“How’s the weather up there?”

“Wow! Do you play basketball?”

“Can you reach that for me?”

“Uhhh, why are you wearing heels? Aren’t you tall enough?”

Tall girls have heard it all. We’ve gotten so used to these comments, and we usually tend to block them out or ignore them. But are you actually thinking of what you’re saying to a girl when mocking her for her height?

I have loads of shorter friends (obviously because I’m on the taller side). I used to make short jokes about them not being able to reach things or not finding clothes to fit them until the tall jokes were thrown back at me. I’m in the same boat as them. Why would I be mocking them when I should be feeling for them? Being tall means shopping is a nightmare for you as well, and you are the one who has to end up reaching for the things the short people can’t get to. I’ve always known tall jokes hurt, and it helped me realize everyone is self conscious about their height.

I’ve been tall for as long as I can remember. In elementary school when we were told to line up from shortest to tallest, everyone would stare at me as I shamefully walked to the back of the line. I felt so guilty for being tall; I felt like an outsider when they glared at me. Girls would tell me about their crushes on boys, but tell me “Kevin would never like you. You’re taller than him.” I’d have to shop in the adult section of most places as a child and buy boring clothes because they were the only things long enough to fit my body. I began to feel as if being tall was a curse.

As if being self-conscious about my height wasn’t enough, it only got worse throughout my middle school years when my height became associated with my weight. This doesn’t always happen, but I’ve talked to numerous girls who were cursed with being tall and confirmed they’ve gone through the same problem: if you're tall but not thin, you're a fat girl. Girls would say I weigh more because I’m tall, and it’s easier to hide the fat that way. It didn’t help that I was in adult clothing rather than tween or juniors clothing, so this spurred on the “overweight” rumors. It got to the point where the boy I had a crush on walked up to me and asked me to tell him the story of how I escaped the zoo. I was crushed.

I began to search Google for ways to shrink my height. I figured in this day in age, a surgery to make me shorter would exist. I'd wish on my birthday candles and 11:11 to shrink a few inches. I’d wear flats and constantly hunch over to appear shorter. Hunching over caused me to mess up my back and eventually led to having me see three doctors a week to fix it. I hated myself.

It began to get better in high school when everyone else continued to grow and I remained my usual height. Everybody was focusing on his or her own bodies and problems, and eventually, everyone finished growing, and I discovered that my height is around average. In fact, I went away to college and discovered that I was ranked below average when it came to my school’s average height. I began to feel a lot better about who I was.

The moral: is being tall that bad? Sure, finding clothes is a nightmare when long pants are impossible to find (and if you have a long torso, good luck finding anything), but there will always be options available that can turn out great. Being able to reach things or see over people is a blessing at concerts or in large crowds. Wearing heels when you already tower over everybody can make you feel like you have all the power in the world. Supermodels usually have a certain height requirement, and it usually is a height above the national average. Even my elementary school self got some advantages from being tall. How special did I feel when I was last in line and got to be the one to turn out lights or stand in the top row for school pictures?

I feel more reassured about the limited amount of “tall shaming” in today’s schools. I know a certain 14 year-old girl who towers over both boys and girls. She carries herself proudly and owns her height. She’ll gladly stand tall while posing for a picture or not even think twice about purchasing shoes that will add a few extra inches to her height. She is proud to be tall, and I’m so glad young girls today are able to focus on other things rather than if their height makes them unlikeable or undesirable.

Embrace your tall. If you tower over others, remember you are just as beautiful as anyone out there. The taller you are, the more of you there is to love!