AS A teenager, Lewis hit 1,65m and stopped growing. He would be almost 10cm shorter than the average British man; in fact, nine out of 10 men would be taller than him. When he plucked up the courage to go out, he wore stacked heels.
He resented the way dating apps encouraged height discrimination. “You’re a great guy – you deserve to be taller,” one woman said. At one point he went on antidepressants.
He’s seen all the usual jokes on Twitter and elsewhere. “I believe it’s one of the last prejudices that is seen as acceptable,” Lewis says. “It’s interesting that people fixate on something you can’t change . . . Well, at least I thought you couldn’t.”
A couple of years ago, Lewis paid a surgeon tens of thousands of pounds to break his legs and make them longer. He knew it would be a risky, painful procedure. But he also knew that, all being well, he would come out of it about 7,6cm taller.
“The day before the surgery I started to get really nervous,” says Lewis, who is British and prefers not to share his real name or any details of his surgery, including its exact cost. “But this is what I really wanted.”
Demand for cosmetic leg-lengthening, also known as stature-lengthening, is on the rise, particularly among young men. Thanks to technological advances and changing attitudes to cosmetic procedures, clinics all over the world are competing for patients.
Yet, there is also concern about
