I actually am the tallest woman my brother’s Japanese mother-in-law had ever met.
The first eight words she said upon seeing me: “She’s tall! She’s very tall! She’s so tall!”
Several high school groups from Kyushu accosted me in Kyoto to interview me for an ESL assignment.
The girls posed for photos with me (for proof they talked to an English speaker). The boys declined.
These anecdotes are bizarre for me because living in North America no one makes much about my height. (I am 176 cm.)
And it messes me up to read about “Big Ethel” or “The Giant” in a Haruki Murakami novel and learn the character is my height.
I don’t shop at a Tall Girl place. I don’t quite reach the minimum for that. But my dad’s paternal lineage is from one of those indigo-coloured countries on the map. In my dad’s family I’m average height for a woman.
My wife (Dutch ancestry) is about 5’10’’ (178cm), and her brothers are all around 6’3" (190cm). I tell her the explanation is simply natural selection. When the dikes failed, as they did periodically, only the tallest had their heads above water.
The correlation between height and perceived attractiveness for men is very strong. I’ve seen it a number of times: a woman mentions she’s met a man, and the first question from her women friends is “Is he tall?”. Height bias has been shown to be as strong as race and age bias in choosing a partner.
I saw a documentary in which a number of women were asked to view interviews with men of different heights and say whom they were attracted to. One guy in particular stood out as a catch - a doctor and published author, well-spoken, and who came across as a genuinely nice guy. He was well below average height, and that was the dealbreaker. The women overwhelmingly preferred one of the other guys - a tall, currently-unemployed lifeguard.
Flying when tall stinks b/c the seats are tiny and it’s damned difficult to keep my knees from getting crushed when the person in front of me leans their seat back. Similarly, signs that are hung too low on city streets or in stores wind me up a bit (as a stupidly hot-headed youth, I’d walk directly into the signs in a passive-aggressive attempt to knock them down, but that can backfire easily).
Beyond that, it’s likely a Really Good Thing that I don’t easily fit on a Ducati or in a Ferrari b/c I would’ve done myself in already.
