Top 5 Dumbest Questions I’ve Been Asked as a Tall Woman — Body-Shaming Includes Height

Warning

I’m not pulling any punches in this story, so somebody could get offended by some of the things that I have to say, and if that’s the case, then: Sorry, not sorry!

Some things need to stop not being said.

So, I’m saying them and it’s my story to tell for myself and everybody who can relate. But, if you have an open mind, then you can see that what I have to say makes sense.

So here goes.

My Height

I am 5' 10" barefoot.

To put this in perspective, with a 4-inch heel, I stand 6' 2".

Now, in today’s world, 5' 10" for a female is not uncommon. But, when I was growing up, it was literally just me. I was the tallest of all my friends. I was the tallest kid in my elementary school classes (even over top of the boys).

People in my family would always be making comments about my height. Like, my grandmother would say, “Good God’a mighty! You gittin’ talla every time I see you!”

For some reason, my legs over grew. They are the same length as guys taller than I am. They are very long.

Kids Can Be Mean

Well back in the day, it was “the tall girl”, “the fat kid”, “the ugly kid”, “the dumb boy”, you get the drift. Prejudice (which is not the same as racism by the way) is often prevalent even among small kids.

Well, guess which one I was — the tall one and it made me feel very insecure.

I was also really skinny, pencil-thin, and later years I found out that I had been anemic as a child, which was due in part to me being so severely underweight growing up.

And yes, I was picked on growing up and talked about because I always had on high waters because my mom couldn’t find pants for me that went all the way down to the shoes. I was so glad when knickerbockers and culottes came in style first and then it was cropped pants and capris. And winter time was good because I could put on boots to hide the fact that my pants were so far above my skinny ankles.

And it was always a struggle for me being joked on for being too tall and called names like “Spider Legs”, “Olive Oyl”, “Tree”, “Train”, “Amazon”, “Giant”, “6/9”, “Lurch”, and whatever else they could think of. And of course, all of this gave me a negative self complex and a sense of body dysmorphia, which is not good for mental health.

I was different. I didn’t want to be different.

No worries about me holding my own though.

I’d clap back whenever somebody started talking about me. I was the queen of riding somebody else out when they would mess with me. I would joke on people so tough that everybody would be laughing, sometimes even those I was going against. But, even though I would win those riding sessions most of the time, it still left me feeling like a side show freak.

I was the tallest in my classes in middle school too, and then in high school, at 5' 10" there was only one other girl almost as tall. She was 5' 9", but her legs were shorter and her body more proportioned — was the thought that went through my tortured mind.

It seemed like I would grow an inch every year. I was 5' 4" in the fourth grade, 5' 5" in the fifth, 5' 6" in the sixth, 5' 7" in the seventh, 5' 8" in the eighth, 5' 9" in the ninth, and 5' 10" in the tenth.

And my shoe size pretty much did the same thing. My feet finally stopped at size 10 in the tenth grade.

Thank goodness for me I stopped growing in the tenth grade because my self-esteem had already taken enough hits that it caused me to inadvertently injure myself.

Insult to Injury

When I was in middle school being too tall was one thing but being very skinny on top of that was another. So, I’d wear leg warmers and multiple layers of stockings under my pants (even in the summer time) to try and look filled out. I was always so hot! And my feet hurt because the extra thickness of the stockings made it so that my shoes were too tight.

And to make this worse, when my mom would take me shoe shopping, I’d tell her that my feet were comfortable in shoes a size too small because I was self-conscious that my feet were too big, which they were just a size 7 — not big at all, but in my mind, it was because I was only in the seventh grade and I was already 5' 7” tall.

Abusing my feet for as long as I did like this resulted in foot deformity with the bones in my feet leaving me with hammertoes and bunions, which ended up needing painful surgical correction that I would have to have later in life.

So, great! Now I have ugly feet and I’m being called “HAMMER TIME” to go along with my other body image problems.

Nowadays, you can go to any middle school or high school in town and see plenty of tall girls. They are beautiful! And they don’t seem to have any qualms about their height like I did, maybe because none of them are the only one.

“Normal” Height for a Woman

So, what is the “normal” height for women?

Recent statistics for 2019 show that the average height for women in the U.S. is about 5' 4". This is significantly shorter than my height of 5' 10", so the difference is very noticeable and has been the cause for negative reactions from others and their need to make rude comments to me growing up and even now as an adult.

What type of comments you ask?

I’ve had plenty of guys objectify me and say that we’d be the same height lying down. And, I can’t even count all of the times short women have said that they wish they had “my problem” or give them a few inches of my height.

Top 5 questions I’ve been asked probably hundreds of times over the years since I was a young girl

First, they’d say, “You’re TALL!!!” — as if somehow I didn’t know that or as if I was 9 feet tall. Then they’d ask one or more of these questions.

1. Wow, how tall are you?

You might think this is innocent enough to ask, but understand that you are probably like the 7th, 8th, or 9th person that’s asked this question in just that day. And what really makes this bad is the way it’s usually asked, with a tone in the voice that suggests that my height is a flaw.

2. Did you (or do you) play basketball?

Does height need to necessarily mean a person is a basketball player? And I’ve even had people tell me that I was a “waste of height” when I tell them that I don’t play basketball.

Tall people do have other interests, talents, and hobbies like reading, playing music, singing, playing chess, or many other things. This question is so cliché and we tall people get annoyed with answering it.

3. Do you have trouble dating?

Really? Can anybody really be so ignorant as not to know that this is a very rude thing to ask? Nonetheless, the answer is no and yes. It depends on the guy’s preference. I have had no problem with attracting some guys (tall, short or in between) and others are turned off (or maybe intimidated) by my height. So there. I answered the question.

