This is the first installment in “A Month of Blind Women,” a four-part essay series presented by LightHouse Interpoint, the new literary supplement from LightHouse for the Blind, and cross-posted at The Toast.
When I was about nineteen, I got into a cab in Paris and the driver commented on my height. This was not unusual; I am tall, have always been tall, and was accustomed to people commenting on it. But then the taxi driver told me that in Sweden they have an operation to fix that.
“To fix what?” My French is good, but the reference to Sweden caught me off guard.
“Your height,” he said. What they did, he explained, was to cut out a section of the thigh bone, just a few centimeters. Then they’d pin the bones together and sew up the leg, and I’d be good as new, only shorter.
I should have let it go at that; should have said, “Sounds great. I’ll pack my bags and leave tomorrow.” But I was too stunned to let it go. “If they cut out part of my thigh, my calf will be disproportionately long,” I said.
“So they can take a piece out of the calf bone, too,” he said. “Then they could take a little bit out of each arm bone, and remove a couple of vertebra as well.”
I was fascinated and horrified. In my mind’s ear I could hear the sharp, metallic clink as small sections of my bones dropped one by one into a stainless steel receptacle, to the accompaniment of the melodic but muted commentary of my Swedish surgeons.
And why Sweden? I wondered. At the time, Sweden was universally associated with sex change operations, so perhaps it was natural for the taxi driver to assume that the Swedes would be able to handle this comparatively simple dissection and reassembly job. But the Swedes are, on average, tall people, certainly taller than the French, so is it likely that the Swedes would come up with an operation for a physical condition they would not define as abnormal?
I snapped out of it. “They can’t do that,” I said. “They can’t remove parts of your spine for cosmetic reasons. And anyway, even if they could, that would make my ribs too close together, and my inner organs would get all squashed. And when they sewed me back up there would be too much skin. I’d be all lumpy.”
“It would smooth out,” he assured me. “Anyway, the point is not to be in proportion. The point is to stop being so tall.”
As I say, my height provokes comments – though this taxi ride was the only time someone had suggested I seek a cure for it. Typically, when I enter a room, people begin talking about their friends and relations who are tall, whether amongst themselves or to me directly. In certain situations, such as a doctor’s office or clothing store, the comments might be appropriate. But it is not uncommon for strangers to come up to me on the street, in airports, even once at a funeral, and talk to me about my height.
I was in an elevator in a hospital recently, and another woman got on and asked me, without preamble, “How tall are you?” When I told her, she piped, “Well, good for you!” Her tone was that of a cheerleader or preschool teacher. Naturally, it’s nice to receive praise from a stranger, but what had I done to deserve it? I suspect that her initial reaction to my height was astonishment, which often veils disapproval, or at least an assessment of something out of the ordinary, abnormal. Perhaps, in attempt to cover the rudeness of her question, she transformed her astonishment into praise.
I can think of very few times that my height has changed the course of my life. And yet people still treat it as noteworthy. For instance, the first time I met my agent, it was all she could talk about. We had known each other for some years already; she had read my work, and through letters, phone calls, and emails we knew quite a lot about each other. When we finally met in person, the first thing she said to me was, “You never told me you were so tall.”
It was true. I had not deliberately withheld the information, but I’d never announced it, either. I’d never written about it. My height does not appear on my CV. Apparently I don’t sound tall on the phone.
I couldn’t even remember an occasion when I might have slipped the fact into our conversation. How would I bring it up? “Speaking as a tall person…” “The tall perspective on that is…” “We in the tallness community…” But my agent found it somehow relevant to my career, as if she would have put my height to some use if only she’d known.
My height makes people doubt their own perceptions. The typical response is to look up at my head, then instantly down at my feet, as if to determine how much of my height comes from my shoes. How high would my heels have to be to make me this much taller than average? Once a teenager on the bus looked up at my head, then down at my feet, then raised her face again to ask: “Are you really that tall?” Is there an answer to such a question?
