel's author website

A touching, tender and at times funny account of a woman’s struggle for stature in a 4 foot 8½ inch tall body, Beyond Measure speaks to the heart of soul-breaking attempts to fit an arbitrary and elusive cultural ideal of physical perfection. Being short isn’t the problem, Ellen Frankel insists. Instead, the real difficulties lie in the social bias against short people.

Ellen shares the difficulties of living short in a world in which stereotypes are based on gender and size. She moves beyond her own experience into the political realm in revealing how pharmaceutical companies—with government backing—are expanding the market for human growth hormone treatment by reclassifying healthy short children as patients in “need” of such injections in hopes of making them taller.

She shares the dilemma of being subjected to simultaneous messages that her physical body should be bigger—that is, taller, but not wider—while her expansive spiritual body should be smaller. Self-destructive behaviors emerge from too much attention on the external rather than the internal workings of the soul. Ellen flirts with eating disorders and unhealthy relationships with powerful males in an attempt to compensate for her feelings of not “measuring up.” In the process, her real self slips farther away.

The path out of her dilemma lies in the shadow of the tallest mountain on Earth. It is through a spiritual pilgrimage to Nepal that Ellen discovers her own strength and spirit, and that we are all dwarfed by Everest and beyond measure.

PRAISE for Beyond Measure

"If you have ever measured your height or weight and felt good or bad about yourself as a result, you need this book. In its pages, Ellen Frankel makes an important contribution to human liberation by telling the most fabulous story that can be told, the story of a person coming fully into her own. This book is thought-provoking, heart-rending, and a genuine solace for people of all sizes."
 
Marilyn Wann
author of
 FAT!SO? Because You Don't Have to Apologize For Your Size

"Delightful and provocative both as a personal journey and as a candid look at how the social prejudice against short stature has been reconfigured as a medical issue."

Alan Cassels
co-author of
Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients