Tall and Proud: Embracing Your Differences With Confidence ft. Co-Founder of Above The Crowd Laurice Sosa

Good mooring, everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. I hope everyone who's tuning in today is doing super fantastic. We do. We do have a special guest on here today. I would love to introduce to you, guys, Laurie Sosa. Hi, Lourise, Hello, Hello, how are you doing today? Fantastic? That is so good to hear. Please just take a second, take a moment to introduce yourself. Well, I'm pretty sure you can introduce yourself much better than I just did. I just said your name, but please take a what to introduce yourself to the audience. Okay, So my name is Larisse Sosa and I am many things, many things to many people. First, I am a child of God, a mother of three boys, a wife to an amazing husband. I am the CEO above the crowd, co own it with my partner at c OO, Shrolie Johnson. She's not here today. I have an amazing uh family. I'm really close connected, really small circle of family that we stay really close connected with. My dad is a giant himself six ' nine. And lastly, but not most important, I am six foot three and uh, I love, I love, I love being it. That is so good to hear, absolutely love to hear it. In sixty and you love being six through two. I actually wanted to ask you about your experiences with growing up as a tall girl, the good, the bad, the ugly. What what was that like for you? For me, I think my story is slightly different than a lot of other individual stories. I think because my close relationship with my parents, and they always pushed to me that being different was beautiful and that as I was growing up that my height was beautiful, and so I really loved being I loved being tall. I knew my place at the back of the line. I was the tallest, I was taller than all the guys, and I liked it. There were things that I didn't like, but from the vast majority of the time, like I knew kind of myself, and my parents really, you know, they saw me, and they saw how tall I was growing and how rapidly I was growing, and they they really like pushed into me that it was a beautiful thing and that I should love it. And I really got that ingrained in myself that I should love it as well. Oh my gosh, I absolutely love that, especially when you were saying about how your parents were, they were basically encouraging and saying that, you know, being different isn't all that bad. I absolutely love to hear that, Like I feel like with my parents, there probably a lot of other parents too. When I would complain about, oh, these people said this thing about me being tall and this and that and the other, they'll just like brush it off like, oh, like it would get better when you get older, or oh, then just like tell the teacher, oh, this and that and the other. But I really like how they were super supportive of that. And this also goes to show that not all experiences with being tall, especially growing up, are bad. There is good out there. There are good experiences out there, And that's just very That's what is the word. That's just very comforting to know, and I'm pretty sure it's also comforting for other people to know. But I also want to know what was something involving your height. It could be like a question or a comment, like, what was something involving your height that you hated hearing? Ah, let's see today. One thing that the thing that probably I hate the most is when people say don't wear heels, you're tall enough, like that is my thing. But let me tell you, let me do I have my shoes in here now. I had a retirement event to go to, and I always wear my heels. Like when I go to work, I wear heels. Like in my other job that's not above the crowd, I wear my heels. So I'm most likely six eight or six seven six seven, six eight in heels, and I completely own it and my comeback like I'm queen comeback. So when they say, you know, oh, you're too tall to wear heels, well, why aren't you wearing heels? One? Or just because I'm tall doesn't mean I have to wear ugly shoes. Period. Love that, And then that's kind of like the birth child of you know, when kids say, oh, how tall are you? Or people say how tall are you? It's the birth child of taller than your daddy? That has to be like my number one comeback, So it's taller than your daddy. That's you know, My kids love it. My kids wear like our merch that says taller than your daddy. When people say you're not taller than anyone's daddy, He's like, yeah, but my mom's taller than your daddy's. That is so funny, and I was so glad to hear that you love wearing heels. You know, this is your reminder to everybody listening right now to wear the heels, where the heels, where the heels is, where the heels. Now. I know you spoke about this a little bit earlier and even just mentioned it, but please tell us a little bit about your business Above the Crowd, Like what is your mission and how does it benefit the tall women and tall people out there? So with Above the Crowd was birthed essentially when I was in high school. It was a high school project. It was what do you want to do when you grow up? I ultimately didn't do it until now. I'm about to cross into my forties. I'm thirty nine right now. Next month I'm be forty. But it didn't really come into poition until until now. But it was you know, what do you want to do? And I was like, I want to do a clothing line for tall women because, like many of us, I think now we have a little bit more options. When I was growing up, I had wranglers. I had to wear men's jeans and they had this weird pouch in the front that I was always That was one thing I was embarrassed about, Like I won't wear longer shirts because the men's pants always had the little pouch in the front. Yeah, but I wanted to, you know, as I elevated myself or evolved myself, I wanted to create a line that wasn't just clothing tall women. It was It's a business that takes some things into consideration, one the uniqueness of individuality and and really supporting everyone not looking the same. I know that social media is going to say, you want to have your lips be big and plump or whatever the fat is, wherever the pendulum swings. You want to be super thin, You want to have big boobs, you want to have long, luscious hair, and you want to, you know, look this way that we put this person in front of you. Well, I