02.05.2009

Ralph Keyes - The Height of Your Life (1980)

Here are a few excerpts from the book which I can recommend because it gives you a few new talking points. You can order a copy here!

Chapter 6 - Petites and Amazons

Page 117:
Earlier I listed male-oriented words used to characterize talls and smalls, as well as a mostly male comparison of the two groups as portrayed by the media. Here's a similar list and set of comparisons of women alone:

Page 118:
As this comparison suggests, women are increasingly judged on male terms, and shortness is no less a negative part of these terms than it's always been for men. Smaller men have had a lifetime to resign themselves, however bitterly, to the injustice of being judged by height. Smaller women haven't.

Page 122:
... Harriet, a 6'0" teacher, aged thirty-five. Harriet - slim, soft-spoken, with light eyes and streaks of grey in her brown hair - had listened attentively to Marilee's (a 5'2" woman) story. The ending surprised her. It always came as a surprise, she said, when smaller women seemed wary of her. "People tend to see me as more together, stronger, more powerful than I really am," Harriet said in her low voice.

Page 122/123:
Harriet's name had come up not long before as a possible participant in a women's rap group, a friend who was present had told her. Another member of the existing group turned thumbs down. "I find Harriet very threatening," this woman said. Harriet has another friend, similar to herself in size, who she'll sometimes observe entering a crowded room. Others' reactions to this woman can be striking: often visceral, almost physical shock - as if startled by a bear. Probably, Harriet speculated, people have similar reactions to her. Harriet's reserved manner also worries people, she had noticed. This too has something to do with being 6 feet tall. That height since her early teens, Harriet said she's always been subject to "a lot of pressure to act older, more mature. To this day I have trouble being very playful."

Page 123:
Having so many boys' eyes at chest level is just one among many horrors tall women recall about the time of life when they first spurted above everyone else. Early adolescence is generally the severest time of tall-girl trauma. Just when such a young teen wants most not to stand out in any way, her body betrays her. "I remember a country walk, with my first love," wrote an Australian woman (on her questionnaire) of how it felt to be tall nearly half a century ago, "and trying to walk in the ruts of the grass-grown road, so that I would be shorter than he was. My clearest ambition was to be 'little and clinging.'"

Page 124:
Too often a tall mother who remembers her own growing pains will subtly encourage such a girl to slouch, or worse yet take her to an endocrinologist for risky estrogen shots that can speed maturation and stunt growth. But even with understanding at home, the junior-high years are tough for anyone sticking out as much as a tall girl must.

Page 126:
In fact, the rewards for being a tall woman today are remarkably similar to those for being a tall man. So are the penalties. Like tall men, tall women generate in others mixed feelings of respect and anxiety, feelings that are expressed in terms much like those dealt with by tall men. No less than her male counterpart, a tall woman is subject to inquiries about her height and the weather up there (although one 5'11" tall woman informed me that instead of being tagged as a basketball player herself, she was once told, "You surely must have kept the basketball team busy!")

Like a tall man, a tall woman can find herself both irritated by the extra attention she gets and appreciative of it. Increasingly, appreciation has transcended irritation. Among other reasons for this is the fact that contemporary fashions of all kinds endorse a taller look for women. At 5'7" today's "perfect size" model is 3.4 inches above the norm. The average Miss America constestant currently stands at 5'6.6". And looking ahead, perhaps, the White Rock soda company portrays the lady on their current label as 5'8" (compared to 5'6" in 1947, and 5'4" in 1894).

Pages 126/127:
In cities such as New York or Los Angeles especially, it seems that women are walking very tall indeed. Many are not reluctant to add 2 or 3 extra inches with heels for the sheer brazenness of it. In my conversations with women about their height, it was the tall ones whose morale clearly was highest. "I didn't used to like being so tall," went the most common refrain, "but now I do." Obviously the changing role of women in general has a lot to do with tall women's esprit. Not since the time of Greek goddesses has feminine tallness been so stylish. But in the course of studying this issue I've come to wonder whether pride in size might not have characterized tall women long before fashion endorsed their look.

Page 128:
Recently I spoke to a group of sixth-graders about writing. One girl present towered over her classmates. Later I commented that she seemed tall for her age. The girl nodded glumly. I added that this certainly made her a standout. She nodded glumly again. Tall women are getting lots of strokes these days, I plowed on (studying height doesn't necessarily make you sensitive on the topic); lots of people are looking up to to tall women. The girl didn't even bother acknowledging this thought. She just looked miserable. Well, you know, I suggested finally, girls who grow fast while young often slow down sooner than others; sometimes they end up average-sized, or even short. At this suggestion the girl's face lit up like a flash-bulb. "Gee!" she exclaimed with a huge smile. "Do you think that might be true of me?"

Pages 128/129:
Obviously, today as always, being too tall too young poses severe problems for a girl. But is the issue here height as such, or simply standing out at a time when a person would rather blend in? In other words, is the misery of a tall girl any more pronounced than that of her smaller sister who has a bad case of acne or a boy who thinks his penis is too small?...

Our mistake all along may have been in assuming that the pain suffered by tall junior high school girls continues throughout their life. Some interesting research along this line has been done on a group of women first studied between the ages of eleven and seventeen. Observers first determined that girls who matured early physically (including, but not only by growing tall) were less well adjusted than those who matured later. The researchers hypothesized that this correlation would continue throughout high school. Contrary to expectations, the early-maturing group - who at first seemed more maladjusted - proved over time to develop "more favorable self-concepts." By contrast, the women who had taken more time to mature during adolescence were found later to have less-favourable self-concepts and greater social problems.

To illustrate the two trends, comparitive case histories have been reported for two such women followed up in later years. The first had always been the tallest person in her class and had reached 6 feet by her first menstruation at ten years, eight months. The second woman had always been small, and did not menstruate until fifteen years, ten months, when she topped out at 5'5".

The shorter of the two girls was quite popular during junior high school. She later recalled this period as her "absolute tops of happiness." But by late high school this girl's popularity had begun to wane, and in college she was crushed by receiving no bid from a major sorority. As a woman she married at nineteen, gave birth to three children, and at age twenty-nine was still complaining to a visiting researcher about her "bad luck in sororities" ten years earlier. The reseacher's observation was that this woman "has not regained the high satisfactions of her junior high school years. In spite of forced good cheer and housekeeping competence, she is still almost as callow as a junior high school girl."

The taller woman, by contrast, was miserable for most of her early years. Her tall mother fretted constantly over the daughter's height, in the self-defeating hope that "she not be tall and have to suffer as I did." This girl's classmates told the researchers that she was shy, withdrawn and not much fun to be with. Such a style characterized the 6-foot woman through her early years in college. But after transferring to another college she began to emerge from her shell, make friends, date, and develop intellectual interests. At twenty-nine this unusually tall woman was on the verge of getting a Ph.D., had published two articles, and was engaged to be married to a 6'4" graduate student. "For the first time in my life I feel like the person I've always wanted to be," she told a visiting researcher. "Life is good, exciting, full. I hope I can help my tall daughters in avoiding some of the unnecessary strains of my life. But, then, maybe we all have to grow up the hard way. Most of the really nice people I know have faced and surmounted tough times. I'm kind of pleased with myself now, but it took very, very long."

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