I am very popular with tall women, or women who always thought of themselves as tall until they met me. In public places and social gatherings, tall women spot me from afar, then lift their chins; straighten their spines. Suddenly they achieve the posture their mothers always nagged them about: “Be proud of your height.” I am grateful that I never heard this imperative from my own mother, and this may account for something. She had been considered tall in her youth (and was still tall in adulthood, except when I was around) and had heard the admonition from her own mother, whose height was average. The tall women who see me become proud of their height, or else proud of my height, relieved at last of the burden of being the tallest woman in the room.
Or it may simply be a sense of kinship. Tall women have common concerns: we can never find shoes large enough, sleeves long enough. We’ve heard all the wisecracks: “How’s the weather up there?” Way better than it is down there.
Many tall women, despite obvious success, desire some consolation for their height. In interviews, the actress Geena Davis complained at length about her height. She described how self-conscious she’d been about it in high school, how hard it had been for her to get a date. She is not as tall as me – only about as tall as my mother – and yet I don’t relate.
While tallness is an asset for men in just about every culture on earth, denoting authority and leadership, height in women is often considered a liability. Tall women learn that to be taller than their male partner is unfeminine, undesirable, and unlovely. It’s true that fashion models tend to be tall, because a tall body is considered a better frame on which to drape clothes. But typically fashion models are on the tall side of average, and most report the same unhappiness that Geena Davis suffered.
My late husband was four inches shorter than I am. We observed that this automatically elevated him in the esteem of women—both strangers and friends who commented on it to me. They judged him to be less shallow than other men, more secure than a man who would be threatened by a tall woman.
While women are conditioned to think of excessive height as a detriment, men often exaggerate about their height, adding an inch or two when questioned. Even the tallest, most popular tall men on the planet – say, basketball players – lie about how tall they are, pushing their inflated stats to the height of believability. Men have good reason to stretch the truth about their height. Tall men tend to earn more than shorter men. Researchers have shown people pictures of a group of men, all similarly dressed, and asked them to say which man appears to be in charge. They tend to pick the tallest one, even if another man is exhibiting dominant behavior.
Things may be changing, however. Recently, a high school women’s basketball team greeted me warmly in an ice cream parlor, not just relieved but proud to be in good company. Indeed, when I see young tall women today, more often they seem to wear their height with a certain swagger: “That’s right, mister, I’m tall. Wanna make something of it?” And I cannot help but think that that as women compete with men more and more in the workplace, in politics, in sports, and elsewhere, the favorable assumptions people make about tall men will extend to tall women. I assume this is why Geena Davis, not some shorter actress, played the U.S. president in the short-lived primetime show ‘Commander In Chief.’
It will not have escaped the attentive reader that I have not said exactly how tall I am. I am the tallest woman I know but not the tallest woman ever. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the tallest woman for whose height there is reliable evidence was Zeng Jinlian of Yujiang village in Bright Moon Commune, Hunam Province, China. She was 8 feet, 1.5 inches tall when she died in 1982. Until 2012, the tallest living woman was Yao Defen, from the Anhui province of eastern China, who measured 7 feet, 9 inches, two inches taller than the previous Guinness record holder, Sandy Allen of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Today, it is Siddiqua Parveen, estimated at 7 feet, 8 inches. And no, I am not in their league.
Yao Defen, Sandy Allen, and Siddiqua Parveen have all had tumors removed from their pituitary glands. Problems with the pituitary are frequently identified as the cause of excessive height. Operations of this kind are deemed necessary when the person’s extreme height makes it difficult for the heart and other organs to function. In Parveen’s case, they were even concerned the tumor would cause her to go blind.
But there have been medical interventions to curb growth even when it does not necessarily threaten life or vision. From the 1950s into the ’70s and in some cases even later, doctors prescribed synthetic estrogens to pre-pubescent girls who showed signs of growing too tall. The hormones were supposed to speed up the maturation process so that the skeleton would cease to grow. Reasons given for wishing to limit the height of girls were that tall girls would have trouble finding clothes, getting dates, and pursuing a career in ballet—as if a career as a ballet dancer guaranteed happiness. There has been little in the way of follow-up research to determine the long-term effect on these women, but some report problems such as early menopause and cysts.
As far as I know, the limb shortening operation the Paris cab driver described is not commonly performed. He may have extrapolated from a limb lengthening procedure by which the long bones of adolescents are severed and lengthened in such a way as to encourage the bones to grow longer. There are by far many more treatments to increase height than to decrease it. Even a cursory web search will yield everything from shoe lifts to human growth hormone therapies to devices that purport to stimulate the pituitary gland or thicken the disks between the vertebrae.