would love to be the person to say that we are individually and beautifully made the way we are, and we don't have to look like everybody else. I work in corporate America, and I have stretched ears and a shave side and locks and a multitude of tattoos. But yet I can walk into a business room and own it with my integrity, with my technical expertise, and so really above the crowd is about owning your individuality. It's still about clothing tall women, but it's also about comfort, and when it comes down to women, it's about taking care of ourselves. As women, we pour so much into everyone around us, whether it's a friend, whether it's our parents, whether it's our children, our spouse's boyfriends. We continuously pour. That's that nurture in us, and we don't pour into ourselves. So it's a comfort line. It's put your robe and your fuzzy slippers, fuzzy slippers that we can never find because they're not made in our size, fuzzy slippers, candles, wellness things, take care of yourself. Remember to take a time to step back and take care of yourself while also offering. There's another side of the community, like the trans community, that they don't just want fancy clothes, they want comfort and clothes as well. So we have larger sizes that meet anybody of any creative, any sex, sexual orientation. It's for all of us, and it's for all of us to love ourselves be uniquely divine as well as our outreach programs work with nonprofits as well, so with that service piece, so that we can get back to the community, get back to our local community. So we want to make sure that you know our character and what means what's important to us is displayed within our business, so not only having mental health and mental wellness in mind, but also outreach programs to the community. I absolutely love that message, especially when you were talking about earlier about how we as women, we often try our hardest to like take care of the others around us, but never have the time or neglect to take care of ourselves. And especially during the winter months, I think it's very important to remind yourself of that as well, because now you know there's less sun. I actually spoke about this in my previous episode, but there's less sun. Energy levels are low, it's colder, and if we don't take care of ourselves, like we're going to burn out in like two point five seconds, and we don't need that, especially when we're trying to make sure we take care of things like such as you with your job and then your business as well and your family. So I absolutely love that your business is more than just selling clothes for taller people. It's also as serves as a reminder that you know, it's good to be unique and it's good to take care of yourself. That's so nice and being that you're a business that also works to serve taller people. Have you met like other tall women, tall business women in the space, and like, what is that community like? So I would say that the tall community, especially like the CEOs of the small tall brands, so we call them the small tall brands, so not like larger ones, but the small tall brands that I didn't even know existed until I entered this space are amazing. Like we all, well, the vast majority of us have conversations. We talk about no different things that we can do for the community, and there were a lot of us are involved in some of the Tall Girl pop up shops. Like one that I would like to highlight is the t JL pop up shop there every year traditionally in October in Dallas, Texas, and it is the most amazing event because it's it's really not just to come and shop, which is amazing in and of itself, because we can't do that. It's an experience where you can come, you can meet a lot of the influencers. There's there's a lot of like the ones that are big that come to the event as well, so you get to meet some of your favorite influencers in person. Try on close like where we go. We get to go and try close like literally nowhere, literally nowhere, Like I've been in, you know, talking to people about the business. And one of the things that I traditionally say is if I'm on a business trip and I ripped my pants, I'm out of luck. I know, is I gotta buy a dress and I gotta hope that the dress is long enough that people are about to see my long legs and think that my dress is too short just because you see more of my legs, like exactly. But the community in and of itself is super supportive as more, I think as time goes on, more initiatives like these are starting to pop up, Like a No Tall Society has some tall girl brunches. Tall Size is having more pop up shops in different cities, so they are promoting that kind of going on now. So there's different opportunities for tall women or tall individuals to kind of interface and get around and meet people who are like them. It's an experience that you can you know, you you never knew you needed, but when you're in that place, they are so welcoming. I remember there's a lady I forget her name, but she's a huge following. She's six six, so she came in with orange heels, and I'm typically the one that's the tallest in them. I felt some kind of way competition, competition. I literally was looking up at like my dad because I was like, I feel like this is moreterline disrespectful. But but that's what people probably feel like with me. So like, h too, Chad, I get it, Yeah, but that is so nice. Have you ever thought about collaborating with any of them? I mean, whether not necessarily in terms of like business with clothes and stuff like that, but just like even in social media and promoting each other, Like, are there any collaborations between you guys? I'm actually curious about that. So I will say, because we are all tall, we all shop each other's whoa So it funny because like right now I have one of TJL's tops. I shop her things, she shops mine. There's Stephanie from Prissy Ducks. She she shops the brand as well. We on our personal pages because you know we're not necessarily going to promote on our business pages, but you follow any of our individual personal pages, you'll see us promoting each other's outfits because we all are for the same theme. It's access. We want to make sure that tall girls have access to all the different brands. And another thing that we're doing on above the crowds website is we're going to be like some of