"I Wish I Was Tall...Just Not As Tall As You" | Getting Bullied When Our Height Is Seen As Desirable

For many of us, being tall as a woman was frowned upon for much of our lives. Growing up, our peers would say the most negative things about our height, calling us big and making these terrible jokes about it. If we had a crush on a guy, he'd probably say we're too tall. Family members would comment on our bodies, often comparing us to boys, and this would happen all the way into teenagehood and adulthood, right people telling us we shouldn't wear heels, male centered short women, calling us masculine, or comparing body parts, even strangers questioning our gender because of our height. All of these experiences taught us that we should hide be smaller and that being tall as a woman is a bad thing. And if that's the case, it being tall as a woman is such a bad thing, then it does come as a shock that some people, especially some women, wish that they were taller. In today's episode, we're going to discuss this, why this shift occurred, and why some people still insult tall women even though they may wish that they were taller themselves. So, without further ado, let's get into it. Good morning, everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. I hope everyone who is 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, and I was gonna TikTok impinture so that you can stay up to date on all of the latest podcast episodes. He catch a glimpse of my everyday life. Also, feel free to leave your review and let me know how tall you are. I'm genuinely curious. I also have a monthly newsletter makes you subscribe to that Everything is going to be linked in the description. I hope everyone who's tuning in is doing super fantastic. This episode is actually inspired by a TikTok video that I found, so I think I'm just gonna play that now right away to kind of set us up for the rest of this episode. One of the most funniest things as a tall girl is when all of a sudden, every single girl wanted to be considered tall. When it was literally what I got bullied for, what I'm getting bullied for still, when everyone hated me because I was so different friends, and now all of a sudden, all girls want to consider themselves tall, But I am tall. Girl. You have to be at least like four to five inches over the average in order to be considered tall. Like, just because the average is five to five and you're five six, you're not tall. I'm sorry to break it to you. If you're five to seven, you're not tall. You're over the average, but you're not tall. But if you want to have your own little group, you can have your own little group. But you're not tall. I'm sorry to break it to you. And the worst part is when these tall girls say that, but just because you're overly tall doesn't mean I'm not tall. Now, this video more so talks about a broader discussion about what is considered tall for a woman, which is a whole separate issue, and not gonna lie. Watching this, I kind of thought about this was like from a long time ago. I did a stitch to it too on my own TikTok. It kind of like made me think about that video of the one girl who was talking about this one woman. She was talking about her experiences with her height and so forth, and feeling like the odd went out and so forth, something that many of us tall women struggle with and even have struggled with in our past and so forth. And she towards the end of the video she was like, I'm five to six, and her comment section was blowing up about. Five six isn't tall? Or five six is tall? Or this that the third and listen again, that's a whole separate issue. In my personal opinion, there are three different levels of tall for a woman. There's short tall, which is five nine up to six feet, average tall, which is six feet up to six four, and tall tall, which is six four and up. And then there's this awkward gray area of five six to five eight where no one can seem to agree on whether or not that's tall, even though it's above average for a woman. Anyways, we went on a bit of a tengent there, But back to the video. The first sentence that she said, honestly really got me because it shows how being tall is increasingly becoming something that people want to associate with, especially women, even though that's a thing we as tall women have gotten bullied for or bullied about for years and still get bullied for. And on top of. Many women wanting to be considered tall or trying to be part of the tall category. We could even take it a step. Further and honestly say that there are many women who want to be taller. Let's listen to this example. Something that I don't hear enough women talk about is how they also wish that they were taller. I think this probably once a day. There are so many things that I could do and wear and pull off that I know I can't with my current height. And I don't even think that I'm short. I'm five four, but if I were just like five six, five eight, oh my god, oh my god. The micro shorts of the boots, oh so cute. I simply cannot pull that off right now with my current stature. And there are even comments under this video of shorter women wishing they were five eight, five eleven, six foot even. And it's interesting to see this when being petite or shorter as a woman is considered the standard of beauty in society, or so we thought, I guess, and I did an episode or so when tall women were trending, right there was the big Mama trend. It was a song by I honestly forgot who, but it was I think a rapper, but it was just like the song called Big Mama, and it was like videos of