I bet you’re reading this article because you’re a tall girl and related to its title, right? Or you’re not tall at all and just found this hypothesis interesting and somewhat reliant. Don’t matter the reason, follow up to learn about this phenomenon and why it happens!
Not a one-sided problem
Before we address tall girl’s loneliness, we have to address the main cause of that: the aesthetic preference for men being taller than women in heteronormative relationships. Not only aesthetically, tall men are perceived as more successful, talented, competent, disciplined, and many other qualities.
But what is the correlation between the preference for taller men and the solitude of taller women? Simple: the majority of women prefer taller men and it gives the impression that there are not so many of them for everyone, like some type of special limited edition toy.
This height standard affects not only tall women in solitude but also men, that recur to surgeries to lengthen their legs and increase their height due to insecurity and bullying.
There’s a stigmatization, almost primal, that favors tall men, due to the impression of protection, health conditions, and success, as we see in evolutive psychology. But that doesn’t mean that we are biased by nature, media representation and overestimation influence a lot, especially in a digitalized society. A proof of that influence is a study that indicated that blind people didn’t manifest preference and more liking to tall men, indicating that consuming visual media, influences our chosen potential romantic interest.
Media representation
Maddie and Nate Jacobs (Euphoria), Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes… Whether fictional or real, a big height difference always stands out aesthetically, but let’s not forget that it refers to men being taller, not the other way around. Ever wondered why that?
Studies report that women favor tall men to look more feminine and girly and pop culture strongly reinforces binary tributes and stereotypes. Not only because of that, tall women end up alone, but men are also more intimidated by their heights
Despite standardized height differences represented in fictional couples, a teen movie was released on Netflix in 2019 and destigmatized something that we were so strongly used to. This movie is called Tall Girl, literally, and stars Jodi, who faces inconvenient jokes and an obvious disadvantage to her sister, who is much shorter and popular.
The movie plays with what the audience expects in the romance and presents a really tall boy that would perfectly match Jodi. But – spoiler alert – the expectation is broken by the end, in which the 16-year-old girl ends up with her male best friend, who is really short and has to use a wooden box to kiss her.
Besides its estrangement and comicality – that matches our prejudiced ideals -, Tall Girl is a movie that denounces a normalized beauty standard, that not only affects women by male preferences but also men by female preferences.
We assume that this characteristic is overestimated by both genders but actually, women are more picky about that… That means that tall women do have options, but we just learned not to like short or similar-height men. An example of people who weren’t taught to favor heights is Zendaya and Tom Holland who broke the tradition of the man being taller than the woman.
This article does not have the meaning to judge and point out people’s height preferences in a romantic relationship, but to question something that became the first thing that we notice in someone. And to also reassure you, tall girl, to continue to use your high heels and not feel intimidated by the lack of man’s confidence to treat you as you deserve.
We may be losing several love interests and opportunities solely by comparing real life to unreal media portrayal, and something that we learn from Zendaya and Tom is that a cute and healthy relationship doesn’t depend on heights. Love is all around, we just have to be open-minded.
Unfortunately, this article doesn’t offer a solution to tall girls’ relationship problems, but to shows that you’re not alone and that, at the end of the day, it’s not that big of a deal.
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The article above was edited by Clarissa Palácio.
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