the other tall society I that Belief has a tallest tall size, I think has the tallest, but we also want to put on ours different tall brands that you can shop because we're trying to solve a problem. I'm not trying to assume the entire space like I'm the Tall Girl Shop. I'm going to deliver everything. No, if there's already a space that's delivering genes, if there's delivering a great product over here, that's fine. My focus is wellness and uniqueness and comfort items for the community. We will get venture off into different things, but it's also to expand accessibility for the tall community. I'm not selfish. We are going to our community because no one else is trying to look out for us. There's that two percent, that two million women just in the United States alone that has these problems with long limbs, long arms, long legs, and they need they need, they need these services. So I'm we're not selfish. We're trying to get the information out there at any vending of it that we do. We are sharing collaborative spaces. Make sure you check out this group, this group, this group, this group, you know, and then the way that we're received in the community, like they're like, oh, I never knew that these people existed. I never knew this shop existed. It's a highlight of our day. We we love doing it, so we share the wealth. We're not we're not stingy here. Oh my gosh, the fact that you guys shop from each other. That is so heartwarming. I love to hear the support. And then back to your point about accessibility, because you know, as we as you mentioned a couple of times in this episode, it is hard to find like even with the example if you like accidentally rip your pants, like where are you gonna go to find like another pair? Can you speak a little bit about the importance of representation in the fashion industry, like especially for underrepresent groups like tall women. Yeah, so, like for I was amazed that as time grew on. So I haven't been in high school for twenty years and I'm not even gonna do the math on that, but it's you would think that there was a little bit more evolution that we wouldn't necessarily have to There would be a more of a creation of tall businesses, that the existing businesses would acknowledge our presence and they hadn't. So along with those other, you know, other instances of okay, well we know that maybe a more in the American side, that we're slightly larger. So we're gonna we're going to expand we're going to go up to a five X, we're gonna go up to We're gonna have larger, larger sizes here. But they're not going tall. They're they're not going to increase their end seams. There are a couple of ones that have seen it, but it also takes us to kind of know that they're that they're doing it, and it's hard search. The shoe game still hasn't caught up, so they're still I wear size twelve most traditional shops go to a size eleven if that, and so finding good shoes finding they're not evolving, but you're enough. But if they're not voices. I think people who have a more influential voice aren't speaking on it enough because I think you know, when you're tall and you have you know, you you've made it in either it's basketball or modeling or what have you, you have access to different manufacturing initiatives, like you can get things made for you and it's not a problem. But for the vast community that's tall and do do not have that access, we're kind of just left out there. So we need more people to kind of speak on it so that these companies that do have like the either fast fashion or they do have very trendy things when you want to be a part of it, like a part of the conversation, I don't want to wear something that's trending, but I can't. I think that's part of the reason why we did things like bluffy slippers to size fifteen, because it was like everyone when the trend was really hot and everyone had on there like cute buffy slippers, I couldn't couldn't find them anywhere for me, anywhere for me. So it's like not only having access to these clothes, but now starting to get into the realm, like something that we're considering now is affordability. We know that a lot of tall one there's a reason why some small brands prices are a little bit higher because they are traditionally a one man operation. They are the marketer, the photographer, the all the things that takes for a business to keep running. And we're trying to do here is to make it so that youth, young people, people who don't have extremely high budgets can still shop reasonably priced items with us. And so just trying to get the word out it's challenging, but we have to keep it in the conversation. I think it's really important what you're doing talking to the community giving. I think it's still giving. It's giving people a platform to kind of say this, she understands what I'm going through right now. We feel so isolated sometimes in our spaces, whether it's a tall thing or uniqueness thing, we feel very isolated. So be able to open up this community to have the conversation. I have to give you kudos on that because it's really an amazing thing that you're doing. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I really really appreciate that. And I also wanted to go back to your point about how there are some brands, some of the popular brands, like the fast fashion brands, that are starting to acknowledge the fact that we need longer in seams and larger sizes. And half the time it's not even correct because Okay, I'm tall, but you know I'm not that tall. I'm only like five ten and a half, but my legs are much longer compared to the rest of my body. It looks it just it's just very it's very long. So I need a thirty six inch in seam, and sometimes I could go, let's say to like an urban outfits or sometimes even like a cells they're tall, would be like a thirty four inch in seam, and I'm like, I mean, yeah, it's longer than the standard thirty and thirty two, but you know, maybe at thirty six would be nice. I've tried shopping with them, and I have had a hard time, like I have, like I have almost it's almost like you are apprehensive because it's like I'm tugh, Like we can only shop through mail, and I don't like returning things. Yeah, it's a pain. It's like a crapshoot. Like what am I? What am I? Going to get is it going to be long enough? Do I need to take a hymn out? And