In questionnaires, both men and women often say they dream of being a few centimetres taller. Being tall is immediately highlighted as an enviable attribute. But what about women who are VERY tall? The qualitative survey conducted among VERY tall women actually tells a completely different story.

Thanks to sociological research, we are now able to identify and better understand, in all its complexity, a specific social reality: VERY tall women who are over 5’8” and who make up 2 to 3% of the female population. It’s based on the daily monitoring of two Facebook groups, one exclusively for very tall women, the other both for very tall men and women, as well as qualitative interviews with 51 VERY tall women.

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The surveys highlighted the body as a major element in how these people built their lives. VERY tall women, due to this physical attribute alone, see their lives in a very specific way: as “out of the ordinary” beings, as “imposing”, “awkward”, “ungraceful” beings, like women but not really.

Stigmas associated with being VERY tall

The social processes linked to the production and transgression of this stigma associated with being very tall have therefore been visible throughout their trajectories – from childhood right to the end of their professional careers. The stigma comes down to the discredit placed on these VERY tall women because of their demeaned stature. As Erving Goffman stated in the 1960s, “the word stigma is used to designate an attribute that is deeply discrediting, but it should be seen that a language of relationships, not attributes, is really needed.”

Being very tall affects people’s intimate experiences as well as their romantic, family, social or professional lives. Their height has a specific effect on the trajectories of these women, beyond all other social determinants: social origin, living environment, generation, education, profession, skin colour, relationships or motherhood.

Learning to live with being VERY tall in the teenage years

From a very young age, these young girls, who have grown up to be VERY tall women, are encouraged to take part in and adopt “masculine” practices and gestures because being tall allows them to assert themselves, to be respected, to become a boss, to play with the boys on equal terms.

However, these young girls are by no means lacking in resources to build a satisfying life, from adolescence onwards, in line with their tastes and desires, often expressed as feminine. There are multiple social structures at play and they deserve to be examined specifically.

Young teenage girls can develop social skills and knowledge that are made more difficult by their height thanks to intense involvement in extra-curricular activities, whether aided by their height – basketball, volleyball or swimming – or uninfluenced by it in any way – music, horse riding, video games, dancing or scouting.

Furthermore, parents who see being tall as something to be proud of embrace this trait for its supposed advantages and, to help to manage stigmatisation, encourage seeing it as something to be ignored with heads held high.

For those who are thin and have regular features, modelling, albeit amateur and temporary, can help to overcome these stigmas by providing these teenagers with positive learning and the “feminine” attributes associated with models in the eyes of their peers.

The VERY tall woman: she’s not quite like the others

Because they are often attributed “masculine” qualities – strength, authority, power or assertiveness – VERY tall women struggle to feel like “real” women. Being tall is a physical feature associated with strength, power and authority, all “masculine” qualities that are socially valued and promote the social and professional success of tall men.  This a priori attribution of “masculine” qualities does not, however, equate to better professional prospects than women of “normal” height. Their socio-professional trajectories are “feminine”: they often occupy jobs in “feminine” professions (for example, as teachers, therapists or assistants); with a very rare upward social mobility in relation to the father; careers “slowed down” or hindered by motherhood…

These VERY tall women certainly seem to be able to utilise “masculine” qualities to make them geographically and professionally mobile, but rarely seem to be able to transform these attributes into resources that help with professional promotion or gain access to mixed or masculine professions which would put them on more of a par with men because they see themselves, and are perceived, as “women first”.

Developing “femininities” as an adult

The women we interviewed initially learnt about “femininities” through experimenting with heterosexual seduction and through their first relationships, whether just flings or long-term commitments. Even in cases where this “femininity” education came late and was complex for them, it was nonetheless accomplished by most of the very tall women we meet by the time they reached the age of 30-35.

The fact that a very large majority of these women chose motherhood and “feminine” professions both affirmed and complicated their sense of being “real” women as they developed other “femininities” valued by them and by others – fragility, listening, mothering, caring for others -.

While the notion of a “well-matched couple” may make dating difficult due to a lack of “suitable” men, these women have developed different strategies for their relationships: accepting a partnership where the man is shorter and has no qualms about it; going all out to find a taller man; living as a lesbian couple where height no longer matters. Very tall women may be less likely to be in a relationship and have fewer children than “normal” or petite women, but they can pursue casual or stable relationships and start a family over time if they develop strategies adapted to their realities. Romantic dating sites have proven to be a particularly favourable ally in this endeavour.

Another major factor in these women’s ability to accept being very tall is sharing their experiences with other very tall women and learning to ignore the disparaging remarks and looks that they endure throughout their lives. By organising exchanges between very tall women from all over France, social networking sites have fuelled this phenomenon and also contributed to creating a collective awareness of the specific effects that being very tall can have on the experiences and realities of very tall women.

The incapacity of psychotherapy when it comes to VERY tall women

Enduring daily derogatory remarks and constantly being stared at encourages tall women to see themselves as “imposing”, “unsightly”, “embarrassing” beings, even “show animals”, and makes it difficult for them to build peaceful social relationships with the men and women around them.

Psychotherapies, although frequently pursued by VERY tall women for reasons a priori independent of their height, are powerless when it comes to giving them the help they need to overcome the stigma they suffer. The social rejection of very tall women is an invisible social phenomenon which has little personal or collective consistency. Very tall women, like their therapists, struggle to identify just how much of an impact their height has on their psychological life and, even more, to come up with a way to accompany them on the path to overcoming these effects.

Social “psychologisation” – that is, the spreading of the discourse of psychology beyond its disciplinary borders – then tends to serve as an explanation for both types of experiences: where “reserved”, “shy”, “fragile” women, who are “not very confident in themselves” tend to have bad experiences; “strong”, “loud mouthed” or “assertive” women are able to overcome the effects.

A prominent gender order in bodies and minds

In a broader sense, this investigation reveals the arbitrary nature of biological differences as the basis of gender differences, for example, the clear separation between women and men due to “feminine” and “masculine” qualities that are supposedly “natural” and possessed by these women and men. And this arbitrariness manifests itself in different ways throughout the investigation.

Very tall little girls are more frequently assigned “masculine” positions and practices than other “normal” little girls simply because of their height.

When teenage girls and women are VERY tall, this tends to tilt the balance more towards the side of young boys and the “masculine” in terms of their environment and even in the eyes of their peers.

Alternatively, even though these very tall women are constantly categorised in the “masculine” side, the vast majority of them strive to become “real” women”, to feel “feminine”, by meeting traditional feminine definitions – heterosexual seduction, gentleness, fragility, care for others, listening, mothering behaviour.

Subsequently, this survey confirms just how strong the unequal gender order unconsciously carried by women AND men in our contemporary societies actually is. On the one hand, this gender order differentiates between men and women in an essentialist way – beings who are naturally different –. However, this gender order is unequally established by constantly promoting the predominance of masculine practices and values over feminine practices and values. Ultimately, observing the lives of VERY tall women reveals just how strong male domination is in our societies, beyond the egalitarian reasoning supported by each and every one of us on a daily basis.

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Illustration by Adèle Huguet for Mondes Sociaux: CC BY-NC-ND
To see more of her drawings, visit https://adelehuguet.wordpress.com/

Images credits : kerismaker, eucalyp et Freepik pour Flaticon.

 

 

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