When Brooklyn journalist Arianne Cohen was a five-foot-three eight-year-old, her classmates nicknamed her Amazon Ari. Her pediatrician told her she was going to be “taller than the president,” who at the time was not every little girl’s role model: a six-foot-one Ronald Reagan. Now 28, Cohen stands proudly at six foot three. Her new book The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life from on High is the definitive guide to the tall experience: the unexpected trials and benefits that come with height, and why tall people have higher salaries, IQs and life expectancies than the rest of us.
Q: How do you define tall? I’m five seven. I thought I was tall.
A: Height is relative. Generally, you’re considered tall if you’re in the top 20 per cent, but functionally, if you’re towering over the people around you, you are tall.
Q: You say this is the book you always wanted to read growing up. What do you mean?
A: Height has really defined every aspect of my life, from which sports I participated in to who I dated to what I wore—because I couldn’t wear most clothes—to even what profession I ended up in. There’s been tons of research done on height and tall people but it was all tucked away in different corners of the world. I really wanted to create a bible for tall people—one book of foundational knowledge to really paint a picture of tall culture, because there really is a culture but it has never been written about.
Q: Like the fact that it’s annoying when tall people are asked if they play basketball.
A: There are three big questions that tall people are asked constantly. How tall are you? How tall are your parents? And do you play basketball? Tall people everywhere have been asked these questions thousands of times.
Q: Judging by your book, tall people seem to be sort of all-around better. For one thing, they’re healthier.
A: Yes, height is used by the United Nations and the World Health Organization as a very broad indicator of how populations are doing. Height is extremely sensitive so if the average height of a population dips by a half-inch or a quarter-inch, something marked is going on. They’re not getting good health care, they’re not getting good food.
Q: Is it true that in the United States, people are getting shorter?
A: Yes, and wider. It’s really stunning. In the last 20 years, the average American woman’s height has dropped from five foot four to five foot three and change, and it’s really a statement about our diet, our health care system and people not getting the care they need. In Sweden and the Netherlands, which both have top-notch prenatal care, they have the tallest people in the world.
Q: You point out that tall people control most of the world’s finances. Thirty per cent of American CEOs are over six foot three. Are tall people generally richer?
A: Tall people make $789 more per inch per year than average-height people and this has been proven repeatedly. It’s kind of funny for me to say I’m going to make $500,000 more in my career than you are, but when you look at it in a mass population, in the U.S., that’s $170 billion in income moving from the shortest quartile to the tallest quartile every year. That’s no joke.
Q: No, it seems pretty unfair. Why is it happening?
A: A lot of it is behavioural. Tall people often take on the role of leader at a very young age because their peers relate to them as an older child. So it’s the role they play. Even as a 22-year-old intern in a company, very often the tall guy or girl decides where everybody is going for lunch and is just sort of the ad hoc leader. That’s really important when it comes time for promotions because the boss is going to give the leadership role to the guy who’s already in it. That’s just how it goes.
Physically, tall people are also related to in the workplace as a boss. When friends talk to each other, they tend to lean in about 18 inches apart, co-workers talk about three feet apart, and when you talk to the boss, you give the boss a good four feet. You do not infringe on the boss’s personal space. But tall people are always given four feet, like the boss. So there’s this whole little dance of body language going on from the beginning.
Q: So they’re not necessarily smarter.
A: Tall people are indeed statistically smarter. But before short people everywhere come out and attack me, the reason tall people are a bit smarter is because the same childhood environments that produce tall, healthy bodies also tend to produce sharper brains. It has to do with nutrition, education, health care, and just well-being broadly speaking.
Q: So, basically, tall people are advantaged in every way and we should all resent them.
A: It’s interesting. Because tall people very consistently make more money, two Harvard economists recently wrote a paper laying out a strategy and process for a tall tax. As a tall person, I find this offensive for many reasons, but primarily because the tall life is actually fairly expensive. Yes, tall people make more money but they also spend more on everything from airplane seats that fit to using 30 per cent more of all products: lotions, extra-long towels, food. I eat significantly more than my petite friends do. But American politicians tend to be quite tall—over half of our senators are over six foot—so they won’t be voting through a tall tax any time soon.
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