What complicates the ways people respond to my height is that I am also blind. I cannot always see the double takes, the astonished gaze sweeping up and down the length of my body – though it is possible to feel these responses, or rather to hear them. A hush tends to come over a room when a blind person enters. My blindness, like my height, makes people see their surroundings differently. Every object, every feature of the ground underfoot is transformed into a potentially lethal obstacle. “Watch your step,” people tell me, and then: “Watch your head!” – a physical impossibility even for the sighted.
Apparently when people see me coming they sometimes jump out of the way. A blind friend and I were walking down the street in Montreal one nice spring evening, and my husband said it was as if we were parting the Red Sea. Even when I’m on my own, people dive out of the way, whisking toddlers and small dogs from my path. My cane moves with steady, rhythmic care; what are they afraid will happen if it touches them? Do they think I’m out there waving a cattle prod around? Do they imagine a risk of blind contagion?
A while ago, I sat down in a Paris restaurant next to a couple of international businesspeople. Immediately they began talking about Lasik surgery to cure myopia, and it was obvious that my blindness led to the topic shift. They both knew people who’d had the surgery, and each had considered having the operation, despite the fact that they’d heard many horror stories about surgeries gone wrong. They both agreed that wearing glasses, even wearing contact lenses, put them at a disadvantage in the high-powered international business world. Wearing glasses denoted weakness, and therefore a lack of authority. From this I gathered that if you show a group of research subjects a room full of men in business attire they will never assume the one in charge is the blind man, no matter how tall he may be. (Unless, of course all of them are blind, but I doubt this experiment has occurred to anyone but me.)
People often tell me that I’m tall, as if I might be in some doubt about the fact. But people never tell me that I’m blind. Blindness is assumed to be such an unmitigated tragedy that presumably I might burst into tears if reminded of it. Rather they tell me, usually in somewhat hushed and reverent tones, about cures. They’ve read something somewhere or seen something on TV about some doctor who has invented a cure for blindness. The public imagination translates a news item about some promising preliminary finding in lab rats into an announcement of a readily available cure for blindness of every kind.
The general public has touching faith in the promise of human perfectibility through science, and a rather murky understanding of the wide range of causes of vision impairments. Cataract operations only work on patients with cataracts. Laser treatments can slow or arrest the progress of certain retinal diseases, but cannot restore cells that have already died. Gene therapies and retinal and cerebral implants may one day improve or restore vision to certain individuals, but not all of us, and not now. Remarkably, the same people who express horror at an operation or hormone treatment to add or subtract an inch or two from a person’s height are perplexed that a blind person might decline the opportunity to have holes drilled in her skull and wires threaded through her brain in the hope that she might be able to gain back even just a few shadows or color perception. Pointing out that a white cane or guide dog can help prevent collisions will only earn one the label of willfully obstinate. I’ve learned that the expected response when these descriptions of cure are offered is: “Sounds great. I’ll pack my bags and leave tomorrow.”
I have been blind long enough to know that I can either drop everything and traipse around the world volunteering myself as an experimental subject to any researcher who will have me, or I can concentrate my efforts on adapting my environment to suit my nonvisual needs. Fortunately, in my lifetime, the proliferation of adaptive technologies has vastly improved my life. My talking computer not only allows me to do my work, but gives me access to an ever-growing amount of reading material. Global positioning devices can help blind people navigate unfamiliar places and, most gratifyingly, let us give directions to taxi drivers.
As the population ages, the baby-boomer generation will be affected by the leading causes of blindness that tend to occur later in life. Demand for assistive tools and services will increase. Environmental concerns will make public transportation more and more of a necessity, so all us non-drivers will benefit.
What makes my height and blindness analogous is that both can be understood as relative. I am taller in France or China than in America or Sweden. I am also more blind than most people, but less blind than some.
