Mar 26
I’m Not Too Tall, You’re Just Insecure
“You’re too tall for a girl.”
These words used to hurt me. For years, this statement took a bite out of my self-esteem every time I heard it. It made me feel like there was something wrong with me. You know, like I wasn’t “normal”.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that I started questioning society’s definition of normal. Then I began to realize how flawed society’s definition of normal is.
A story over two decades in the making
I was a tiny kid. Short, slim, and below the average size for my age. Add this to the fact that I was the youngest in my class all through elementary school, and you have the perfect recipe for being picked on, right?
No. I didn’t get picked on. At least, not in elementary school. Mother nature, being so kind, blessed me with brains. So, what I lacked in size, I made up for in intellect, making me the smallest and smartest kid among my peers. My unusual combination set me apart in no time. All my teachers loved me and I spent the whole of elementary school basking in the euphoria of being the teachers’ pet.
I was that one kid who the teachers put on a pedestal for the other pupils. Parents used me as an example for their kids. Life was sweet!
But not for long.
Fast forward to my early teens, I was already chasing six feet with the speed of light. But while a whole lot was happening vertically, not very much was going on horizontally. I mean, I was this tall, skinny adolescent girl with thin legs that took up a large proportion of my entire height. When you’re in secondary school, being “different” is not exactly something that is celebrated. Kids can be mean. Especially when you don’t fit into their limited definition of how a person should look.
And no, my intellect was not enough to save me anymore. I was fast attracting the bullies like sugar attracts ants.
And boy, was I bullied.
“Spaghetti!”
“Electric pole!”
“Cigar!”
These are just a few from the plethora of nicknames that plagued me all through secondary school. I was given every name on the face of the earth that connotes unattractive length.
Oh, and let’s not even talk about the horror of shopping for clothes then. From hemlines that always fell where they weren’t supposed to, to jeans that played hide and seek with my ankles. I had to resort to wearing adult clothes, which was a fine joke on me as I barely had enough flesh to fill out kids’ clothing.
Watching my friends fill out their clothes made me wonder if the goddess of womanly curves was ever going to visit me.
Well, let’s just say she took her precious time.
I eventually started to fill out my clothes in my late teens. And in no time, that tall and lanky adolescent had morphed into a tall, curvy lady that got stares whenever she walked into a room. But that wasn’t enough to make me accept my height. I still felt odd.
The catalyst
The real change occurred a few years ago when I realized the problem with society’s definition of normal.
We live in a society where being “normal” means being in or around the average for a given attribute: height, weight, body type, sexuality, etc. In reality, using the social average as a measure of normality is misleading because, although there is usually a large cluster around the average in any given population, there are various levels of deviation from the average that are perfectly normal as well.
Being normal is subjective
What we perceive as normal is determined by our past experiences and is thus subjective. Let’s use my height as an example. At 178cm, someone from Cambodia, where the average height for women is 158.11cm would think I am “too tall,” while someone from the Dinka tribe of South Sudan, where the average height for women is around 181.3cm, would think I am normal.
Therefore, you can say that a person’s definition of normal is only an opinion formed based on what they’ve been exposed to and is by no means a fact.
And the moment I realized this, I no longer allowed an ordinary opinion to influence my self-esteem. I began to embrace every inch of the goodness that is me.
And today, being tall is one of the things I love the most about myself.
The tall jokes have become stale
I still get the “you’re quite tall for a lady” joke now and then, especially from men. But it doesn’t bother me anymore. I’ve come to realize that perhaps, the reason they’re so bothered by my height is that it makes them feel insecure.
