Short girl problemz

“HOW TALL EVEN ARE YOU?”

“Not very.”

Being a 21 year old girl, pocket sized, standing at a mighty 5ft 1 and half (every little helps) there’s only so many times you can explain to people you genuinely did drink all the milk you were supposed to, and that in fact your parents aren’t the borrowers, before you begin to stomp your size 3 feet and feel a sense of self-pity.

Here are just some of the predicaments us short girls experience on a daily basis:

Reaching

Lets start off with the bane of every short girls life: reaching for things. You find yourself staring at the object wishing its sudden ability to move closer to you with the power of your mind and you’re mad at it for being inconvenient to your needs. The daily challenge of getting a bowl from the top shelf can be the equivalent to a session in the gym – climbing the work tops or going that extra 5 feet to get yourself a chair.

Often my flat mates will hear a faint and pathetic “Can you come get this for me?…” which is met with a pat on the head and a sympathetic, yet judgmental, smile…

Although always grateful, you can’t help but think “keep your pity and pass me the damn bowl.”

Who even puts a microwave up there?!

Ordering

“Who said that?..Oh sorry didn’t see you!”

The painful moments spent screaming through the salad bar glass at subway when you just wanted some more cucumber on your sub…you never do get that extra cucumber. Only then do you accept defeat, sigh, look at the floor and nod that you’re done.

But UGH ordering at a bar, ledge or anywhere designed for a ‘normal’ person to rest their elbows on, procedurally you get on your tip toes and in, some cases, perch yourself on the metal pole helpfully placed along the bottom of the bar only to realise that the added height has only made you the same height as everyone else and has no advantage whatsoever.

But it’s not all bad…how are your calves? Mine are made of steel.

Flats vs. heels

“Shall I wear flats tonight?” 

Oh how blissful it must be for a tall person to make this decision. Us short girls spend our adult lives finding THE pair of heels that are comfy enough to survive an entire night and still make us tall enough to justify not wearing a traffic cone on our head around the club.

We long for fancy dress nights when everyone will be in flats and no judgments made. Us short girls can high-five through the crowds of legs while dressed as stereotypically short fancy dress characters knowing there was united decision to be short together.

The uncomfortable neck extension…still looks like their child.

Conversations over your head

Of all of the square metres you could stand, choosing to have a conversation above our heads is just the most belittling (not sorry) thing you can do to a short girl. As if she wasn’t struggling to hear what you were saying up there as it is, continuing the chat without her while she’s watching below is like making a tormented dog watch a tennis ball be hit back and forth

Hot tall guys

You can’t help but see a hot tall guy and think: “If we procreated…our children would be normal sized.”

You get people asking how the dynamics of an intimate relationship works: “But you’re like…there and he’s like…here..”

Short of telling people you carry a yellow pages everywhere you go, you just have to shake your head, flare your nostrils and know that you don’t need higher physics to make it work.

Hugging people becomes problematic, however. The intimacy is removed as such when you spend the entire experience face planted in someones chest hoping they haven’t spilt their lunch down themselves and praying that their top doesn’t have a zip…

Torn between ecstasy and despair.

I.D

Every female’s passage into adulthood begins when you no longer get I.D’d; how fantastic that must be. Short girls have their ID out in every circumstance before the person has time to say, “Can I see…” , preempting the awkward eye contact when they realise you turned of age FOUR YEARS AGO.

The worst scenario is when you’re with a taller friend and you’re both ID’d, and they look at you as if you deliberately shrunk just so they’d get dragged down the embarrassment slope with you

But this is not just an outburst of “little man syndrome” (legitimate condition) to moan about being small – because being tall has its downfalls too, don’t get me wrong. If you guys need something in a crowd, we can squeeze through and get that for you; if you want to park in a parent and child space – we can be that child; and if you have a sore back we’ll pick up your fallen items.

The best thing about being small is that, however vulnerable you feel in the big bad world, you always have a taller friend or two that will feel the need to protect you from harm’s way, tuck you under their wing, where we then nestle in and milk the attention for all its glory!

“So THIS is what it looks like from up here!”