The Long and the Short of Being Tall
Is it the height of vanity to obsess about one’s stature?
In American folklore, heroes tend to be tall, dark and handsome. And there are discernible advantages to being tall in affairs of the heart, business and politics. But like everything, lofty stature has its price.
While there isn’t nearly as much pressure for women to be tall, our images of beautiful women--mainly conveyed through ads and television--strongly encourage it. A slight 5 feet, 5 inches is now the average for women, but, according to a study by Brandeis University, the image of the ideal woman has been growing steadily taller.
The average American male is 5 feet, 10 inches, but the magic number for men--even if it requires they stretch the truth an inch or two--is 6 feet.
“Guys are intrigued by tall women,” admits Lisa Rostalski, a 25-year-old San Fernando Valley marketing assistant who describes her stature as “5 feet 12.”
Rostalski and other tall adults often speak of their height in a cavalier manner, but most admit that as children they paid a high psychological price for those future advantages.
“I remember being 12 years old in the sixth grade and I was already 5 feet 11,” recounts a now-confident 6-foot-2 1/2-inch Deborah Kucharik of Torrance. “Other kids called me a goon, a geek or Lurch. Being that tall, nobody wanted to know you. It affected me tremendously.”
After the painful childhood, however, the rewards started. By the time she reached college, Kucharik had stopped hiding in her brother’s sloppy hand-me-down jeans and found pants that actually covered her long legs. She began modeling for a tall women’s clothing store.
Buoyed by the charge to her self-esteem, she had lots of friends and was rarely dateless. She was, however, usually the taller one in a couple. While the shorter men in her life didn’t seem to mind, Kucharik did. The practicalities alone were irritating.
“I remember going out with short guys and they would just hit my breasts. Hugging them was, like, ‘Oh, gosh, don’t do what I think you’re going to do.’ ”
Eventually tired of dating shorter men, on her 26th birthday she joined the California Tip Toppers, a social club that limits membership to women 6 feet or taller and to men 6 feet, 4 inches or taller. Being around physically similar people made her feel even less of an outsider.
“I used to think I was an ugly duckling. Now I would describe myself as tall, vivacious, beautiful, a good head on my shoulders,” Kucharik says.
As a testament to her evolution, Kucharik was crowned Ms. California Tip Topper last March. She now boasts about using her height to her advantage.
“People look up to me no matter what,” says Kucharik with a laugh. “They say, ‘Wow, she’s tall. She’s pretty.’ They always ask if I model or if they can have my legs.”
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As a society, we respond more favorably to tall people. In 1994, two Dartmouth University researchers found that boys who were tall adolescents wound up earning considerably more money as adults.
Other studies compared adults to one another. At least one study suggested that there may be an increased income of about $1,000 per year per inch of height above average. Both studies were conducted on male subjects. Researchers do not believe that the height-wage correlation is consistent when comparing women to women, but it may be one reason women statistically earn less than men.
Male or female, height may play a part in acquiring employment and receiving favorable performance reviews. One 6-foot-4 Los Angeles man says he has been offered every position for which he has interviewed. A 6-foot-tall woman says her height helps her project competence, even when she doesn’t feel completely confident.
Celebrities know the power of perception. If they can help it, few celebrities will admit to being short. One well-known 5-foot-tall television actress, who declined to be interviewed on record, admits that she has turned down offers for lucrative deals that draw attention to her lack of height.
“Everyone knows I’m short,” she says, “but I don’t want to point it out. It’s not good for my career.”
It is sometimes difficult to get an accurate answer regarding the height of celebrities. Television talk show host Oprah Winfrey is a prime example. The Current Biography Yearbook lists her height as 5 feet. Other publications have listed it at around 5 feet, 4 inches and her publicist contends Winfrey is 5 feet, 6 1/2.
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Attitudes like these have helped contribute to a “short scare” and the use of drugs to help some short children grow taller. Since 1985, drug manufacturers have been able to synthetically reproduce human growth hormone. This drug is intended for extremely short children who are not producing adequate amounts of their own growth hormone, but parents of mildly short children who are not growth hormone deficient have begun to request it.
