How Being Extremely Tall Shaped My Personality

Nature vs Nurture is a popular argument when we talk about the determinants of our personalities and life paths. But for me, I may have taken the “nature” part a little too literally heh.

See, I’ve always had a fascination with the idea that our bodily features could shape our personalities in the long run, especially extreme ones! By extreme, I mean having natural features that situate at long ends of the spectrum of what society deems “acceptable”.

This could include having ‘spectrum-end’ light skin or dark skin, curves, and in my case – height!

Ever since I can remember, yearly health check-ups had always put my height at the upper 97th percentile of the population. I mean being nearly 6ft tall at the age of 13/14, that’s not very surprising. Then it got me thinking – in hindsight, did being at an extreme height shape my personality to be what it is today?

It’s a loaded question. Presumptuous even. And because of that, I wanted to have some fun analysing official research about the topic! Of course, what I’ve found are usually from expert researchers and psychologists but I’ll still give some of my two cents on their hypothesis based on my personal life experiences.

I found a few interesting excerpts so let’s start analysing away!

Tall People Are More Confident?

When I chanced upon this Journal of Applied Psychology (Vol. 89, No. 3), I thought it was going to mention tall people being favoured in jobs like modelling, etc (those that have actual height requirements). But what I found instead was fascinating.

The 8,500-strong study had findings that suggest that 6-footers, on average, earn nearly US$166,000 more during a 30-year career than someone who is 5ft5 (1.55m) – even when controlling for gender, age and weight. And a possible reason for this correlation, as explained by psychologist, Dr. Timothy A. Judge, was that there might have been greater self-esteem and social confidence in taller than shorter people – making them seem more leader-like and authoritative.

I could use this study and other similar ones to toot my own horn – but alas, I think the self-esteem that Dr. Judge alluded tall people to generally have varies from person to person greatly. In my own experience, being tall damaged my self-esteem for many years!

My Personal Experience

As a kid, growing up and regularly receiving stares (awe, fear or otherwise) didn’t help a lot for my self-esteem. I was already 5ft6 (1.68cm) at 10 years old – taller than most of the teachers in my primary school. At the time, and with unsavoury comments from strangers, it felt like I was a walking freak show when having the body of an adult but with the mind of a 10-year-old.

Source: Gintarė Kozakaitė, Bored Panda

Ironically though, I did notice that as I grew older, the same people who made fun of my height had a change of perspective (some even desired it). Not gonna lie, that added to my confidence quite a bit. Also, objectively speaking, being tall definitely helps create presence. During any standing occasion, I technically don’t exactly have to do as much to be noticed (especially in heels) as compared to my shorter peers.

It’s interesting right? On one hand – as a kid, the attention I got from my height was mostly negative and on the other hand – as an adult, it got more positive. When it comes to my own personality development, however, this was basically an experience of facing 2 very different and extreme forms of attention that was confusing for a long time.

Maybe that’s it! Having features on a spectrum’s extremes can lead to extreme attention/reaction so how it affects our personalities, in the long run, could literally be a coin toss!

My Actual Take

In theory, I could be marred by childhood insecurities and feel like a freak on most days or I could do the opposite. Reality is, however, and I’m not sure if this is the case for my other tall peeps (so please let me know), – I feel indifferent.

Indifferent in a sense that, I removed the importance of height (in social settings) from my mind entirely. I still acknowledge that being this tall can be a good conversation starter here and there but in all honestly, I stopped caring. Hell, I even stopped having height requirements in dating.

So, I guess that’s my takeaway from it all. I came into this thinking that I’ll be writing an article about how being so tall could make me a certain ‘type’ of person. But funnily enough, I’m ending this by saying that height did affect my personality development – it made me stopped caring about height.

*Credits: Cover photo - Rian Mendiola, Spot PH