The Large Girl

I must make a mental note to never go on a blind date for a friend again. Three month ago a girlfriend of mine asked me if I wouldn't mind "entertaining" one of her boyfriend's friends during the weekend that they would be visiting. The first question out of my mouth (since an embarrassing incident back in high school) was if he was tall. She said that he was taller than she was. Me, assuming that he was therefore taller than I was, kept on asking further questions such as age, occupation, geographic location and "social activities." Once satisfied, I accepted this blind date weekend and kept on with my daily routine. Well, the weekend finally arrived and I got to meet Mr. Mysterious and to my surprise he turned out to be not only completely antisocial but also 5'6". Oddly enough, it didn't bother me that he barely said more than 10 words and would not look me in the eye throughout the evening. As I have said before, C was extremely antisocial and I can work around it and with enough work, I truly believe that you can get anyone to come out of their shell and have a conversation with you. What bothered me was his height.

The fact that I am so taken aback by something so superficial might sound awful to some people, but it is more than just height. Some girls only want to date tall men because they want tall babies; some want to reach up to kiss the person they are with. Some even like men for even more "superficial" reasons than that, but the truth is that most of us girls that are attracted to tall men are that way because we just can't be attracted to shorter men. It is the same way that we can't be attracted to other women. With shorter men, I appreciate their great looks and wonderful personalities just as much as I would a taller man, but there is a complete lack of attraction for me and there are no exceptions. Why I feel this way about shorter men is a little more complicated. Let's face it, at some point in our lives we were programmed with what was attractive and what was unappealing to us and at some point we "taller preferring women" made our choice. My decision was made not at an exact point, or time, but rather, from the moment I realized that there was difference between different types of boys and girls.

If you page through my childhood yearbooks, all the way from Montessori through 7th grade you will notice one child who is always standing at the back of the classroom. This is the child who is back center in every picture. She is always last in line, the heaviest, the strongest and the tallest. I am that child. I remember feeling different from everyone else and thinking to myself that girls were supposed to be smaller than boys but this wasn't true with me. I was not only the tallest girl, but the tallest person in my class until the 8th grade when some of the boys finally caught up with me and I remember being so excited that I was finally allowed to fade into the background. Unfortunately, that was never going to be the case.

On top of being tall, I was also a little heavy in middle school and progressively got heavier until high school (but this is a story for a different entry). So to add insult to injury, I was not just the tall girl and I was not just the heavy girl, I was "the large girl." I felt so large at times that I thought I would break my dainty sister when playing around with her. I thought that every time I walked into a room there could not possibly be a person in there who was larger than me. I felt ashamed to be large and felt that someone who was as big as I was didn't deserve admiration, attention or love. As a result of feeling a larger girl the thought of dating a guy who was smaller than I was made me sick to my stomach.

If I were to date a guy, no matter how wonderful he may be, who was smaller than me, I felt that I would lose every tiny shred a femininity that I had left in my body. Girls are supposed to be small. Society shows us every day that women who are skinny and tiny are attractive and feminine and desired by men, ergo larger women are not. I felt like if I were to date a man who was shorter than I was, that I would feel even taller. Movies, don't show women lowering their faces to kiss their men and I didn't want to feel any bigger than I already did. When I am with a man who is larger than me, it is a glorious feeling, because it is the only time in my life where I feel small, smaller. For a moment, I feel like a real woman and I feel like the way I should be and not the way I have turned out; I feel feminine. As a result of this, I am completely unattracted to men who are my height or shorter (this of course greatly limits my dating pool).

I eventually lost the weight in later high school and college, but I still find myself getting little panic attacks every time a guy takes interest in me. I notice his height first: Is he taller than me? By how much? Can I wear my favorite pair of heels around him and still be shorter?; Once that passes then I look at his waist line: Is he thinner than me? How much thinner is he? Oh goodies! He has some weight some weight one him!; Then I notice his smile, his sense of humor and social decorum and if all that passes then I feel really lucky. But every guy, every time, is a battle with my own personal demons. I wish I was so self-conscious about how I looked or how tall I am or how large I am. I wish that I could be comfortable around any great guy that I meet (well, if that were the case, I would be dating half of my friends now). But I can't do it, I just can't do it; no matter how much I want feel like a good person and see beyond the physical in everyone I meet I cannot do so because I am bounded by my view of my physical self.