The concept of “legal” blindness in the industrialized world identifies some visual activities as more crucial to living and working than others. Blindness is defined as the inability to read standard print or drive a car safely. The standard measure for legal blindness is an acuity of 20/200 or less, or a visual field of 20 degrees or less in the better eye with corrective lenses. People whose vision falls short in these areas are legally eligible for educational and vocational programs. In some countries, such as Egypt, the threshold to be considered blind is 20/300. I would still be blind in Egypt; perhaps not in another country. But I would probably still be noteworthy.
What I don’t always know for sure is whether it is my height or my blindness that strikes people most profoundly. Recently, a man in front of me at the supermarket checkout line said, “You were in line behind me when I was in here last week.” He reminded me that he had asked me to hold his place in line so he could go get some tomatoes he’d forgotten. “You’re a very distinctive person,” he said, by way of explanation. “I mean, you must be the tallest woman in here.”
I sense he might also have been thinking, “You’re the only blind person in here,” or even “You’re the tallest blind person I’ve ever seen.” But since blindness is not considered something polite to mention, he decided to mention only my height. Why mention any personal characteristic at all? I wondered. I mumbled something about how “I stand out in a crowd” and let it go at that.
I remember a man in Montreal once offered the comment: “La géante est aveugle!” The giantess is blind! This sized me up, in a way, but did not manage to get me in a nutshell. My blindness, like my height, is simply one of the many characteristics that make me who I am. I am way above average in one respect, way below average in another. And while life could always be better, I do not feel I need to be cured of anything. That’s right, monsieur. I am tall. I am blind. I am female. And the weather up here is just the way I like it.
Fist bump from a fellow tall person enjoying the weather up here.
Oh this is such a beautiful piece. Thank you.
I’d like to think that attitudes towards tall women are changing. I mostly get comments from (shorter) older men, although I know that I attract more attention than comments. Especially if my 5-inches-shorter husband is next to me.
But, there are few things I love more than being among tall people, tall women in particular. There’s a strange sense of power that I feel when I straighten up to my full height–a feeling that is even stronger when I’m wearing high heels. A woman was helping me at Nordstrom’s last week and she was taller than me, and wearing heels that were at least 4″ tall. I just stared up at her in adoration the whole time. She made me wish I was even taller, which I would be if I didn’t have scoliosis. I love my height, so thank you for this reminder to be my tallest self all the time.
I hate wearing heels, but I have a very high pair for those occasions when I need to be physically intimidating. It’s amazing how just standing up (and a little too close) gives me more authority.
Over here (where we measure in cm) attitudes are changing as well, I think.
I definitely have some surreal experiences. Like meeting a lady who, upon seeing me, started to explain to her little girl that sometimes one is born with the body of a boy while one is actually a girl which is a kind of being ill but fortunately, nowadays… Er, I definitely agree on the “fortunately, nowadays”, but I struggled to decide whether I should subtly whip out a chromosome chart showing my two shiny X’s. Or maybe sing a top G. Or drop my pants?
I always love meeting other tall women. I creepily position myself near them while waiting for public transport etc., and bask in being normal among the tiny people for a minute. Although like the author, I am yet to meet someone taller.
I come from a country of short people, and women tend to be petite; I’m tall and broad. It blows I’ve always been the ‘tall’ girl. But since I’ve moved to London I’ve really enjoyed being ‘average height’ (I’m not even 6ft, Irish people are just really short, as in when I was 10 I was taller than my teacher.) and I really love seeing tall, well dressed women out and about. It gives me hope!
Sometimes I see women who are 6ft+ and broad like me, and they’re dressed in immaculate business attire, or a power suit and heels and its brilliant! I dress like crap because I despise shopping because there is never anything in my size. My feet are too big, my hips and back are too wide, my legs and arms are too long, its a fucking nightmare, I feel like some freakish oger in every clothes shop I go into, but then I see these women and at least there is hope, the clothes are out there somewhere!
This article was really beautiful written too, I’m a bit misty eyed tbh.
I can definitely identify with feeling like an ogre while shopping, especially outside the US. I have slowly learned to let go of attributing self-worth to pants size and focused on feeling good in what I wear, no matter the number on the tag. I’ve also had to get used to not finding much very often and trying lots of things on in the process. It is definitely a struggle to fit into the mold defined by the modern fashion industry. Good luck to you in your quest.
