The ‘T’ Word
Today an article on smh.com caught my eye. It was an article about how to deal with being a tall, young female.
Against my better judgement, I clicked the link and read the article.
You see, I was once a tall, young female [to avoid any possible confusion, all that changed is that I'm now a tall, late-20s female] and I thought maybe someone had an opinion worth sharing on the issue, because I have some beefs with the topic.
Beef number one: The question [usually from strangers] ’How tall are you?’
First, I would never ask how much you weigh, mostly because I have much more interesting things to think about. Like giraffes. Giraffes blow my mind. How the hell did ANYTHING evolve to look like a giraffe? Everything about a giraffe is blows my mind. Proportion, colour scheme. Everything. I still wouldn’t ask a giraffe how tall they were though. Okay, giraffes were the worst example possible for other things I might be thinking about rather than other peoples’ appearances, especially height. Ibis. Ibis also blow my mind. Hello living dinosaurs!
Having said that, it’s not that I get always get offended when people ask, because normally, it is strangers and when I look at them, almost every single time, I’m all like ‘Dude, you want to go toe-to-toe with me over personal appearance. STEP OFF!’
It’s more, let’s have some semblance of social graces people!
My actual beef with that question is: maybe I’m missing part of my brain, but it’s so illogical! Surely me standing next to you and being taller than you is the best indication ever of my height. Why do you need a number? Do you have some sort of space aged computer program in your brain that makes a little graph for you of your height compared to mine? YOU’RE STANDING RIGHT THERE! LOOK UP! THAT IS HOW TALL I AM!
*cough*
Moving on.
My second beef: tall people who talk about how tall they are all the time with huge sighs and sad eyes, like they forget that it’s not a disability. And before anyone jumps down my throat and says ‘Yes, but you are only six-foot something, you don’t know what it’s like to be this much taller!’, stop, breathe, and then think about people who really have it hard. Now let’s go shoot some hoops.
STOP RIGHT THERE!
Shooting hoops. Mostly old white men say ‘You must play basketball!’ and I say ‘No, I am afraid of balls and I have been told by two people that the way I run is the funniest thing they’ve ever seen’. However, once, a very tall African American man asked me if I played basketball and I was like ‘…’.
The point being that the smh.com article was really superficial and stupid [and short, ho ho!] and I rarely think about height and am often surprised when I realise how much taller I am than a lot of my friends. And then I shrug and get on with my day, which usually involves rescuing my shoelace from whatever it got stuck in that made me trip over.
I am the Clifford the Big Red Dog of tall females.
9 comments
Snap! Totally agree.
I find it’s always short people who ask (as in, people who are objectively quite short, not just people who are shorter than me), which says more about their issues than the issues of tall people. I like being tall, and I think tall ladies are very sexy (yoohoo!), so I really don’t understand this weird stigma towards tall women.
That said, most tall girls I know who have dated/married gents of lesser stature get a bit weird about it. One even sighed “Oh well, I won’t be able to wear heels any more.” Screw that! It’s the 21st century! Forget heteronormative gender roles, embrace your tall sexy self.
As best I can understand, people ask because they want to compare you to the tallest person (or woman) that they know. Are you Officially Huge? Or are you just tall? I HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THIS.
The weirdest thing I get is people who argue with me about my height, usually: “no way, you aren’t that tall.” Because you’d know, human tape measure.
I mean, people who argue with me about the number.
I get the tall thing occasionally too. And the ‘skinny’ thing. Yes, people, I do have a mirror. I know I am both tall and skinny. But thank you for informing me anyway, just in case.
I don’t really get offended anymore (but boy did I used to — you should have heard my “I would never comment on how fat you are!” diatribes), but I really don’t understand it.
I, like you, don’t think about height and have real trouble remembering how tall people are. Actually, I’m just generally bad at describing what people look like…
Pity the article wasn’t more insightful. The psychology of height could actually be quite interesting.
And I agree with you Liam — except that I don’t wear heels in the first place, because I almost always roll my ankle when I do.
Mary, that’s weird. The arguing thing, I mean. Reminds me of the time one of my housemates argued with one of my friends about where in Victoria her hometown was. Because, of course, he would know better than she.
People are just tedious. When you get older it stops being the weight and more …..
“How old are you?”
“Aren’t you retired yet?!”
“How much super have you got?”
Thin women on fishing expeditions say “Oh I’m so fat!!” just as they did when they were 20 and fatter women reach for the nearest sharp object just as they did when they were 20 but luckily, most people over 40 have boring things wrong with their bodies and want to talk about that.
Something to look forward to.
As someone who plays basketball, when a basketballer asks you ‘how tall are you’ it’s because they’re pretty fricken jealous of your mad height!! Your very tall African American friend was inadvertently giving you a compliment probably. Height is good.
I’m only about 5’7…I reckon if I could pick a height, I’d love to be 5’10 – 5’11 for every day and well, as tall as I could be for basketball!!
Ha! Yeah with the African American dude, I more meant that it was genuinely funny that of all people to ask me that, the one better basketball stereotype asked.
For the record, Clifford is one my heroes.
As are you.
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