Today my friend Billy sent me a snippet from a popular YouTube video that totally sealed the deal for me. In it, a pint-sized Asian lady answers a room-for-rent ad and shows up to meet her two female housemates, who both sit in a sparsely furnished living room. When the women stand to greet her, they each unfold to reveal near skyscraper measurements.
"Wow," marvels the Asian, speaking directly into their navels. "I am so tiny compared to you two gorgeous giants."
"It's the latest craze," Billy wrote in his email, "tall porn!"
I knew it was bound to happen. With the recent release of Arianne Cohen's The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life From on High, (not to mention all the fanfare made over Michelle Obama's 5-foot-10 stature), I am, at long last and just an inch shy of 6-feet, finally in style.
Like Cohen, who stands 6-foot-3, I too often feel like I walk through life with a spotlight on me. Growing up (pardon the pun), the question, "How tall are you?" was usually followed by, "And did you play ball in school? (No, why, were you a jockey? I'd respond, especially if a short man was posing the question.)
In an interview made to promote her book, Cohen talks about the trouble she has finding clothing to fit her long frame and the discomfort of squeezing herself into coach class or movie theater seats. I definitely feel her pain, but I have never seen "tall" as being a condition. Or, if I did, I usually saw it working to my advantage. In fact, one of my most shining moments occurred in a movie theater when I was in college. The guy in front of me kept rocking his chair back, repeatedly knocking me hard in the knees. When I leaned forward and politely asked him to stop, he turned around, regarded my cramped quarters, and snarled, "It wouldn't be such a problem if you weren't such an Amazon freak."
"Yeah," I coolly replied, "it's definitely been hard for me having legs that go all the way up to my neck." As soon as the credits began rolling, he turned back around and asked me for my phone number. (And, just to lay this to rest right now, I may be tall, but I have never been confused for a supermodel.)
In her book, Cohen provides an inventory of the difficulties associated with being vertically challenged—like the Goldilockian search for chairs and beds that fit just right ("The world is not built for tall people," Cohen observes). The author also offers some pretty comforting statistics about being tall. Perhaps you munchkins out there weren't aware that tall people possess higher IQs, win more presidential elections, earn approximately $789 more per inch per year, and generally outlive their shorter contemporaries (although, with my being an accident-prone lefty, this sort of cancels that last one right out.)
I'm thrilled that my height is being memorialized on the printed page. But unlike Cohen, who has said, "tallness isn't something that people write books about, " I did have a literary touchstone. Phyllis Krasilovsky's The Very Tall Little Girl got me through the decades of teasing that might have made me feel even more self conscious about my body had I not read and reread it at such an early age. The title character, who truly stands out from the black-and-white ink illustrations by being dressed in a vivid pink and red polka dotted dress, struggles with squeezing into her classroom's tiny chairs and tables and engulfing her smaller friends in her outsized hugs. But, as Cohen does in her book, Krasilovsky catalogs the benefits of being tall. Like, being able to pick out groceries from the high shelves or being allowed to go in the deep end of the swimming pool. While the other children are relegated to their homogenous black and white background, the very tall little girl gets to carry the flag at the school assembly and star as the funny giraffe in her school play.
For this tall tale, I thank my mother, who stands 6-feet in stocking feet although she prefers to be in heels. "This book belongs to Cathy Alter," she inscribed to my then 5-year-old self, "a very tall little girl." I was then, as I am now, touched by her largesse.
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4 comments:
A fun read. I'm of average height but I've always wanted longer legs...
Charlotte
I always wished i was taller-and i think your height compliments you...or the other way around? I love this post.
I think it is great that you have always loved your height and never had to deal with the "condition"-like aspects of being tall but as a fellow 6'3'' female I must stick up for Arianne and say that I think those 4 inches between us probably make a pretty big difference in how it impacts your life, particularly in terms of clothes fitting and finding taller men to date. Anyway currently reading your book and thoroughly enjoying it!
Boy, I think this post elicited the most comments so far! I always think no one reads my blog, so it's really nice knowing I'm not writing into a void. I wanted to respond to JessDC by saying I absolutely agree. Being under six feet is much easier than being over (especially during those painful 20s in NYC). I was lucky to find shorter men who didn't mind dating a woman who towered over them and even married one. I mostly wanted to point out that there was a book that made an impact on me when I was younger, given to me by my six-foot-tall mother, who always walked through life in high heels. I was lucky to have such a stunning role model for sure.
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