These days I’m jussst outside the ‘regular’ sizes in the UK, and the plus size stuff is either hideous or too big, so its just impossible. I’ve taken to walking around TKmaxx and just picking up anything that’s a 16/18 (so not much.), and then trying it all on and anything that fits I’ll buy (usually one top. That I don’t even like but I need clothes.)
TKmaxx in particular infuriates me, but I love it for the choice, like why is there two racks of jeans that are >28 inches, that is tiny! They have so much in a 6, 8, and 10, a bit in a 12 and then 14+ there is pretty much nothing unless that particular branch has a plus size corner full of floral tents. (for reference the average size in the UK is 14-16). And don’t even get me started on sleeves, I’m a grown ass woman, I deserve full length sleeves!! (My poor wrists are so. cold.)
I get so angry in these stupid shops, I want to spend money, why won’t you give me things to spend money on! Isn’t that what you want? I don’t even care about the number on the tag, all I want is something that will fit me without suffocating me or making me look like I’m wearing a bin bag.
The first time I shopped in a clothing store for tall women, I tried on a pair of jeans that were too long. I burst into tears knowing somewhere out there was a woman taller than I.
I think, as a tall woman myself, that the Nordstrom annual large shoe event is the closest to a Friendly Tall Women Convention I will ever get.
Another fist bump. Over the heads of the shorties standing between us.
This was brilliant, thank you. And it really drives home that women are just damned if they do, damned if they don’t, because femininity is both compulsory and defined as powerlessness. So tall women are shamed for not being sufficiently feminine, no matter how femme they actually are, while short women are often condescended to, treated as children and subordinates. I’m on the short side of things and deeply aware that my body is considered incompatible with power, especially political power. It’s enraging.
Thinking about how disability fits into this is even more complicated. Thanks for doing it so gracefully.
i have been having a very strange experience lately, of feeling like i actually do have power in my workplace, in comparison to other women i work with. examining it closely it seems to just be a factor of my greater experience, i.e. i am willing to push until i get what i need, where my female coworkers might give up.
and then of course a male coworker did that thing where he talked to one of my other male coworkers even though i was the one who knew what was up, and i was reminded that even with my experience it so often doesn’t even matter, i still have no power.
also i didn’t mean to make this piece be about me! i really enjoyed it even though half way through i realized that my brain had read ‘blind’ but thought ‘deaf’, i am an idiot
Not an idiot. I can’t tell you the number of times people asked if I had to learn sign language due to my son’s blindness.
I hope you tell those people you did in fact learn sign language so that you could talk about your son in front of him without him knowing. If you could say it with a straight face, that would be beautiful.
maybe it’s because culturally we treat both blindness and deafness similarly? it’s not like it’s easy to confuse the two concepts.
but what makes this worse is i’m actually deaf, so i really have no excuse.
On the contrary; I think that makes it all the more understandable. You’re used to thinking about deafness, so your brain autocorrected for what it expected.
I’m not super tall, but tall enough that I’ve definitely seen people check to see whether I’m wearing heels (which I’m usually not). I’m so glad to read that someone else has this experience!
I think I might be proportioned oddly for a tall person, since people always seem surprised by my height close up — maybe I look average height from afar. I’m an optical illusion.
a thing that happens to me a lot is that I will see a tall woman out in the wild, and think to myself “oh look at that tall lady” and then upon getting close to her, realize I am the same height or taller.
I also get asked to reach things on the top shelf at the supermarket a lot, which I always obligingly do.
yes! I never really think of myself as that tall, but often when I think of women (not close friends who i spend a lot of time in close proximity, but people like professors, strangers, co-workers that I don’t work with) as being tall, I later find out that they’re either my height or even an inch or two shorter than me.
On behalf of the shorties, thank you!
Also, as a Short, I have a problem with assuming everyone is tall. I’ll describe someone as “that tall guy” and everyone will look at me perplexed, because the person I’m talking about is only 5’7″ or 5’8″. But that’s over half a foot on me!
I love meeting people while sitting down for just this reason–my torso is actually pretty short proportionally. Then I stand up, towering over them, and the game is changed!
I love that too. Especially men. Women generally look delighted and say something like “oh, I wish I had long legs like you.” As for men, something shifts in their demeanor immediately, as though I am now someone they must take serious note if and respect – my power rank just went up a notch in their minds.
