Tall and beautiful?

Unbearable Lightness posted on being petite a couple of days ago. I commented on her blog and she suggested I should also post on this topic, it is something I have much to say about, as the issue of height has always fascinated me. I am the shortest of my siblings and when I was younger,  I irrationally felt mildly resentful about it.

But height is a relative concept. We know that there has been a tendency for young people to grow taller than their parents. If we compare height over the decades we will find that people have grown much taller at an alarmingly fast rate over the past  three or four decades. To give you an example: I am slightly over 5'7'', which I round up as 5'8". I used to be regarded as a tall girl in Southern Italy, which is where I come from, but I remember that even in London, when I first arrived in the late 1970s, I was also regarded as tallish - British women on average tend to be shorter than their American cousins and shorter than the Dutch or the Germans. But these days I am just medium height.
I still remember that in my native Southern Italy the average height of women until at least twenty-five years ago was 5'3 or 5'4. In more recent years I have seen several girls in my home town who are about 5'10'' or 5'11''. I would not say they are the norm, but they are not so unusual either. I read somewhere that young people today are  much taller  everywhere, including countries where on average people have always been much shorter than Europeans and Americans. This is  because of the highly processed red meat they eat, so full of hormones. It is something to think about. If this is true it goes to show that this fast growth rate is not at all natural.

Photographer: Neil Huxtable. Postprocessing mine

The idea that as mankind evolves it grows taller is somewhat dubious. It is a concept that formed the basis of the belief in the Aryan super-race and it needs to be taken with a very, very large pinch of salt.  In Africa the Masai and the Pygmies have been around for a long time, more or less coexisting (though not necessarily peacefully as many African tribes regard the Pygmies as sub-human and kill them as a sport). Whereas the Masai average height is something close to 7' (for both men and women) the Pygmies barely reach 4.5  feet. It is definitely not the case that the Pygmies evolved into Masai, they are simply different. In fact,  just like the Pygmies and the bushmen of South Africa are ancient ethnic types, so are the Chad giants, such as the Watusi, averaging 8'  - and equally in danger of disappearing.
In fashion it is now the norm that female models should be over 5'9" for catwalk work (and ideally skeletal). This is a relatively recent convention. But shorter models do exist and they do catwalk work, quite happily and as competently as their taller counterpart.  Even in fashion being over 6 foot is not so good, that's why girls who exceed 6' tend to put on their model card 5'11, according to an interview given by a famous model agent.

In dance being very tall is still regarded as a disadvantage for women, especially  ballet dancers. With their block shoes they will tower over the male partner and in traditional classical ballet that does not look very good. Imagine a Giselle that is considerably taller than Albrecht! Their pas de deux will lose its pathos, so will ballet purists say. What helps dancers is having long legs, longer than their torso - and this is irrespective of height. Applicants to the Royal Ballet school are screened on the basis of their proportions - they are actually measured to determine how they will develop as adolescents!

Is being tall a sign of beauty? Not really. It is a matter of taste. Would you say that being pale skinned is a sign of beauty? People used to say so until it was realised it was a racist belief.  The belief that height is synonymous with beauty is also a construct permeated by invisible racism because it  excludes from this notion of beauty people who belong to ethnic groups other than the Caucasians  and who tend to be shorter than Caucasians. And even the very tall Africans are not regarded as  beautiful, despite their height - and this is because they are  not Caucasian.

Personally, and this is simply my own taste,  I have always wanted to be either really petite or very tall - I like extremes. Unfortunately, I am stuck with being in the middle, tallish but not tall. This is just a personal preference and one which figured strongly in my earlier make up, when I was much younger. In reality it is absolutely fine to be of any height and to accept one's height just as one accepts one's eye colour or skin shade. What matters is to keep oneself healthy and look after one's bone and muscle structure through regular exercise.

(All photos modelled by Alex B.)