Catching Up with a Guy Who Had His Legs Surgically Lengthened by Three Inches

Checking in with "Alan," who is all healed up after going from 5'6" to 5'9".

The nail.

Two years ago, I wrote a story for GQ about guys who secretly got their legs lengthened during COVID—I watched someone get the procedure done and everything—and it’s still the most popular thing I’ve ever written. SNL did a whole sketch about it with Jack Harlow.

I wrote the story in part because, as a shortie myself, I wanted to get in the heads of dudes who would put themselves through something so debilitating: the process involves getting mechanical nails inserted into the bones of your legs, usually the femurs, which are then lengthened a few millimeters every day until the desired height is reached.

One of my favorite people I talked to for the piece was “Alan,” a sweetie tech bro who lives in Chicago. He decided to get his femurs operated on after a girl he had a crush on in college made fun of him for being short. He was five-six then; now he’s five-nine.

I was curious about how his life might have changed now that he was three inches taller: Was dating better? Was working out weird? Did it feel strange to pee from a new vantage?

So, last week, Alan was kind of enough to FaceTime with me nearly two years after getting the surgery.

Before we get to the interview, a few quick things:

• For SSENSE, I had the great honor of interviewing my favorite writer Judith Thurman about clothes and her 50-year writing career. Her essays on everything from artisanal tofu to Paleolithic cave art to Rei Kawakubo were incredibly formative for me.

• For the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, I highlighted a few exciting new non-alcoholic beverages that don’t taste like sad imitations of, like, vodka. It’s kind of an addendum to this HEAVIES post from back in December.

• And lastly, if you’re able, please consider donating to the GoFundMe pages of displaced Black families who lost their homes in Altadena. SoCal will always be home for me, so I’ll also be donating an additional $10 for every person who becomes a paid subscriber this month.

Onto the chat…

Chris: Yo dude. So are you still at the same job or did you get a new one?

“Alan”: I'm still at the same job. They were really nice to me the whole time. I’m still able to work remote but I go to the office sometimes.

Well, first off, congratulations. Are you all healed up now? How are you feeling?

Yeah, so I'm all healed up. I ended up getting the nail removed. I did it locally at the University of Chicago.

Oh wow. So you didn't have to go back to Vegas to get it removed.

Yeah. I don't know how the whole thing works. I think since it's cosmetic you're supposed to go back, but they didn’t really ask questions here.

So how tall are you now?

I'm five-nine-ish.

Amazing.

Yeah. I mean, I think it was one of those things where you don't need to be the best at anything, or the tallest or the fastest, but it kind of sucks when you're the worst.

How many inches did you get done total?

I did the full eight centimeters, so just a little bit over three inches.

How long was your recovery process after the surgery?

It definitely took a while to recover. I was on a walker for probably the whole time the internal nail thingy was growing. I had to be on a walker for about three months. I didn't find it to be that big of a deal?

Did you have a pretty smooth physical therapy process or were there any complications?

I think the hardest part of PT was just getting [to the physical therapist]. For a while, my mom came back to Chicago to help me recover, and so she organized something where a physical therapist would come to my apartment. But that didn’t last long.

So I ended up having to go to a clinic, and there are a lot of little things that are just a lot more difficult by yourself. You're on a walker. Your legs hurt. You're trying to get the door open. It's the middle of winter in Chicago. And it’s so cold. [laughs]

So did any of your friends notice that you were taller? Like, did anyone know it was you in the story?

My parents and stuff. But no. I think it's also one of those things where except for your close friends, people aren't going to… it would be almost rude to call someone out on it.

Anyway, here’s the nail. [holds the nail up to the camera]

It looks like a piccolo.

Yeah, it's very surprising how they fit this thing [inside your bone].

You should get it displayed on your mantle. Like samurai swords or something.

I want to get it framed.

Did you have any interesting interactions with your friends when you came back taller?

Not particularly. I told my close friends and stuff. I mean, yeah, you can have your “story” about why you're on a walker. First off, I didn't really need to hide it from them. And second of all, they're close enough where they'd probably want to know all the details and stuff.

