Are You Intimidating or Are They Intimidated?

Good morning everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. Help everyone who's tuning in today is doing super fantastic. Before I get into this episode, I do want to say, make sure you're following me on my socials at a Tall Girls podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and pinterest, like you could stay up to date on all of the latest podcast episodes and catch a glimpse of my everyday life. Also, feel free to leave me review and let me know how tall you are. I'm genuinely curious. Everything is going to be linked in the description. Quick question, are you guys ready for fall? Because by the time this episode is out, I think that fall would to start in the next week or so. Wow, fall is literally about to start in a week. Are you mentally prepared? I've been seeing all over social media on these past few days that people are getting ready to get their fall decorations. Some people already have their fault decorations. So many people are happening for spooky season, Halloween costumes and next thing, you know, prepping for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and like, slow down, it's only September. We're still in summer, we still have Okay, September twenty three, I think is the last day of summer, or is it the twenty second, twenty three is the first day of fall. Either way, we still have a couple more days before fall starts. And I think also I've been spoiled these past few weeks, past few days, i should say, because it's been in the high eighties and the low nineties where I'm at. So I'm just like, yeah, summertime, summertime is still here, and I've been going out with friends, and that's not a good idea because I started school. I just started school last week, two weeks ago, something like that, and I gotta be on that grind, you know what I mean. But this weather this summer, the degree ninety degree weather is kind of like we're outside. We're gonna be outside and we're not going to stay inside and do our school work, which is not okay because I am severely behind now. So maybe it could be a good thing that fall is just around the corner, if you ask me, I'm not mentally prepared for a fall to come, but I won't be too too mad at the sixteen seventy degree weather that crisp fall air. I love crisp fall air, and maybe the cooler weather will motivate me to stay inside and actually get stuff done. And not to mention that eighty and ninety degree weather has me feeling very cross because I take the subway to school and the air circulation underground is not It's not the best. If you follow me on Instagram, I'm pretty sure you've seen me on my story complaining about how hot and humid it is down there, and I think I'm just kind of over that as well. As much as I want to be outside, maybe it is time for fall to come. I just need to slowly transition into that mindset. Okay, enough about fall. Let's get into today's topic, which is intimidation. Now, if you're tall, twelve times out of ten someone has told you that you're intimidating. I know. I've gotten that so much that I just take it as a compliment now, and you can get this comment for a variety of reasons. You can come off as extremely confident and extremely bold, which can be off putting to others, especially people who are very insecure in themselves or people who are not used to being around confident people. Or it could be your physique. You could be tall and have a very athletic build, because yes, even though we do complain about getting questions about whether or not we play basketball or volleyball and whatnot, some tall people do play sports. Not even just that you don't have to play was to have an athletic build. You could just be tall and simply work out, go to the gym, do different types of workouts online, or you're in these different fitness programs. No matter what, you can still be tall and have an athletic physique, and people can be terrified by that apparently, or if you're anything like me, I'm a New Yorker and I have a very scary, resting face to some people. That is so funny because last night, when I was coming home on the train at midnight because the trains were severely delayed. But anyways, when I was coming home on the train last night, there was this guy who was from Tennessee and he sat down next to me. I didn't know he was from Tennessee. I just thought he was from New York as well. And when you sit next to a random stranger on the train and you're a New Yorker, you don't say anything ever. But he was trying to strike up a conversation with me, and I'm like, why are you doing this. It's almost midnight. I don't feel like talking to anybody. But he said that he was from Tennessee and he was visiting New York to see a Broadway play he saw that night, and he made this comment. He was saying that New Yorkers, whenever you walk past them or sit next to them or whatever, they never make eye contact with you. And then he made this comment that a girl who was on the other side of the train car, he said that she looked very, very mad. And I'm like, yep, that's that right there. She's a New Yorker, Because you we always look mad for some reason. We always look mad, we always look stressed, we always look angry at something. But he looked so happy and just so content with talking to strangers and striking up a conversation. I'm like, yeah, you're definitely not from New York. So I'm just going off on a tangent here. What I'm trying to say is that if you're a New Yorker, or maybe there's other cities that do the same thing, you have a scary resting face, so being tall mixed with that scary resting face can probably scare people away. I personally think it has more to do with the facial expression than the height, but maybe the combination of the two can be intimidating. And when people called me intimidating when I was younger, I would find it very strange because it's like, what exactly am I supposed to do with that information? And if you find a ten year old intimidating, I don't know what to tell you, because grown adults would call me intimidating. Grown adults who are shorter than me would call me intimidating. It's like, number one, why would you say that to a ten year old? And number two, like I said before, if you find a ten year old intimidating, that's definitely a you thing. But in my mind it also raised a question why am I intimidating? How exactly am I intimidating, Because especially if I'm trying to become a friend with that person, I