like where where are your So I've stopped kind of shopping with certain brands that they say, oh they have tall because I've been looking for an excellent like high waisted boyfriening for forever. But I get on those websites, like, for instance, one of the Kardashians, I think it's I guess it's Chloe. She has an amazing I forgot I was tall for a second. So on the website and I was like it was good American and I looked and I was like, oh, she has to ass talk. I think she's kind of tall. I was like, there's no, there's no tall on here. And because they had the jeans that I wanted, and I'm like, so for like people who are tall to have businesses that serve the multitude and not tall, it really blows my mind. It blows my mind. It's like I want to shop with you. You're tall. You understand we're not to be seen exactly. It needs to be like tall needs to be. There needs to be a new definition of tall because it's it's not thirty four in Zen it is a thirty six minimum, thirty six, thirty eight forties like I thought it was a thirty six. I just recently started buying more thirty eights and that's like my sweet spot, Like that's my jam. I love the way it kind of slightly drags the floor like yeah, floor a little bit like where did we do this? Yes, I remember the first time that I found a tall brand. I said, I'm going to order the longest in scene. I ordered a forty inn scene and I laughed because I stood there like I was in my dad's pants, laughing like what is wrong with me? This never happened though, I was super excited. It was amazing. It was a good laughter because it was like, never in my life had pants that I can stand on the leg. This is insane. That is great. Now, I want to get to the last question before we end this episode. Now, what is because you know, I'm pretty sure you're a very experienced tall girl, what is one piece of advice that you want to get to the tall girls who are listening right now, who are struggling with their self esteem because of their height. I would say they might not want to hear this first part. But if you are struggling with your height and you're holding your head down, or you're trying to make yourself look smaller. It only brings more attention to yourself. You have to own yourself. You have to look in the mirror every single day and say, I am that girl. I am different than everybody else, but I stand literally that's where above the crowd comes from. I stand above the crowd like we were meant to be seen. Even if you feel like you know, I'm kind of a wallflower, I don't really want to be seen. You have to own and have that self pride in yourself, and that comes to anybody loving these different these differences that we have. You have to start to become comfortable with yourself before you can try to receive acceptance from anybody else, because you're not going to be able to get those things from people if you can't find it within yourself. So I say, if it's a clothing click for me. If I don't wake up in the morning, take a shower and get myself together, I kind of feel like down, especially like you said, with like seasonal depression, because it's getting darker at four o'clock. You get killed down. But like get up, put something on that makes you feel good. Now we're starting to the tall community, at least the ones that are you know that we are in collaboration with as well, even some of the ones that we haven't even discovered yet are trying to find more options for you to clothe yourself better because that's also going to help with your self esteem as well. Like you've found clothes that fit your body that you're actually comfortable in. That helps with your self esteem as well. And surround yourself with people who support you. People who do not support you, get them out of your circle. Get them out of your circle. And if you have to have a small circle, then have a small circle, because it's about the quality and not the amount of friends that you have. Social Media is fake people. You know, half the time I don't post because my house is a mess. I have three boys. I have three boys. Sometimes I want to show it, but you know, I don't want to hear people say like your house is a mess. But sometimes you can't do all the things, like if you're if you're lacking in one area, you're typically succeeding in another area. But take that time to understand that the things that you're seeing on social media is not real. The relationships aren't perfect. I grew up romantic. I wanted to have the perfect relationship. Those things aren't true. Everything takes work. So don't idolize people, don't believe in everything that you see on the internet, and start having more faith and trust in yourself because you're you're uniquely and beautifully made, and it starts with you kind of wanting to love and appreciate the differences that we all brank to the table, and we all do bring something to the table when we're here for a purpose. Thank you so so much for that advice. That was so nice. Literally every single point I agree with and what you said is literally like that forty seconds. It took me two and a half years to say on that, So that was really well spoken. Please where can we find you? Like on the interweb on social media? Where can we find above the crowd? Where can we find you? Just go ahead and plug yourself for all of us, please, So our website is above the crowdclothing dot com. Our Instagram page is above the crowd llc and you can also find me if you want to hear me my rhetoric about my children and mind typically funny stories. It's Extra Tall thirty four. Thank you so much. Everything is going to be linked in the description, so it's easy for you guys, So just click on it and head on over there, and I'm going to use this time to plug myself. You can find me at a Tall Girls podcast on Instagram, TikTok and pintures. Feel free to hit me up and let me know what you thought about this episode. Feel free to hit Lorisa, but let her know what you thought about this episode. Like I said before, everything is going to be linked in the description, and I hope that you guys took thing from this episode because there was. There was a lot of good stuff. Thank you again, so so much, Luis for joining me today. It was awesome. I'm having you here. Thank you so much for having me and I will catch you guys in the next one. Good night and goodbye.