Even the people who I did try to hide it from, being dishonest is a lot of mental strain. You have to remember your lies and stuff.

I feel you. So you ended up telling most of the people you know?

I think I told most people except work people.

That's totally fair. Did your friends end up asking a lot of questions about it?

No, surprisingly not. They would just ask about recovery or how expensive it was. The weirder thing is I like to go to comedy shows. And I don't know if it was the article, but [the procedure] went from something that was very unknown to a lot of people having heard about it. [laughs]

Yeah…

I don't know if you're responsible for that, but…

Honestly, the story kind of took on a life of its own that I wasn't expecting. They did an SNL sketch on it. Did you see that?

No! But I'm going to look it up. But yeah, I go to a lot of comedy shows. The people onstage would bring it up and start making fun of people who got the surgery done. And I'm with my friends, and I'm just hoping weren’t going to be like, “Yo! This guy did it!”

You have good friends if they didn’t put you on blast.

Yeah.

I imagine the view in the crowd a little better now that you’re taller. Does anything feel weird physically or different now that you’re all done?

I used like to lift and now that's totally messed up. It feels weird. It's not painful or anything, but if you're trying to squat or deadlift or anything, it's weird. It feels like your form’s jacked no matter how many times you try to fix it.

Do you feel like your gait is different?

Not really. When I first started walking again, maybe. I noticed that I would get some knee pains, but I think that went away after a little while.

Are you more cautious now when lifting weights? Like do you lower the amount of plates you’re putting on?

For some things, definitely. I think it puts a lot more weight on your knees if you're trying to squat, because my femurs are a lot longer. I mean, I'm not trying to be a power lifter or anything, so I'm not upset that my max went down or whatever. I just kind of do it to try to not be scrawny.

Did you have to buy new pants?

Okay, so that was one of the really weird things I noticed. A lot of my old pants still seemed to fit! Which would've meant that they were way too long beforehand.
The bigger issue was surprisingly shorts. Because my femurs are longer, so my shorts are kind of short shorts almost.

I remember you told me part of the reason you decided to do this done is because of a girl. How's your dating life now? Is it better? Or something you haven’t really explored yet?

I don't know if it's made a difference or not, but I think it's more in my head, which is probably the thing that would make a difference. Just not having that insecurity of being short anymore, because I mean, I'm sure people pick up on that.

You feel more confident in your day-to-day.

I think it's more… I don't even think about it now. Whereas before [being short] would kind of be on my mind a lot.

Do you ever feel tempted to get your shins done too for another three inches? Or are you done?

I've thought about it. I think at that point, though, it'd be screwing up my proportions. I sort of already feel like I'm kind of at the edge. The bigger thing is I don't ruminate about [being short] and it's not always on my mind, so it's not an issue psychologically.

Anything else weird? Is peeing in a toilet weird? Is driving weird?

At this point I don't think anything is particularly weird. I think the biggest thing I notice is the issue having to buy shorts. Did other people say they had trouble peeing or something?

Yeah. One guy was like, “My aim is off and I’m pissing all over the place.” He said the angle was all off.

[laughs] I don't think that's anything like that's really happened. I mean, I've noticed on airplanes it's a little less spacious. I did the math. If you go from five-five and you get three inches on your femurs, you have the femurs of a six-two or six-three person.

That’s crazy.

I guess on an airplane, if you have your legs kind of at a right angle, maybe your knees are gonna hit the seat in front of you.

Oh, one of the weirder things that happened was I had to I get a MRI for something totally unrelated… while I still had the metal nail in me. And I couldn’t get it done.

That’s terrifying. Like the magnets could yank the metal nail out of your leg.

Yeah. I told them I had it. I was kind of scared.

So from beginning to end, how much time did this process take up in your life?

Like two years. I think I was pretty on top of it about getting the nail removed.

Well, big congratulations on getting this all done. Part of me is a little jealous. It must be so cool to be five-nine now.

But you watched the surgery and now it's ruined for you.

Pretty much. Oh, did you have to get your driver’s license height changed at the DMV?

That was kind of weird. I did it in person, but they don’t even measure you. I could say I was six-three and they would probably just write down six-three.

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