Ann at Feministing has an extraordinary post today about how being extraordinarily tall (she’s 6’2″) means that she gets all kinds of intrusive (and predictable) questions from people who view her unusual stature as an invitation to comment.
Fratty dudes in bars will chant “6 footer!” or loudly make bets with each other about how tall I am. (Well, I’ve actually had restaurant wait staff and fellow wedding guests make bets, too, so maybe it’s unfair to pin that one on the bros alone.) People stare openly, all the time, everywhere I go. There are some days, namely those when I’m wearing whopping 1-inch heels, that I feel like I leave a ripple of height comments in my wake. Small children point and say, “Mommy! Look at the giant lady!” Women who feel insecure about their own height will often say to me, “I wish I was that tall!” No, honey, you don’t. Really. . .
To a certain degree, I still get angry at well-meaning strangers who feel it’s OK to make a comment about my body. It’s not. I don’t walk up to short men and ask how short they are. I don’t approach strangers and announce to them what color their skin is. I don’t approach other women to tell them how skinny or blonde or freckled they are. Also, I hate it when strangers ask me if I’m a model or if I play basketball/volleyball. I never ask short men if they’re a jockey. (Well, I do if they’re being an asshole to me. But never out of the blue.) I hate that people immediately think my physical characteristics have anything to do with my career or interests.
Ann writes about feeling physically exposed during her adolescence (she reached her present height in 7th grade, when she was for a time the tallest person in the school). I myself went through a brief period of being the tallest one in my homeroom during 8th grade (my 8th grade class picture is really a hoot, since I’m taller than everyone, including the teacher, by a good five inches). But by the time high school rolled around, I wasn’t quite so unusual anymore, for my height at least (my weight was another story, since I was one of the few back then).
And when you’re the tallest, or the fattest, or the shortest, or the only person of color, or the only redhead, you become defined by that characteristic in other people’s minds. I was always the fat girl, before I was anything else. Because that’s how people remembered me. And people — strangers — will feel free to make comments to you or to draw conclusions about your personality or interests based on the unusual characteristic you display. Ann gets asked questions about how tall she is, and people presume that she’s interested in basketball or volleyball. Redheads undoubtedly get sick of hearing how fiery they are. I knew a tall black man in college who got asked so many times if he played basketball that he finally just started going along with it and letting star-struck UConn fans buy him drinks. I don’t know how many times that someone I don’t know has felt free to comment on what I’m eating, or how much, or whether or I should be. Or, my favorite, to presume that I don’t have enough “hustle” to do some particular task. Several very short people in comments to Ann’s post write of being sick to death of being presumed to be young, silly or delicate because of their size.
The phenomenon, notes another very tall woman, is an unsettling reminder that women’s bodies are public property, up for judging.
To begin with, to be extra-tall is to be somehow more public than the average woman. Everybody sees me. Strangers on the subway peer upward and tell me about their childhood neighbor who was tall. Fellow grocery shoppers sheepishly request my help procuring items from upper shelves. Male passers-by mutter, “That was one giant woman.” Men seem particularly inclined to register one characteristic: tall. They put me in the “enormous” category and move on.
There’s a really odd dynamic in being unusual in some way: you’re both highly visible and highly invisible. You don’t conform, and your nonconformity both calls attention to you and renders you unworthy of attention once you’ve been categorized. It’s got a certain freedom to it as well, once you realize that you’re so far away from the standard that you can’t easily conform.
Read Ann’s whole post, particularly her thoughts on what she finds positive about being so tall, namely the looming.