Finally, we get our due.
This takes my thoughts off in two unrelated directions. First, it reminds me of someone . . . I can't remember who . . . telling me that he'd just seen a bakery in New York titled "Bonjour Croissant", which had encouraged him to consider migrating to Paris and opening a diner called "Hello, toast!". I wish I could remember who it was . . . but I do remember that it came in response to the cunning bit of Franglais titling I had just espied, a (mercifully short-lived) restaurant on the Upper West Side called, I kid you not, "Avec un Petit Buerre". We talk a lot in this country about compulsory licensing of guns, but it seems to me that we might better focus on preventing the abuse of French-English dictionaries.
On a completely unrelated note, last night I was talking to a friend who is himself 6'4 or 6'5, who was nonetheless surprised to hear that for a woman, hitting 6'2 at the age of 11 kind of, well, sucks. I'd just read a story about human growth hormone treatments for short kids, which in passing alleged that 1/3 of the parents of very tall girls (5'11 expected height or higher) are offered estrogen to stunt their growth. He found this shocking. I found it shocking, but understandable. After all, it's such hell to be a tall girl.
"Really," said he, as if it were an immensely surprising revelation.
My first instinct was to ask what planet he had grown up on, but others seemed to share his surprise. I suppose I had thought that the drawbacks were obvious--particularly when I was growing up, when tall girls had a choice between wearing men's clothing, or looking as if they'd suddenly outgrown everything they were wearing. All the tall women I know slouch ferociously, and I'm told that we're much more prone to eating disorders--hardly surprising, given the nicknames that kids apply to tall, heavy girls. Not that "Beanstalk" and "Mosquito" were huge improvements. And I have only recently come to terms with the fact that for the rest of my life, no matter how I dress or how long I wear my hair, someone will call me "Sir" at least once a week.
Now I like being tall. But then . . . spending six years as the tallest person in her school is not a fate I would gladly wish on anyone, particularly not the person I loved most in the world. The thing seems so obvious to me that I still find it hard to believe that it wasn't equally obvious to everyone else. The private hells of adolescence are surprisingly private.
Everyone's heard about how short men have it difficult - passed over for jobs and promotions, reduced earnings potential, harder to find women to date them, etc. It's interesting to hear that tall women may face challenges too.
I was talking to a friend who is himself 6'4 or 6'5, who was nonetheless surprised to hear that for a woman, hitting 6'2 at the age of 11 kind of, well, sucks.
"Nonetheless?" I'm confused; what, pray tell, would make you think that a man being tall faces anything near the issues of a woman being tall, particularly at such a young age?
I'm "only" 5'10, but I experienced a lot of the same things growing up--I was 5'7 by 7th grade, and was already taller than some of my teachers by 6th grade. I can definitely understand the eating disorder bit--unless you know about healthy BMI ranges, if your friends are talking about how fat they are at 130 lbs, you're going to assume that being 160 means you need to lose a good 30 or 40 pounds (140 is the lower end of what's considered healthy for someone 5'10)... Thankfully, in college I started rowing, which gave me a much healthier idea of what someone of my height and build should go for.
My wife, at 6'2 would quite commiserate, and am surprised at your subsequent paean to Bananaland - home of inseams not beyond 34. At 6'4 myself, we've not given our children much choice in the shallow end of the gene pool. Out eldest 10 year old daughter at 10 is 5'5, and has friends the size of out youngest at 4. Am hoping the 2 boys in the middle will bear me the favor of not outgrowing me til their teens.
We've been called by some of our quant friends a living argument against mean reversion.
The original "Hello, Toast!" bit comes from Fran Leibowitz.
So, what's the weather like up there?
And is it worth the climb?
Just in case you haven't heard those before...
I'd suppose that because men generally aspire to be tall, Mr. 6'5" didn't think of drawbacks like that... Without wishing to slight my gender, I'm going to guess that the stylish ramifications of clothing choice weren't uppermost either...
My wife is 6'0" and our daughter is 5'11", so I'm familiar with many of the problems you talk about.
But there is the other side of the coin as well. We took great pains when our daughter was growing up to make her proud of being so tall. My wife and daughter run into the problems you describe, but they do not seem to be as upset by it as you are.