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing this gorgeous piece.
As a woman on the taller side of average, or the short side of tall, I loved getting a glimpse into those clouds of what life is like for you truly tall ladies.
The way we remark on physical characteristics as if they have some inherent value is truly peculiar. Of course the way we move through this world does effect our perceptions and experiences, but remarking on someone else’s body is rarely useful or helpful. Hearing from you about those interaction actually is helpful for those of us wanting to increase awareness of others’ experiences.
Not to mention how enjoyable it was to read your lovely writing.
I love this piece! So many interrelated things tied together so well!!
“My blindness, like my height, makes people see their surroundings differently.”
I would like to believe that this is usually true in only the best ways— that when we are exposed to people with different experiences, that we expand our ability to think of others as human too, and that not everyone has the same needs/ perspectives/ etc. In reality, I know that’s not true nearly as often as it should be.
Oooh, this essay was great. Thank you!
I can’t speak to tallness, but I can say it’s really fantastic to see writing from a blind perspective. My dad was born with congenital glaucoma and has been completely blind since he was seven. I am often infuriated by how ‘othered’ he is, even just while out shopping for groceries at the tiny market down the street. He’s led a lower quality of life physically and socially because of the stigma around both his blindness and his general handicap. People forget all decorum and freeze, some openly stare, some lose their words when he walks into their store, walks down the street, meets mutual friends.
I yearn for more conversation around this topic, for normalizing the experiences of the handicapped. I want people like him to be seen like as much of a person deserving of manners and normal interaction as anyone else.
Thank you for writing this. It means a lot.
A friend of mine in college was blind and we were all in a super liberal crunchy granola grad program and some people were very awkward around it, and what I thought was so odd about it that my friend was incredibly gregarious and not shy at all in talking about herself- she was very much a “get it out of the way so we move on to other things” person, and yet even in this extreme crunchy group with a person willing to make herself available for educational purposes, an ideal environment you’d think, you still get that frozen thing from time to time.
It would depend on if your father likes making a scene or not but my friend’s favorite thing to do in a restaurant or bar was say very loudly, “what does a blind woman have to do to get a drink around here?!” Then she’d usually mess with the waiter for a little bit, and then let him off the hook. She said, when she went blind she decided to go loud. She also did this at a party once time when a guy came up and was like, “why didn’t you move out of the way while I was doing my dance?” and she said, “oh are you blind too? You can’t see my cane and my dog then!”
My dad isn’t particularly quiet; I would actually say one of his stimulation tics is talking. He advocates for himself but he does it in that crotchety-old-man way I’m both proud of and embarrassed by. No matter how much he speaks up or banters, people are still totally shocked by the appearance of someone with a non-normative body and life-experience in their space.
I’m gonna also say that among my dad’s blind friends, I’ve noticed a vast difference between the socialization of people who went blind later in life versus people who were either born into it or had a very short time as a sighted person. It sounds to me like your friend went blind post-childhood as making a conscious choice to be loud seems like a very self-aware decision.
There’s a lot of subtle visual cues my dad didn’t learn and as such doesn’t exude in conversation; people don’t always show compassion when dealing with him and his particular verbal style. I wish he was good at burning people when they don’t “get it”, but he either doesn’t notice or becomes infuriated with his unjust treatment. I get his anger, and I also wish there was just more education and discussion on how to treat all people like actual people.
Also, I just want to acknowledge to anyone else reading this that I’m really self-aware I’m coming from the stance of close-to-having the experience instead of actually having it, and I’m not trying to represent myself as knowing more or better than other folks who have lived it.
Thanks for the reply <3
Gosh, I’m sorry I was being very dumb in a kindly way. I think what I meant to say, and said badly, is that my friend was the first person I knew with a disability who really called people on the carpet for it, and it was a real eye opener for me watching her throw awkwardness back at the person causing it- it’s been an inspiration for me in occasionally cussing out catcallers. I’m infinitely amazed at how weird people get around difference and I’m sorry about it.
And to be clear I know very little about the lived issues of a blind person and I’m sorry if I did that “well what you should do” thing, I really really didn’t mean that.