4. Why do you wear heels when you’re already tall?

Yes. This is a common one. I’ve been told that I was too tall to wear any type of heel on a shoe and should only wear flats. I have had both women and men make comments about my shoes not being flat.

Do they really think that women wear shoes with heels to look taller? How about because they go well with my outfit. Or maybe I’m wearing them because I want to, just like you do whatever you want to do.

5. How’s the weather up there?

Yes. I have had this question on a number of occasions from a few dimwits. But obviously not for legitimate reasons, but only as an intentional insult or just as a stale joke that’s not even funny. What’s comical is how stupid somebody looks saying something to somebody else that they perceive as unattractive when there’s usually something about them that’s ugly both on the outside and the inside themselves.

A Ridiculous Encounter

One time, I was in Home Depot and this old lady said to me, “You’re tall. Can you reach up there and get my balloon for me?” I looked up and it was way up in the rafters of a 50-foot high ceiling. I looked back at her and said “Are you kidding me, lady?” Then I just walked away.

She must have thought I was Inspector Gadget because surely she couldn’t possibly have been that stupid to think that I could really reach that high up — is what I said to myself.

But, I ended up giving her a pass because clearly, she had dementia problems. She wasn’t trying to be funny or mean, she really thought that she couldn’t reach the balloon because she wasn’t tall enough — bless her heart.

But still, for me, it was the same result as if somebody was making a wisecrack about my height. It set off the same negative emotions.

Another Dumb Situation

One time I was with a bunch of family members at a sit-down to be served restaurant and my Aunt asked the waitress (who was very tall) how tall she was.

Now, mind you, before this, my Aunt had made a comment to us about the girl’s height and said that she was going to ask her how tall she is.

I immediately said, “No. Don’t ask her that! It would be rude. She probably gets that question all day as it is. It would offend her.” But, my Aunt stupidly did it anyway. And this is how she did it.

My Aunt: “Excuse me. But we were wondering how tall are you?”

Me: “We?” I say.

The Waitress: “I’m 6'10” (while trying to hide the annoyed/embarrassed/tired of answering this stupid question look on her face).

My Aunt: “Oh, well we were just wondering.”

And then my Aunt said the most condescending thing that she could have ever shitted out of her word hole next.

My Aunt then says with a drawl in her voice: “You wear it well.” — What? She wears it well? Like the girl’s height is some kind of scarlet letter or something.

I — was — livid!

When the young lady took our orders and left the table looking sad, I asked my Aunt why did she feel the need to do that even after I had pointed out that it would hurt the girl’s feelings. She just shrugged her shoulders.

Why ask somebody how tall they are?

If you know your own height, you can pretty much guess somebody else’s. People do this to tall people all the time.

Would it be ok for a tall person to walk up to a short person and say, “Gosh, you sure are short! How short ARE you? What’s your height away?”

Or, many times people have had the nerve to double-up on their insult about me and attack both my height and my weight. When I was real skinny, I had people blatantly tell me stuff like, “You’re sooo skinny. Are you anorexic?” Or, “Wow, you’re really skinny!”

Would it be ok for me to tell somebody how fat they are? “Gosh, you sure are fat. Do you have an eating disorder? Are you bulimic?”

But these things wouldn’t be ok to say — would they?

They would be insulting — right?

Of course they would be!

I read a blog post once where this woman, who was overweight, had another woman in the grocery store point out that her grocery items were fattening and that she shouldn’t be buying them because she was already too fat.

Are you kidding me? The nerve of that woman!

What makes people think they have the right to say anything derogatory to somebody else about how they look? I don’t get it. I wouldn’t dare do that to somebody.

Nobody has the right to go up to someone else and make rude comments about how the person looks!

One of the Tallest Women in the World

There are some women in this world who are close to or over 7 feet tall. I can’t help but wonder that if I’ve had to deal with so much height shaming for being 5' 10" with a size 10 shoe, I can only imagine what even taller women and girls have been through.

Zeng Jinlian from Hunan, China was 8 ft 1.75 in (249 cm) tall. She died in 1982.

Extreme height that is considered abnormal (beyond just being a few inches taller than average) is often caused by a medical condition that has to do with dysfunction of a person’s pituitary gland due to a tumor, which can sometimes even be cancerous.

I wouldn’t dare ask someone of extreme height any of the usual questions they hear all day every single day, day in day out. I would refuse to be in that category.

We Are Not Our Bodies

Body shaming of any kind is wrong on so many levels. I really just don’t get it. I don’t understand what makes somebody the type of person that would blatantly insult somebody else’s body out loud, in their face, or even on social media nowadays.

If this is you, how dare you!

What do you look like? Or somebody you care about that may have the same issues as the person you’re insulting?

The you that makes you, you and the me that makes me, me is not the body. The body is just an avatar. It’s the soul of the person that lives inside the body that — is.

Yes, this is a physical world and we need our bodies to live in this dimension, but that doesn’t mean that someone’s body that doesn’t fit society’s molds should be a reason why they are unhappy because of other people’s cruelty.

Discussion

Through all my experiences, good and bad, I learned how to love myself. Self love is a very powerful positive force, even when others make it difficult.

I came to appreciate my uniqueness and my beauty — long legs and all.

For those who are different, I want you to understand that others who say mean things about you are sowing negative seeds that will grow into a harvest that they will reap one way or the other, sooner or later.

Embrace you and do what makes you happy to enhance any part of you that you see fit — or not. And don’t apologize for it. Do you.

And as my brother, Genius Turner, says, be indifferent in a world in which you are different and comfortable in your own skin — there’s nothing more attractive.