I have been pretty busy lately. That means I don’t have time to report on my encounter with the average population in America. But even though I am short on time I have tried to find time to read “The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life on High” by Arianne Cohen, a 6’3″ journalist with more stories than me, as well as a better prose. Here is the author talking about her book:
The book is a collection of facts and interesting stats about tall people combined with humorous (or sad, depending on where you stand) stories about the author and other tall people. Because I have been busy I don’t have time to read this book in one sitting like my wife does with her romance novels, but I am slowly getting around to read each chapter. I strongly recommend you read this book, it has some very interesting things in it that may help you understand how hard life can be to tall people, which is somewhat confusing since we pretty much rule the world.
Since I want you to read the book I am just going to provide a brief review and my interpretation of her book, so here it comes:
Part I: Tall Context
Chapter 1- A Primer on the Tall Life: Smarter, Richer, Longer, Better: Tall people live longer, are happier, and are more successful. While this has already been established in this blog according to research and news articles, Arianne provides a much more concise and elucidative explanation of why this is true. In her book the author explain that while some tall people have a lot to celebrate since their lives will rock, it seems that there is a diminishing returns both in life expectancy and projected earnings after you surpass a certain height. The height cutoff seems to be 6’6″ for men, which makes me less healthy and less successful than a person that is 6’6″ or below. It is important to note that this is all the author is talking about healthy tall people, and not people with tall related (tall is normally a symptom of a problem) illness.
What I thought it was interesting, and this is a topic that carries on to Chapter 2, is that it is not being tall that makes people more successful. Just like tallness is a symptom of certain illnesses, being tall is also a symptom of being healthy, which will consequentially lead to a more successful life. In other words, tall people are smarter, healthier, happier, and more successful not because they are tall, but because they had a good healthy childhood.
Chapter 2-Tall People Around the World: The bottom line of this chapter is that while genetics may influence height, the environment one grows up in will be the best height predictor. This chapter is very well written and provides some interesting data on how the average height of populations across the world are strongly related to eating habits and socioeconomic development. Basically, a Mayan native from Guatemala (average height for a male is 5’2″) is short not because of the family lineage but mainly because Mayans in Guatemala have a lot less access to a healthy childhood development than your average Dutch (average male height 6″ and 1/2″).
Genetics play a factors when you have extremely tall people like the Dos Santos family, but the author’s analogy of two trees in the forest helps the reader understand how is it that the environment may be more important than genetics. Cohen, and I am paraphrasing here, says that if you look at two trees in a forest and one is much taller than the other you will have to wonder what made that tree taller, and in that case it may have to do with the genetics of each tree. However, if you look at the forest as a whole you will realize that most tress as either tall or short, which is a testament of the soil’s fertility and the type of climate in the region. In other words, of course you will have a Pedro here and there, but if the average male surrounding Pedro is 5’7″ (average height in the US), then that’s because most people around him are somewhat healthy.
While Cohen does not touch on epigenetics, I think that her argument falls right within this approach. A recent Time article does a pretty good job at explaining what this is and how genetics alone cannot explain vast variation in life expectancy and personal traits even among people who share a lot of the same genetic pool. I am not going to try to explain this in detail because I am not a geneticist, but based on the stuff I read so far epigenetics makes whole lot of sense.
Chapter 3- The Birth of Tall People, A History: This chapter is about the history of human kind and the history of the tallkind. Building up from the first two chapter the author explores how we have become taller today than most of hour ancestors and how being tall has a lot to do with the human evolution. What I learned from this chapter is that the black plague was bad for the height of humans, King Frederick William I of Prussia created a tall army, and that per capita income is one of the best predictors of height. There were some interesting discussion about slaves in this chapter too, but I think you may be better off reading it yourself.
On page 46 of the book Ms. Cohen gives us Kolmos’ (an economist) equation for tallnes, and here it is: “Tall People= High Per Capita Income+Income Equality+Low Disease+Reasonable Food and Good Prices.” Bottom line being, again, that being tall probably means that you are smarter, healthier, and happier than your average person.