would want to come off a different way. I don't want to scare people away. That's not my intention. So I would actually ask people like, why do you find me intimidating, or even if I ask for first impressions and they would tell me, oh, at first they found me intimidating, I would ask why, and almost always it would be associated with my height, because height and being tall is connected to power and dominance, and when you tower over people, they get scared. And from that I kind of feel like it's associated with being masculine and having masculine energy, which I personally don't like, because I think that the whole idea of masculine energy and feminine energy should really be associated or linked to your character or your vibes or how you act and your actions, rather than a physical trait that you can't even control. For the most part, even though I said earlier that now when people call me intimidating, I take it as a compliment, it still doesn't feel right because when a man gets called intimidating, it's seen in a positive light. It's seen in a good way. It's almost given to him as a compliment, whereas if a tall woman or just a woman in general is being called intimidating, that's seen as a bad thing. It's meant to come across as a negative because of the whole societal norms situation that women are supposed to be smaller and not supposed to be like loud and take up space and have big personalities or even just be tall and stuff like that. The real question to ask yourself as a tall woman is are you intimidating or are they intimidated? Because there's a major difference. The first one involves your character and your actions, whereas the second one involves the other person insecurities. Think about it, like with the example that I gave earlier, when I was going over the reasons why somebody would call you intimidating, one of them was maybe because you are confident and they're just not used to that, or they feel as though they are inferior to that. Why I first of all, that is unique to them because they have whatever that they need to deal with in terms of why they think of themselves that way. And on top of that, they're also comparing themselves to the other person. Because if you're thinking to yourself, I'm inferior to that person. That person is like super confident and making me feel some type of way, you're also comparing yourself to the other person. And that's also not a good look. You shouldn't really be comparing yourself to somebody like that because each individual is unique in their own ways, so they're insecurities and their self comparison leads them to feel intimidated. But if you're coming across as intimidating, maybe it's thing that you're doing or something that you're putting out there. It could be how you talk to people. It could be your scary, resting face if you're a New Yorker, things like that. So that's kind of the difference between the two, at least in my opinion. And going off of that, sometimes people just aren't used to being around tall people, especially if you live in an area in an environment where much of the population is on the shorter side, so they're not used to seeing people who are taller or at least significantly taller than them, and that could play a part into it because they're just not used to it. Being around other tall people or being around another taller person can probably make them feel uncomfortable. It's kind of out of their comfort zone. They're not used to it, so again they feel some type of way, and that's something for them to deal with, not necessarily something for you. To change. What I'm trying to say is that it's all relative. It's based on other people's experiences, on other people's opinions, on other people's thoughts, on other people's environments, and it's not only out of your control, but it's also out of their control. We can't necessarily control people's experiences. We can't control their thoughts and opinions. Those people can't control their experiences for the most part, and they can't control their environments. So being called intimidating, since it's based on a bunch of factors that are out of people's control, why fret and why stress over that people are going to think what they want and that has absolutely nothing to do with you. It really makes no sense to spend all of your energy on trying to fix other people's opinions about you based off of something that you can't even control, when you can be focusing the energy on yourself and what you're doing and your future goals and your self confidence and your self love. So at the end of the day, we need to focus on what we can't control. At the end of the day, it's up to you to embrace every inch of your height. It's up to you to embrace every inch of your long arms, every interview, long legs, every intervir long torso, because we all know that the haters deep down inside are jealous of us. So with that, being called intimidating can be annoying, It can feel hurtful at times, it can feel very strange, especially if you are a child being called intimidating by an adult. But all in all, that's saying something about themselves. It's not a problem. It's did that problem. They have insecurities that they feel the need to project onto you, which is honestly horrible. And on top of that that probably even says something about you that probably says something good about you. Maybe they see you as extremely confident, or maybe they just really like your physique or they really like your height. And because of their insecurities and they see that you have something that they want, they cannot handle that well and they find you intimidating. But you are not intimidating. They are intimidated. I'm gonna say that again. You are not intimidating. They are intimidated. And that's on period. So I'm gonna end the episode here. Thank you so so much for tuning in. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you as always. Feel free to hit me up on my socials at a Tall Girls podcasts are all going to be linked below, and just let me know. Have you been called intimidating once, twice, thirty thousand times? Maybe how did that feel for you? We could talk about it, we can unpack, or just talk about your day or life in general. I'm always down for a chat. Also, feel free to leave me your view and let me know how tall you are. I really want to know. I want to see if there's anybody else out there who happens to be five ten and a half and I will catch in the next one. Good night and goodbye.