Women, High Heels and the Short Man

Women, High Heels and the Short Man

When I was eighteen and a freshman in college, I got a heavy-duty crush on a young woman.  She was very beautiful, I thought so, anyway.  And, she seemed to like me.  After some months of flirting around on the issue, I finally asked her out on a date.  To which she promptly agreed.  It surprised me.  I do mean, she was very cute and I was aware a number of the other guys in the class we shared were interested in her and had tried to get her to go out.

Turned them all down.  Why me?  No hesitation, she just immediately said, “Yes.”

Hmm …  One problem; I am shorter than average for an American man, she was not only tall for an average American woman, she was like basketball tall.  I was like soccer player short.  Not skinny, just short. 

Not only was she tall, but she had a fondness for high heels.  Well, not to class.  Too much walking around for the general college student to try and wear high-heels all day.  But even without them, without the heels, she was a good half a head taller than me.  So, every day – in class – she just seemed tall, not really out of my league tall – not entirely (to my young male ego).

I show up at her dorm to pick her up and woah!, like a runway model tall.  Now she’s a head and a half taller than me.  I’m not even sure she’s going to be able to sit in my beat-up Volkswagen beetle.  (Not that she’s going to be standing up in my beat-up Volkswagen, you understand.)

I grew up short in a tall family.  Tall cousins, tall father, tall brother.  So I learned early to hold my own and I admit to having a bit more confidence and swagger than maybe I deserved according to my stature.  But still this event set me back.  I noticed it.  Everywhere we went, everybody else noticed it. 

Both of us held it together for actually several dates.  We got along great.  Had a lot in common and all that, but the social pressure – just too much.  And she wouldn’t give up the stupid high heels.  Being a tall person also meant she was not in the light weight division – I’m not either – but although she was kind of thin, body mass amounts to weight whether it’s horizontal or verticle.

This means that those shoes had to be painful to wear and they must have been squashing the hell out of her feet.  But try to get any woman who wears those things, to give them up.  What I can’t understand is that even the short women who wear them, judge a man’s height by his natural height – in just standard shoes.  Which, at the most is … say has an inch of heel.  And yet they want to be seen with a man who’s taller.  Taller than they are when they’re wearing five or six inch heels?!

Now say this young woman was five ten at the time.  I was five seven.  She wears five inch heels, which puts her at six three.  I go out and buy some cowboy boots with three inch heels.  I’m now five ten.  Just for the sake of this concept here, I add a one inch wedge inside my boots.  Now I’m five eleven.  She’s still three inches taller.  And we’re both terrible uncomfortable.

Why the hell are we doing this?  Just to look acceptable, or something, to other people?  To look cool and tall.  We still look like Mutt ‘n Jeff.  It’s unnatural and both of us are not used to it.  Wobbly … off balance … kallomping along like clowns on stilts.

She catches one of those spikey heels in a sidewalk crack and topples over, I go to catch her and I twist an ankle.  Down we go.  I break my ankle and she breaks her wrist.  (This part did not happen.) But spending a date in the ER is not a good thing now, is it?

So there is all this talk about body types for people and especially women not getting all stuck on their weight and becoming bulimic and anorexic and stuff, which I totally agree with.  A person is what they are and if it’s a little overweight, ???, just keep it healthy – right?  But the height thing?

Why ruin your feet over this tall issue and more than ruining your health over being too heavy?  So I ask a number of women friends and they said, “Because it makes your legs look better.”  “They give you a sense of confidence.”  “They’re stylish.”

Hmm … Don’t like being overweight, don’t eat so much.  Don’t like short men, don’t wear high heels.  Your legs look just fine to me.  Confidence – take a martial arts class.  Stylish (?) – can’t help you there.  Sorry.  My sense of style is jeans that aren’t  more than five days dirty.