Part II: The Tall Life
Chapter 4- The Secret Life of the World’s Tallest, A Look in the Stretch Mirror: In this chapter Ms. Cohen puts tall in perspective. I am 6’9″, which makes me much taller than most people. However, I think that in today’s society being 6’9″ is on the threshold of what I call “just tall” to “freakishly tall.” What I mean by that is that while I love to complain about airplanes seats and people love to tell me to go play basketball, I still have it easy compared to anyone 7 foot tall or above. Being 8’5″ would suck not only because of all the mundane hassles, but it would suck even more because such height normally comes with an array of health problems. Reading this chapter gave much more appreciation for being “just tall”, and it reinforced my love for the NBA, since the league helped transition popular culture from seeing tall people as circus material to seeing them as world-class athletes (page 55).
Chapter 5- A Brief Interruption for a Tall People Convention In this chapter Ms. Cohen talks about her experience at the 2007 European Tall Club Convention. This is a very humorous chapter that also explain the history of the tall clubs. Before the internet years these clubs seemed to be the best way for tall people to find like-heighted individuals. This chapter got me curious about the tall clubs and while I have heard of the KC Skyliners Club I never felt compelled to join them in one of their events. Even though I would not be going to find a tall mate (Cara makes the 5’10” cut depending on who measures her), I am pretty sure it would be fun to be at a place where being tall is not the first defining characteristic that people will see in me.
On Chapter 6 of Arianne Cohen’s (6’3″) “Tall Book” the author talks a bit about her life growing up (pun intended). This is another funny chapter, but I figured you should read the book, so instead of talking about the book I will talk a bit about my tall experiences.
Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that I think tall girls/women have it much harder than tall boys/men. Since an early age being tall for a boy is desirable, since tallness normally means “power” or “superiority”. For women the story is a lot different since girls are taught from an early age that being cute and delicate is the way to get things, and being cute and delicate can be complicated when one is tall and gangly.
Little Kid
My memory is not as good as Arianne’s. Either my mom had me on drugs and alcohol during my early years or my long-term memory is not very good. I only vaguely remember most events in my childhood. I remember being one year old when some sadistic bastards (my family) tried to throw me in a pool (okay, it was a baby’s swimming lesson, but for some reason I was so terrified of water that I actually remember it). I remember when I was three years old the day my grandma passed away. Then everything else is hazy.
I can remember some tall related events in the haziness of my younger years. In kindergarten the class was lined up by height, and me and my disproportionately big head were always on the back on the line, which for some reason I really hated. The only time I got to move to the front was on my birthday, and I clearly remember being thrilled at being the first person in line, like I was number 1!
The Not So Wonder Years
Arianne seems to remember many traumatic moments that have to do with dating, and while I don’t remember a lot of those I can guarantee to you that being tall never really helped me in the girl department until college. In Brazil we have these things called “Festas Juninas” where everyone dressed as caricatured versions of people who live in the rural areas and we re-enact a “shotgun wedding,” where the father of the bride, a pregnant bride, has a shotgun pointed at the groom to make sure he goes through with the wedding. I think this is the first time in a child’s life in Brazil that the need for a date becomes a reality. The tradition is that you ask someone on your grade to dance with you. I am not sure if it was because I was taller and very uncoordinated, or if it was because I was one of three shyest persons in our grade, but I never managed to ask a girl for these events. So my solution was that I always volunteered to be the priest. In my opinion that was genius. Like any other kid I was not keen of rejection, so my solution was to never ask anyone out. Again, genius.
Needless to say from second grade all the way through seventh grade I was not known as Casanova. Also, I was not known as an athlete either. In Brazil, if you are not good at soccer you are not good at anything, and in my case being tall and uncoordinated did not help my cause. My class had some really good players, three of them played in the junior level of big clubs in Goiânia. Between first and eighth grades I was not way above average, I was as tall as a guy that was in the grade ahead of me. But I was one uncoordinated bastard. So I was always picked last, and even though I had started playing basketball at that time, I still sucked at that sport too. That didn’t really mattered because no one even knew what basketball was back in those days.