Haha, omg this comment specifically showcases how the comment culture with Toasties is really nice. I didn’t take it as aggressive or over-reaching at all. You’re totally fine! I’m always interested in comparing experiences.
🙂
This is wonderfully well written and thought provoking
I don’t have anything intelligent to add, just wanted to say that I thought this was lovely and, as others have pointed out before me, thought provoking. And as a Swede, I have a bit of googling to do now! I had no idea we used to be associated with sex change operations.
I learned long ago to never tell a man, particularly a man in a bar or at a party, my height even though they nearly always ask. I am precisely six feet tall. Only maybe 5% of American men are six feet tall or above. Yet, I can testify that more than 50% of men who are 5’10” – 5-11″ will belligerently react to my answer by saying, “You’re NOT six feet tall! I’m six feet tall!”
Then they hop off their barstool and demand a side by side measurement, or make comments about my heels being higher than they appear, or they just keep muttering…
It’s incomprehensible because it’s not like I was looking to out their lie. They didn’t need to fling themselves into a self-created battle.
Being (very close to) 6′ is like being a lie detector for men who are 5’10”.
Yes… my entire life. I am 6.25 and it’s ridiculous the number of men who want that side-by-side. I flat out tell them “all men under 6 feet claim to be 6 feet” and refuse to pay their little game (it’s so yucky!).
I am so happy (or sad) that this observation has been made by others as well.
It’s really interesting how much more insecure I’ve become about my height as a guy. I was on the tall side of average for a woman and never really gave too much thought to my height one way or another, but as a guy now, I’m short and I can feel it more in social situations. Even if no one comments on it, there’s more implied looming. It’s had the effect of getting me to stand up straighter, which is something I never did as a woman, so I suppose that’s something.
Wow, what a unique perspective! One of my friends is a transwoman who is 6’2″. I wonder how her height affects how she’s perceived, and how she views herself.
eeeeeeewwwwwww……. how does this even work out? won’t you still be taller than them if you comply with the measurement game?
OMG. This has happened to me as well! And I never wear high heels 👠.
OMG SAME. 6’0″ on the nose and it just infuriates those 5’10-and-three-quarters” dudebros…
Being 5’9″ is like being a walking yardstick- anyone noticeably taller than me is Tall, and most guys who like to think they are just aren’t. Plus, having come from a family where the 6’1 uncle is the short one, I have very particular standards for male height.
Our culture informs capitalism about what’s acceptable to sell. It’s ok to have long legs,so tall women can find jeans and slacks quite easily. It’s not ok to have a long torso or long arms,so it’s moderately hard to find tops and very hard to find tall dresses,lingerie or sleepwear (you can find tall pj bottoms but not nightgowns). Bathing suits are also a challenge. As a young woman aching to feel more feminine 30 years ago,the utter lack of lingerie and dresses that fit felt like a painful slap in the face whenever I went into a store. As though being a real girl was a club I was not invited to,and I should be ashamed for yearning for it. (Note: I never wanted to be shorter,just to wear pretty things.)
Yeah, my mum has short legs and a long back and she always gets those two-piece swimming costumes that are essentially a one-piece cut in half.
Myself, I’m short all over, so my biggest problem is just having to turn up the bottoms of my trousers.
(Intended as reply to Anne)
Thank you for your lovely article. As another very tall woman I have been ridiculed all my life. Total strangers go out of their way to comment negatively on my height. I am also extremely myopic, so myopic that I am legally blind without my thick glasses. Lasik won’t work for me, no matter how many times people urge me to have it. I empathize with Georgina most sincerely.
A girl I was in primary school with (early 80s) was on hormones to stop her from growing. I never saw her after puberty, but I do occasionally wonder how that worked out, or what hideous fate her parents imagined for her as a tall woman.
Ahh! I got to UCB and I see her on the bus sometimes!
Back to serious, this was really excellent, and a good reminder to not say things to just to say them. I wonder what it is about human brains that makes us feel like we need to point out obvious traits? There isn’t any conversational merit, they’re not framed as complements, and it’s not like the person doesn’t already know that they’re tall.
Also, I really enjoyed the portions about her travels, which I think would make for an excellent follow up article…