tall women with their measurements, their height, their their size, their weight, et cetera, on the screen and really just showing them embrace their bodies and embracing their height in their size. There was also actually another trend where it was like a photo carousel thing going on on TikTok, and the first photo was like, yeah, oh, I wish I was five feet and then it would swipe and be like oh psych or something along those lines, basically showing like their thoughts when they were younger, wishing that they were shorter, but now it's like no, like they love being tall, they love their height, they loved their sides, et cetera. So that was also another trend. And then another trend was basically men doing a whole slew of videos talking about how tall women are superior. And this was all happening around the same time. This is all happening around like the big Mama trend that was like the biggest one, and then you know, you had that secondary trend, but then you also have all these men going on there saying tall women are superior, tall women are beautiful, tall women, This tall woman that, so forth and so on, like all that kind of just came out of nowhere, not really just came out of nowhere. I mean, tall women were trending, so maybe they were hopping on that trend. But the main thing here is at one point, all of a sudden, it was just all this love for tall women, right and saying that they're attractive and they're beautiful and superior and tall women over everything, and this that and the third. And there were several comments under all of these videos talking about, well, it's primarily coming from tall women, asking why now, why do y'all love tall women all of us? Why do y'all think that we're beautiful? Why are y'all hyping us up all of a sudden and all of that? And that is a very valid question because for most of our lives we have been told that, oh we're monsters, or oh nobody's gonna find its attractive because of our high men don't want women taller than them, and you know, we're just told all of these terrible things. It made to feel as though, as I said in the intro, that we're supposed to hide, we're supposed to be smaller, We're not supposed to be our size and it's seen as a bad thing. And here's the thing. Social media played a big part in this, right. Social media plays a big part in trends in general and what's considered good and what's considered bad. What is it called like mob mentality? I think that's what it is, where you know, you see a bunch of these things, everybody's talking about one particular thing, and then you just start to agree with their opinion because it's trending on social media. So social media definitely played a big part in the tall women being trendy or whatever. Having height is trendy. But even long before that, we have the fashion industry, I will say, to think about that, where you know, models were like the big like the huge standard of beauty being tall, being thin, being statuesque and modeling all of these clothes. Because when people think of tall women, they think of models, right, They think of Gigi Hidi, they think of Kendall Jenner, they think of Carly Klass and even Kendall Jenner being on reality TV for all these years and then getting bigger on social media and so forth. Media still played a huge role in kind of pushing tall kind of being an aesthetic. And that's the thing right back to, you know, the questions of tall I'm and asking why now, why are y'all finding tall I'm attractive now after all these years this, that, and the third and even seeing like videos and shorter women wanting to be taller, wishing that they were taller a certain height though, which we're going to get into in a sec there's this idealized version of tall for a woman, Like there's a particular type of tall that people like and find aesthetic and find quote unquote trendy tall women often here I wish I was tall, just not as tall as you. I feel like when shorter and say stuff like this, it really shows that there is a standard of beauty within the tall community, where certain heights or a certain height range is seen as ideal and anything outside of that is seen as less desirable. Think about it this way. The ideal height range in the modeling industry is like five nine to five eleven or maybe up to six feet. Right, your favorite IG models, your favorite models who are also on IG, your favorite IG models, they're like five nine, five ten. Even the one of the short girlies in one of the earlier videos that I played here during this episode, saying that she wishes that she was five eight. They want the aesthetic that comes with being tall without being too tall, or let's say, I would probably even go as far to say, they don't even want to be over six feet, right, the five seven, five eight up to five eleven is kind of their ideal, and they want the elegance that comes out of it. They want the confidence. They want that aesthetic of being tall without actually being over six feet tall. Right, because when social media portrays us when people think about models, even like in the media. Now that you know, I guess tall girlies or tall women are on the rise. We exude confidence, right, we exude elegance, we exude sophistication. I mean we've always we've always exuded that. But now people are actually, like I guess, starting to hop on that bandwagon and they want to be a part of that. That's kind of like what's trending. I guess you could say, whereas being short and bubbly and petite that was the big thing, like a few years ago, a couple of years ago, being short and being cute, see