Anyways, since I was always picked last I had another genius plan: be a goalie. That was perfect! I am taller than most people and no one wants. That plan worked for a while, but I was so bad at it that everyone eventually decided to pick the other unathletic kid and let him give it a try. This was pretty traumatic to me and I gave up on soccer pretty much until 2005 when I started playing in the Lawrence Adult League. By then I was not as uncoordinated and had some athletic ability that masked most of my lack of soccer skills. Plus being from Brazil always gave me soccer cred here.
Tall…I Mean High School
In eight grade I changed schools and I thought the clean slate would give me a chance to be someone different. I was 16 them and had a vivid imagination, and I always imagined I was the cool kid in school. Reality was much different. I was a NERD. I am not sure if the height thing had anything to do with me being into Dungeons and Dragons, but growing 4 inches during the year and having jeans automatically turn into Capri pants did not help me in becoming Mr. Cool. I had friends at the school, but I still relied on my basketball friends for some comfort. Comfort meaning that they made fun of me but I got to make fun of them back. Until 1996 I was not good at basketball either, I just showed up to hang out at the club. But growing four inches that year helped me become a better player and it did wonders to my self-esteem. Until then I was a tall nerd in school, but outside school I was a basketball player.
Beyond High School
Between 1997 and 1999 I lived alone with other basketball players while finishing up high school in 97 and then just studying to the college entry exam in 98 and 99. Well, in 99 I just messed around really, trying to make money playing basketball. Those three years really re-defined who I was and pretty much shaped who I am today. Before 1997 I was this shy kid that was oversized. After 1997 I became that guy that is not that bad at playing basketball. That still did not help me get the ladies. All my girlfriends at the time were girls from the basketball teams that my friends helped me “hook up” with, most of the times for their amusement more than anything, because they always helped me hook up with tall girls, which they thought was hilarious.
In 2000 when I moved to the US I really changed who I was. What I hoped to do when I moved to high school and failed miserably mainly because I was a big pussy back then I was able to do so when I moved here. Clearly it worked at least on the dating department. I ended up marrying a pretty hot lady!
I truly believe that basketball was the reason I was able to become outgoing and become the person that makes fun of everyone and everything, including myself. Arienne talks about growing up tall and taking a long time to accept one’s tallness and be at peace with that. I think for me, without basketball that would have been much harder and I would probably still be a very introspective person today if I did not have that outlet to show me that being tall is actually awesome.
This is a sad truth, that I needed a sport to tell me that it is okay to be myself. In today’s society a person is only worth something if they are good at sports or are celebrities. I love (and by love I mean I hate it) when people come to me and say that I am wasting my life for not continuing my basketball career past college. I was an adequate player that could have gone to play a few seasons in Europe or back in Brazil, but my health, my personal life, and my professional goals all made me decide against that so I could stay, go to school, and get married. The best of it all is that tall seems to be the only quality that people assume I have. Nevermind that I am about to finish my PhD (well, about is a vague term, so I am going to stick with that).
Reading Arianne Cohen’s book has opened up my mind to this idea of tall identity, and while I love being tall and I love making fun of people that like to tall me I am tall, I do think that Cohen hits the nail in the head when she talks about tall identity: other people see us as tall individuals and nothing more. Worse of all, a lot of times when they realize that after a stupid joke that the tall person is more than just a tall person, they don’t want to know about what other qualities the tall person has.
But in the end being tall probably helped me develop a personality that is a lot more resilient than the average person, made me more aware of other peoples’ issues, and made me funnier than the average person. So, to quote Ms. Cohen, “tall is, objectively, gorgeous. It just is. Remember that.”
Chapter 7- Sports, Long Limbs, Big Paychecks: In this chapter the author explains why people assume tall people are great athletes, and how if they do not play sports, they will spend the rest of their lives saying “No, I don’t play basketball” (84). I think it is funny that the misconception that all tall people are good athletes comes from advertising, and that tall women had a harder time “selling” the idea of tall athletes. Arianne goes on to say that talls are not suited for all sports, and that characteristics such as slow tempo, propensity to tip, slow to get moving, and higher likelihood of being injured creates some problems in the tall athleticism department.