My son-in-law is 6'6", and believe it or not even for a guy, around 6'2" is when the disadvantages of being above average start to increase exponentially. He wears a 36 X 36 size blue jeans and you would be amazed at how hard it is to find a pair of Levis that size. The best pants length for me is 33" but when the length get above 30" most manufacturers of men's casual pants only do the even numbers so I have a choice of wearing a too long 34" or a too short 32".
Megan, I wonder, do you have many girlfriends? I'm 5'6" and among one group of girlfriends I feel positively Amazonian and it makes me feel pretty self-conscious when the talk (inevitably) turns to clothes and our bodies. And forget sharing clothes with my best girlfriend, who is a teeny 5' and 85-90 lbs. Thus, we never shop together.
So do you find that your relationships with women are decidedly less girly than the norm?
I too wonder if people "friend" assortively. In college my three best friends and I were 6'5", 6'3" and 6'2", with the last, at 5'11", grating constantly at being "the short one." "In Boston I was TALL!" he would bellow.
Smart girls can have problems too but I don't think making them dumber would be an appropriate response.
believe it or not even for a guy, around 6'2" is when the disadvantages of being above average start to increase exponentially
I've read that the ideal height for a man is 6'1". At that height you're tall enough to have a fairly commanding presence, you won't be at a disadvantage in many sports, and according to many studies you'll do better than shorter men when it comes to finding women and getting high-paying jobs. On the other hand, you're not so tall as to appear gawky, and shouldn't have trouble finding clothing or fitting in tight spaces such as airline seats.
I am 5'10", right at the average for American men, and all throughout my adult life my height has been nearly irrelevant, in fact I probably think of my eye color more often than of my height.
James B. Shearer wrote: Smart girls can have problems too but I don't think making them dumber would be an appropriate response.
You know that really distressing splang a guitar string makes when, in the middle of an entertaining musical number, it suddenly breaks? That's what my brain just did in trying to determine how this response reconciles to MM's comment about repressing excessive height with hormone therapy.
Your argument about intelligence might be closer to accurate if we were looking at autism, which seems to be the result of intelligence genes run amuck, driving the party in question beyond social function and into the realm of special needs. If -- for the sake of the argument -- a clinically autistic person could be made a bit "dumber" but was, in turn, able to interact normally in society, would that automatically be a loss?
Excess height usually isn't that extreme, but it sometimes trends in the same direction.
It seems like a lot of men want to inflate their height to a bit over 6'. I'm a 6'1" man, but occasionally I've met men who, even though they were my height or a hair shorter, have insisted they were 6'2" or 6'3". Maybe they think they'll get a tall-man prize or something.
It would be a really good idea for American culture to think about how to encourage more tolerance for a diverse range of appearances in children and adolescents, and to focus less on appearances in general. Little frail guys, fat kids, black kids in overwhelmingly white schools and vice versa -- all can have pretty crappy adolescent experiences. My instinct is that the interests of tall girls would be best served by a general initiative for tolerance of diversity in youth culture.
But that's all pretty academic, given that American culture is dominated by commercial interests which make their money by propagating a focus on external appearance, and on specific styles of external experience, and instilling the desire to reshape oneself (through consumption) to conform to those specific styles of appearance. It's hard to imagine any circumstances which could alter this. Succumbing to the impulse to allow the pharmaceutical and plastic surgery industries to "correct" our appearances will lock us further into the current model, as the advertising/culture industry will find powerful new clients to subsidize the propagation of exclusive appearances to aspire to.
Remember "Life is Short I'm not" I am 6"4' female. I was picked on when I was growing up. I joined a Tall Club. I have friends all over the US and Canada plus Europe. Check it out www.tall.org
'
uljkydah vordm sdgtex zbjga qfvekr wzimob lpdqyrz
uljkydah vordm sdgtex zbjga qfvekr wzimob lpdqyrz
Hi, I am a short 5'0 inch tall man of small stature. On my heaviest day I weigh 110 lbs.
My daughter is only 9 yrs.old and is already 5'4 inches. My wife is 6'5 inches tall. When we go to the park instead of me giving my daughter a piggyback ride though the trails, she usually gives me one on her back, lol. Seriously, its whatever god deals you , you just love what hand you are delt.