Attention all tall women out there, don?t let the little people get to you.

As a woman who stands 6-feet tall, it?s great to be able to reach the top cabinet shelf in any kitchen or touch ceilings with my fingertips. But a lot of times tall women, like me, feel unfeminine when they can do things like know who has dandruff in any given room. Tall women never have to work hard at getting attention, especially from the gawking eyes of men. We could walk into a room and turn heads even if we have sweats on; hair?s uncombed and have a face sans make-up. We can also gain 20 lbs. and it will look like we only gained 10. These are just some of the benefits of being a long-legged female, but boy are there downfalls.

If you?re a dude with altitude then you most likely don?t have a problem with scoring, however that usually isn?t the case with tall women. College has confirmed to me that men will always go for the trophy belly-leveled types. When I was in high school, I hoped, wished and prayed things would be different in college. They?re not.

Apparently most guys just prefer the doll-factor. It gives them a more dominant feeling when they are with the shorter species. Now we all should know that not all the short girls are submissive, but they are perceived far less intimidating than the taller girls are.

Another obstacle tall women face is the way they dress. It?s an incredible feat if a tall woman can find a pair of pants that aren?t high waters. And if tall women are wearing skirts, the hemline has to be longer because if we wear short skirts?since we?re showing more leg?we get the kind of attention that is unwanted. Short women can wear whatever they want, because no one really notices them, at least as much as they would a tall woman. Short women sometimes claim that they would love to be taller. Maybe that attitude sprang forth from the supermodel craze when the media wasn?t shy about revealing the height numbers of those “goddesses.”

And you would think that tall women would feel that they would have a chance of feeling more feminine because our society now celebrates tall women?but, like with everything else, there?s a catch. The tall women our society celebrates have to be third-world country thin in order to be desirable. It makes sense, because even though those women are tall, they?re still small in a different way (the most important way), which men respond to in the same manner that they do with shorter women.

The goal here is to give you some perspective of what it is like to be a tall girl in a small-minded world. Growing up as a tall girl was not easy. If you didn?t fit into a role, which was be a bully or an athlete (are you a basketball player?), and then you would get teased relentlessly. As adults, the teasing doesn?t happen quite as often, but nonetheless, tall women are still typecast.

No one has ever really addressed this kind of prejudice because the assumptions made about tall women are not as effective as the attitude that is portrayed upon them.

To all the men out there: tall women are not freaks. We?re just longer legged versions of the petite women that men seem to love so much.

Georgette Todd is a Journalism major and can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].