Despite the fact that people have been telling me so my whole entire life, it wasn’t until I was in my Freshman year of college that I became aware of how exceptionally tall I am for a woman (and that maybe it wasn’t a good thing).
I was at one of my very first college parties and the night had reached that point when only a few of us remained. We were all sitting in a circle talking about nothing in particular when suddenly some guy I had never even met before started going on and on about how his brother was dating some girl taller than he and making fun of how awkward they looked and talking about how gross it was and how he doesn’t like tall girls (or something to that effect) and it felt weirdly personal even though it probably wasn’t at all and that was the first time I remember ever feeling self-conscious about my height. Now, any time I have ever felt down about my stature, I inevitably come back to that night. To think, I had made it through the horrors high school without ever once feeling weird about my height and then I got to college and bam! it became an unfortunate sort of obsession of mine.
Kids Adults can be so mean.
So I dedicated myself to a life of the flattest shoes on earth (except when in Vegas, obvs), obsessively googling the heights of everyone in Hollywood all of the time in order to see how I compared (no seriously if you were to search my google history it would mostly be “how tall is [insert famous name here]?”), and lamenting the fact that the average height of men is approximately two inches shorter than I am. I also became real super good at not rolling my eyes whenever people told me they wished they were as tall as I or when they asked the “Oh wow you’re tall! Did you play basketball in high school? Surely you must have!” question.
These days I have mostly accepted my membership in the Tall Girls Club. In fact, most days I barely give it any thought. There are even some great positives! Like I never miss a second of the action at any concert, I laugh every time my shorter roommates ask me to get something for them from the top shelf, and I plan on using my height to get myself to the Olympic games in 2016.
Unfortunately two things have remained very much so the same: I restrict all of my shoe shopping to the super flat flats section of the store, and I have become even more efficient at googling celebrity heights.
This is why, within ten minutes of falling blissfully down the rabbit hole that is Gossip Girl, I became inappropriately obsessed with Blake Lively and had already committed her height to memory. I mean, aren’t you obsessed with her, too? She’s gorgeous! And you know what else? Not only is she my height, but she looks a-mah-zing in heels. I’ve always said that if I weren’t so darn tall, I know in my heart I would be a heels all day errday sort of gal. And then I saw Blake Lively being the most glamorous being on earth with her stunning long legs and fabulous footwear and even sometimes boldly being taller than the men around her and I had a sudden thought – why not me, too?
So, over the past couple of months, I have been slowly experimenting with wearing shoes with heels. Just a little bit at first. Just to see how they feel. And I am happy to report that I am madly in love with the heels. Oh how freeing it has been to finally add them to my closet! It reminds me of the days I first discovered red lipstick and blonde hair.
Oh but yes, I most certainly realize how silly it is to get hung up on something as ridiculous as height. And even though I hate to admit it I still find myself getting jealous of women even two inches shorter than I. But isn’t that the way our society unfortunately goes? We all have that thing we would like to change about ourselves. The thing that no matter how hard we try we won’t ever be able to change it. So we just have to hope that one day we will be lucky enough to find a way to embrace it. I know I am not completely there yet, but with Blake and my closet full of heels I feel as if I am getting closer.