This got me thinking, just like tall people are fit for some sports (i.e.: basketball, volleyball, swimming), very short people are also fit for certain sports (actually, one sport comes to mind, and that is a jockey). I was just wondering if when people see a short guy on the streets they ask him: “Man, how short are you? You should be a jockey! You are wasting your life!”
Chapter 8-On the Job, Counting Greenbacks: In this chapter Cohen goes in detail on the why tall people are more successful in the job department. What I get from this chapter is that being tall is awesome. Talls get the job after the interview, are more respected by co-workers, are perceived as better workers, and get promotions quicker. Pretty much tall ascension is not about us, but about perception. However, I will take it if it means I gets paid!
Apparently tall politicians are more successful than not so tall ones. So maybe I am on the wrong side of the equation. Instead of studying politicians I should become one, since chances are I will win an election, unless, or course, I am John Kerry.
Chapter $- A Word on the Cost of Height: In these two pages Cohen does some very scientific calculations to come up with the $230 per inch extra cost of being tall. We eat more, have to buy more expensive clothes, and sometimes have to buy furniture that fits our lifestyles. Even though we have to go through all this some people still want to charge us a tall tax, and that’s just another word for socialism if you ask me! Leave my tallness alone random economist!
Part III: Tall Science
Chapter 9- Genes, Hormones, and Luck; Why You Are Tall People always ask me why I am so tall. They ask if it was something my mom made me eat when young, if my parents are tall, and if I did a lot of stretching when I was young. Sometimes people like to guess that the milkman was tall, in an attempt to be funny by stating, as Gary Gulman so eloquently described, that not only my mother is a whore but she also has sex with men in extinct professions.
I was also curious about being tall. My brother is 6’10” but he grew a lot faster than me. I believe he was 6’8″ when he was 14. It took my until my late teens to have my growth spurt, and before that I was just a bit above average. Clearly my parents hit the height lottery twice, with one 6’10” and one 6’9″ “seed.” So what made us so tall? Arianne spent a few pages explaining that it depends. This chapter is very interesting if you want to know what makes people tall, but be advised that you will not read the formula to make you or your kids grow taller. Clearly genetics play a role, but how specifically is hard to pinpoint. The rest of the book had already established that the environment is important, so making sure you kid eats well and is healthy is very important. But the reality of it all is that it is a combination of things, and unless you are Yao Ming and Ye Li (I can put money that their kids are going to be huge!) you just need to be careful with your kids and just hope that genes together with care will do the work.
Chapter 10- Tall Health; Why Does Everyone Think We’re Going to Die? I am going to be honest. I thought that tall people lived less than average sized people, mainly because growing up I only saw a few talls. Well, turns out I will probably live as long as most people. True, cancer seems to be more prevalent on talls, but nothing that makes it a clear health risk. Arianne has some of her own theories, including the Tall Eating Theory (page 123), the Tall Puberty Theory and the More Cells Theory (page 125), on why talls have a greater incidence of certain cancers. But if you are tall you should worry just a little bit about cancer, don’t worry too much or you may have a hear attack.
Actually, let me take that back. Your heart is probably just fine. People always think that talls are more prone to heart problems because there is no way a normal heart can pump that much blood around. Well, tall hearts are big hearts too, so don’t worry about it.
Chapter 11- Tall Treatments; Sixty Years of Height Reduction Pills: I did not pay too much attention to this chapter, since I love being tall and I feel like talls should own their tallness and dominate the world. But I do understand that some people, especially women, may want to control their height. This chapter does a pretty good job at explaining the alternatives out there and how these alternatives were developed.
