I am pretty tall, 6 foot, which I think registers me as "pretty damn tall" as far as women go. My whole life people, usually much shorter than me, would tell me I should appreciate my height, and that I was really lucky to be so tall. Notice it was always shorter people who said this to me, and they said it as though they had gained some sort of wisdom being short that I had missed out on. I think if the tables had been turned and I took them aside and said "Look- appreciate being short! You're very lucky" they probably would have been a little miffed at me. Yeah I know- we want what we can't have, the grass is always greener, yadda yadda.
Which reminds me of a time at church when I was about 13 or 14 and spent my Sunday mornings singing with the youth choir in front of the whole church. After the service an older lady, who I believe was the mom of a girl a few years older than me, took me aside and said "Sweetie you're so beautiful... but you should wear makeup. Then you wouldn't look so tired and dead up there!" She smiled at me kind of expectantly, like I was supposed to thank her for pointing out how pale and tired I looked. I stared at her for a good 15 seconds, and then I turned around and walked away. My mom was horrified and chastised me for being rude, but truly I thought this was a lecture this woman should have received instead. I pointed this out and my mom insisted she was just trying to be kind and didn't realize how fracking RUDE she was being. Especially to a teenage girl. Especially to a teenage girl who didn't identify with the other teenage girls her age, especially to a teenage girl who found all that "girl" stuff kind of pointless and stupid. Especially a teenage girl who already felt pretty alienated from her peers, for a myriad of reasons, one of them being her height.
Anyways, height. People have things they dislike about themselves, things they long to change. One of mine has always been my height, although I'm fresh out of options for changing that. For a long time I never really noticed it, but as I grew older people felt compelled to point it out. Especially when I gained a fondness for heels, especially very high heels. I began to truly tower over everyone, leading people to ask me my least favorite question: "Why are you wearing those? You're already tall." Nevermind that I just liked the way they looked, that I was aesthetically drawn to them. I don't really wear heels anymore, or if I do they have very small heels. I have a pair of platform heels that have 4 inches on them and I LOVE the way they look- but not so much the way I look on me. With them on I am 6 foot 4, an unacceptable height for someone in the real world. I'm sure things would be much different if I was an actress or a model but unfortunately I am neither.
I brought up this discussion on facebook, trying to detail how I've struggled with this fact of my being for many years, and I got a lot of "well you don't have it so bad" comments. And I know that, I know other people struggle with things much worse than this, that they struggle much harder and longer than I ever have and ever will. But for christ's sake this is MY struggle, and just because it's not as bad as being under 5 foot or being born with no arms or legs doesn't mean it's meaningless. So in case any of you are reading this and feel that argument bubbling up inside of you, I'll say this- I have a wonderful life, I have been so lucky, and so blessed in so many aspects of my life. I am well educated, I am privileged, I am well adjusted. But I struggle with this, and no amount of "quit whining, you have it good" will ever take that away.
Some days I wake up and life goes on like usual, I dress for work and slip my flats on and go about my business. But some days, today being one of those days, I wake up and I feel the full effects of being so tall. Today i got up and was looking at a trinket on my wall, which my head is level with. I considered that if I was a "normal" height, this trinket would be above me. I stoop down and try to imagine what it would be like to go through life at a normal height. When I was younger I dreamed of having some sort of surgery where they would cut the bones of my legs to make me shorter. Now I know that even if some sort of wacky surgeon was offering that surgery today I would not take him up on his offer. My height is what it is and one day I'll get old and start to shrink and I think that will be the one thing I enjoy about aging.
And one day I'll have a child or children and if it's a girl I hope she does not inherit my extreme height. I hope she is 5 foot 8, making her tall for a girl but still completely accepted among her peers. She won't feel, as I read on a blog once, "out of scale among groups of women friends, clumsily photoshopped into the scene." But if she is as tall as me, or taller, I hope I can tuck away my own insecurities and show her, daily, breezily, effortlessly, that it's no big deal. That being tall is a fine thing, that she is still a normal person even if she is 8 inches taller than her best friends, even if she gets stuck in the back row with the boys in elementary school pictures.