and you know, being petite and you know, so small and you know somebody can just like pick you up with one hand type of situation. That was a trend. That was the standard of beauty for sure. It still kind of is. It's like it varies, of course, but being tall back then was definitely found upon, Like no body. Liked tall women like that. And that's kind of weird to think about, right, because you know, social media and the media plays a big role in fashion trends and hair trends and style trends. Body types can also be trends too, Like you all remember the BBL era or the lip filler era where everybody where it was like all over the place like getting bbls and getting glip fillers for bigger lips and so forth. That was such a huge thing and everybody wanted to do that. And now in more recent times now it's like more natural, smaller bodies, more natural bodies, things like that, embracing your natural beauty as they like to call it, even though for the most part, is not natural. It's just like the fillers and the stuff, the work getting done is made to look more natural instead of like out of proportion. But that's again a whole separate issue. My main point here is body types are also trends too, and you know, just like the BBL era, the lip filler era, it's a similar situation here with height. Now the girlies don't want to be shorter like that, they want to be a little bit taller. I don't know, I just find it interesting that for so many years tall women have been bullied and shamed for their height and still lowkey are, but now being tall is considered trendy and desirable and sought after. Just don't be too tall, though, and that's why many of the five six, five seven girlies are trying to squeeze themselves into the tall category. Though. Yes, I can understand that around their peers, around their friends, around their family members, they may feel that way because they're taller than all of them, or taller than most of their peers and family members. But either way, many tall women aren't buying into that. Why are y'all five seven and under? In my comments talking about oh I can't find pants, they're not. Stop trying to struggle. Okay, you could probably go to a mall or something to get your clothes off the rack. Anyways, I just wanted to point out in this episode that though we get shamed and bullied for our height, for being tall as women, more people are wanting to be tall or wanting to be taller, wanting to be put in the tall category nowadays, and that's partly due to social media and the media, because seeing height and being tall pushed around more and being glorified even on social media and so forth. Now people want to attain that, it wants to be part of that aesthetic. And I think that the modeling industry, the fashion industry beforehand, played a huge role in that foundation, if that makes sense, the foundation of that, and now social media and the media is kind of pushing that more. Right now, tell women are a trend now, the body type of being tall as a woman is a trend, tall and thin, I will say, And people want to be part of that. People want that aesthetic. And it really does raise the question what happens when tall women aren't a trend anymore, When being tall as a woman isn't a trend anymore, what happens, like, how are we going to see ourselves? Are we still going to embrace our height, Are we still going to love our heigh? Or are we going to go back to hating our height, not liking our height? Are we going to go back to those days when people start shaming us more so than glorifying us When that time occurs, are we so? Are we going to embrace our higher We're going to want to be tall ourself? Are we going to love our height? You know? So it kind of does raise that question, and it kind of does make you think. And I just wanted to say with this is that even when I guess being tall as a woman is no longer trending, is no longer a trend, we deserve to love ourselves and love our height, and we shouldn't view it as a trend. We should view it as a lifestyle period. But of course, you know, there's still people who view tall women in a negative way, who view having high as a woman is negative and so forth. But I just wanted to note that there's increasingly more positive thoughts about it, or positivity around it is increasing with social media trends, if that makes sense. Anyways, I'm going to end the episode here. Thank you so much for tuning in. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you of course, as always, feel free to hit me up on my social so to tell gross podcast. Let me know what you thought about this episode. Do you agree that being tallst seen as trendy and so forth, and people wanting to hop on that bandwagon. Do you find it interesting that people will insult tall women and shame tall women but want to be tall themselves or secretly want to have the height themselves. I personally think that it is interesting, but I also think it's kind of a way to humble them, to be like, oh, you have something that I want. You have something that I see as desirable, but I'm going to make you feel bad about it anyway, since I feel bad about myself. What are your thoughts on that? Would love to know. It's literally storming outside right now. I don't know if you could hear it in the background. I'm going to try to edit it out as much as possible. But again, thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I appreciate it. And yeah, let's talk in the comments, let's talk in my dms. So let's have a conversation and I will catch you guys and the next one. Good night and goodbye.