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The long and short of being tall

By Ai Yang (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-18 07:45

153cm. That was how tall I was - or short, if you like - when I was 13 and going to middle school.

Out of the 27 girls in my class, I stood third from the front in the queue, with the tallest girl far away at the back and the shortest at the front.

During the first semester, most girls seemed to have been mushrooming by the day, while all I succeeded in doing was making friends with the second-shortest girl in my class - my forehead leveled her scalp when she stood in front of me in the line. Other than that, I remained pretty much unchanged.

Worried (unnecessarily, it turned out), my mother even took me to the hospital to check if my body was still developing.

Of course, the doctor didn't think I would remain short forever, especially seeing that I had a 170cm mother and a 183cm father.

And in the following weeks and months, I grew.

After just one summer, I was 11cm taller, shocking my friends and pleasing my mother.

Sometimes, I wonder if life would have been easier if I had stopped growing more or less after that. Regrettably however, the momentum didn't stop and, over the years, I have finally stretched to my full length, measuring 173cm today.

And life certainly does treat you differently if you are a woman and too tall for the average standards in town.

Wearing heels is a crime.

"You are tall already and now you look even taller in those!" my girlfriends would usually exclaim.

Failing to comprehend that, like most of them, I prefer womanly footwear - which inevitably comes with heels - to boring flat trainers.

Being in group photos is also a challenge. My parents accuse me of never standing up straight, scowling at pictures of me lowering myself with an awkward haunch amid friends and smiling humbly as if saying, "sorry for having outgrown you guys!"

Shoe shopping equals self-humiliation.

"Sorry, the biggest we have is a size five and they are in black."

The eye-rolling shop assistants bring me the news in a way that really seems to be saying: "It's your own fault that you have big feet."

Frustration is a word too light to describe my mounting failures in finding the right-sized (pretty and feet-friendly) shoes.

And don't get me started on trousers.

But, of course, there are benefits that are hard to overlook - I don't stumble into other passenger's laps or stomachs on a crammed train when the driver decides to brake at the most inconvenient moment because I can simply reach for the ceiling while the panicking others find nothing to grab hold of - and fall.

And I can shun friendly offers of matching-making from eager family members and friends, without offending their hospitality, by declaring I want a boyfriend who is at least 180 cm. After adding a few very reasonable standards, the surviving candidates will be basically rarer than an extinct animal and I will be at ease.

OK, maybe I'm being sarcastic, but at least I have managed to find some good things about being tall and it sometimes gives me an advantage. So, it's not all bad being a 173cm woman.