Part IV: Tall Quandaries, Explained
Chapter 12- In a Box of One, Tall Psychology: Tall people have a hard time growing up. Not only will those knee growing pains make you wish you had no knees, but the psyche of a tall child goes through a lot of questions about fitting in, self-esteem, and life in general. Arianne Cohen explain that a tall person’s personality has a lot to do with their height. Talls will either take on the larger than life persona, like Ms. Cohen did and I did, or they will shell up and be very shy and introvert. I think it is funny that psychologists never bothered to study how height influences psychological development, and just use the short cut of calling it analogous to other traits such as physical attractiveness (page 146). Well, I agree with Ms. Cohen that treating tallness as analogous to other traits is BS.
In the psychology department, I think I got lucky because not only I had tall parents (6’5″ dad and 5’11” mom), but I also had a gigantic brother (6’10”) and my mom always made sure to remind us that tall is beautiful. I feel like my mom struggled with her own height when she was a kid (she never played basketball because she felt it may make her look more like a man) but she did a good job a showing to us that she was comfortable with her height. Arianne talks about “crap positive statements” that kids can remember forever, and while we did not have a crap positive statements, we did have a crap statement. Every time my parents, and later my brother, saw me slouching, the would tap me and say: “Barriga pra dentro, peito pra fora!” (Loosely translated to gut on the inside chest on the outside). This was their way to remind me that I was slouching and that posture was important, but I feel like that was a covert crap positive statement, because I still think of it as a reminder that tall is awesome.
Chapter 13- Into the Bedroom; Where Tall Folk Produce More Tall Folk: This chapter was a lot of fun to read and tips for men and women that can picky, especially tall folks that are picky. I married a lady that is 5’9 1/2″, which makes her miss the tall boat by a half-inch. Nevertheless, she is one tall pretty glass of water and being tall definitely made a difference in my book. While I had my short phase in high school and in college, after I realized how awesome it is to be tall I figured I should make babies with someone who increases the chances of my kids having an awesome tall life.
Chapter 14- The Tall Fetish: I guess my sometimes jealous wife will agree that there is a tall fetish thing going on. She claims that women push her away when we are out at bars and clubs to come talk to me. While that happened once, I doubt that this tall attractive thing is a lot less powerful that she believes it is. Either way, even if girls would come talk to me, after three minutes they would realize that I am d-bag and then would walk away (I make a point in being a d-bag, that’s one of my favorite past times while out in the town). Either way, the tall fetish chapter is interesting an eye-opening. I have to admit I never really thought of it, but tall women, like most “exotic” women are “fetishized.” Some women, like Goddess Severa (warning, link takes you to a mature audience only web site) make money because of it. So as long as it is a healthy fetish, I guess its okay. I am pretty sure some of my feminist friends will probably disagree with me, but some fetish can always be fun.
Chapter 15- Retail Therapy; Buying Off the Rack and Other Pipe Dreams: This chapter hit very close to home. My wife is always complaining that I have too many clothes and too many shoes. For a while, my brother’s wife had a “one in, one out” policy for shoes. Truth is, I do have a lot of clothes and my brother does have a lot of shoes, but if you spent over 20 years of your life limited to athletic apparel and crappy stuff you would be crazy about these things too (My first pair of dress shoes were bought in 2003. That’s right, I was 22 years old when I got my first “nice shoes”). Sometimes when I find things that fit me I think about buying many of the same article of clothing. Truth is, even though I have a lot of clothes, most of it still does not fit well.
Men do have it easier than women and Arianne makes sure to explain why, just as she explain why stores such as “The Bap” have tall stuff but they fit weird. This chapter was fun to read even though it brought me bad memories of wearing short shorts and tight shirts, not because I thought it was cool but because I had no other option.
Chapter 16- The Fitting Manifesto: Talls are wealthier and more powerful, and yet we do not fit anywhere. I am not going to bother you with flying woes stories (you can check my blog/rant about it), but Arianne does an awesome job not only explaining why we don’t fit, why airlines are a-holes about it, and what talls have tried to do to make a difference. She also explores the problems of being in a public space and in a private space. The bottom line is that the world is not made for talls, even though it should. So if you are tall and annoyed about it, read this book and then do something about it!
There you have it. One of the best books I have ever read and one great tool for all of us tall people to explain with clarity some of the mysteries of tallhood to everyone. Now go out an buy the book!
Big People, Little World 