From the age of five to eighteen I would describe my stature as gangly, awkward, and towering. Always standing in the back row of school photos, embarrassingly next to my teacher, unable to wear high heels to any school dance, dare I go, I was painfully unaware of the many statistics of the success of my fellow tall, gangly beings. By the age of sixteen I’d observed that men (boys really) of my age were more interested in my shorter and shall I say bustier classmates, but not to worry, this is no sob story about the tall skinny girl who had no friends. For years I have sat back and wondered how exactly it is that tall people are statistically more successful than their shorter counterparts. I stand at five foot ten inches (fun fact, .7% of the US female population stand at this height or taller…and yes, that is a decimal in front of the seven), just above the average male height by one inch.
When I was younger I got little to no attention from my male classmates, for most of my middle and high school career I thought my height difference would forever be an “issue.” I was taller than my teacher in 3rd grade and by sixth grade I was five foot seven at which age I was supposed to stop growing….turns out I fell outside the “normal” growth curve. I could never buy the cheap jeans my mother would have preferred for me and every shirt was a belly shirt (luckily this isn’t still a problem). When I entered into college I began to realize that perhaps us tall people might just have to work a little harder to not seem so fe fi fo fum scary, which in turn would perhaps explain where these correlations to height and success could be coming from. As the years have gone by I have been told a handful of times that close girl friends thought of me as unfriendly when they first met me. Research has found that tall people are often seen as intimidating, so it seems as though they would have to become more outgoing and friendlier than their shorter counterparts in order to be perceived as less threatening.
My theory goes as such: tall people= fe fi fo fum scary. Fe fi fo fum scary people have to work harder at making friends = becoming more capable of socializing with people of all types. Being better at socializing makes us fe fi fo fumers better adept at communication and therefore = more success in our careers, life, etc. This is simply my attempt to explain some of the statistics that seem to constantly present themselves to us and as the years have gone by I’ve come to accept my height for the positive and negative things which it brings. And hey, supermodels tend to be above five foot eight…not too bad of company to be associated with!