Such use of it has raised considerable controversy. According to reports in the medical journal the Lancet, pharmaceutical companies producing the hormone have adopted aggressive marketing campaigns to try to recoup the enormous investment they made in the research and production of it.
Doctors say proper use of the drug is not harmful, but there are no long-term studies yet. Still, whether swayed by publicity from drug companies or social prejudice against short stature, some parents have made the decision to give the drug to their children.
Such was the case with Jonathan Serwa, a 21-year-old psychology student at Carthage College in Wisconsin. When Serwa was 10, his parents noticed that he was not growing out of his clothes as rapidly as other children his age.
They took him to Children’s Hospital, where he took part in a study of 200 children nationwide. Serwa began daily injections of HGH. After eight years, he reached 5 feet, 8 inches. His mother and sister, who did not take growth hormone, are 5 feet 2; his father is 5 feet 4. Serwa says the doctors predicted he would have reached only 5 feet without treatment. While Serwa admits to being called hurtful names such as steroid monkey throughout childhood, he still says the result was worth it.
“[Being taller] has given me a boost to my self-esteem,” he says. “Anything you can do to make yourself better is good.”
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If you strip away social prejudice, is height for the pure sake of being tall necessarily better?
Surprisingly not, says Tom Samaras, author of “The Truth About Your Height” (Tecolote Publications, 1994). Tall people often complain about low shower heads, short beds and small cars, but Samaras has approached the subject from a scientific standpoint. Based on his extensive research, society’s zest for height is irrational.
“The increase in human size [over the past several generations] is bad for our health and bad for our survival,” contends Samaras, who is 5 feet 10. He charges that the same unhealthful, high-fat and -sugar diets linked to an epidemic of heart disease, cancer and diabetes have also been slowly contributing to our progressive increase in stature. Better medical care and less physical labor during childhood have also helped.
During the past century, the height of Americans has increased by an inch per generation. Today’s young people now average 4 inches taller than 19th century Americans. Does this mean sturdier? On the surface, perhaps.
“Smaller is actually more durable and more efficient. As people get bigger, their weight increases faster than the strength of their joints and muscles,” he explains.
Taller people are more susceptible to injury from falls. Tall people are also at higher risk for damaging a knee, wrist or ankle and breaking a bone in activities where the body is twisted. According to kinetic researchers, joints get weaker with increasing body height and weight.
As if to add insult to the increased chance of injury, Samaras also says bigger people are gobbling up more than their share of scarce resources.
One example from his book: A 6-foot person compared with a 5-footer of similar body proportions requires 73% more food and water.
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Even if we could change our height, Samaras admits that short would be a tough sell. Admiring and trusting sizable people are primitive instincts. As infants, our caretakers and providers seem to be big, tall people. Among primates, the bigger primate is the more powerful and dangerous animal who gets his choice of food and partners.
Image experts bank on these primitive feelings.
“Everybody brings up height when they are short,” says Lynne Henderson, president of the Assn. of Image Consultants International. Henderson’s short clients pay her to advise them on how to style their hair and dress to appear taller.
“Tall people take up more space and space is interpreted as power,” she explains.
The issue of heightism centers on image. “We live in a culture where we encourage people to develop an image, rather than develop themselves,” says Ann Kearney-Cooke, a Cincinnati-based psychologist and body image expert.
In televised political debates, for example, short candidates make it a point to have their podiums altered so they appear taller. There’s a focus on projecting an image instead of ideas.
Young people are especially vulnerable.
“Instead of asking, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ teenagers are asking, ‘Who do I want to look like?’ ” Kearney-Cooke says.
When we can stop looking outside of ourselves for the key to power and stop trying to match an illusory image, Kearney-Cooke says, we can begin to develop our own expression of ourselves.
That’s real power, no matter what the height chart says.
