Attack of the 50-foot Woman
Tracey shares what it's like to be Amazonian in an average (height) man's world
I've just arrived in Cusco, Peru and I feel like a million dollars. Not because I look good – it took 18 hours to get here and I have a face like a stung scrotum – no, because everybody can't stop looking at me.
This must be what it feels like to be a Kardashian.
Walking through Cusco's historical centre, ladies in colourful national dress leading fluffy alpacas wearing pom-poms and hats, Rhonda is laughing at me. “Why is everybody looking at you and not the alpacas in drag?” I look around to see men young and old staring at me, old ladies with crinkly eyes smiling, confused, tiny children hiding behind their nanna's skirts, as a Godzilla with bouffey hair strides through the city’s narrow cobbled streets.
But it's not because I'm beautiful, it's because I'm six foot one. A nation with a national average height of 5'3”, when I landed they must have thought the Amazons had returned.
I'm actually quite used to this when I travel. I spent a year in Hong Kong in 1995 and it did wonders for my ego. I was stopped several times a day (a day!) by families, students, random pensioners who all wanted to have their photograph taken with me. I fear that I'm in more family photo albums in Hong Kong than I am in my own childhood home.
I actually love being tall now. It's a real statement. But it wasn't always that way. I've been six foot since I was 12, taller than most of the boys – and many of my teachers. I was incredibly self-conscious about it and used to hide it through humour. It really affected my confidence – teenage lads were not kind and I was called lanky, beanpole, stick insect, and the worst, loppy. So naturally, I developed a hunch to try and make myself smaller. Ridiculous.
It took leaving school and college and going to university to really come to terms with my height. In the first year, my friend Georgette said, “I can't call you Tracey – that has its own connotations– so I'm calling you Legs.” And it stuck. Everybody called me Legs. Even now, my uni friends – and their children– call me Legs and it gives me such a thrill. Getting a nickname which was universally used – and not Loppy or Lanky like at school – was a turning point in my relationship with my height. Now I bloody love it!
However, I can see how my Amazon stature might be intimidating for men. It takes a fair pair of balls to be the small man in the relationship. I got my first boyfriend aged 18 and he was quite a few inches shorter than me. He was not bothered by it at all, but I was and I remember walking in the gutter when we'd go out. If I could say anything to my younger self, I would tell her to stand tall, enjoy her height, and that she is marvellous. And to get out of the fucking gutter!
After I separated from my husband –who, incidentally, loved my height – I threw myself into the snake pit of dating apps, dating as a tall older woman was quite the eye-opener. It seems many men are still intimidated by a tall woman. And I'm sure I was rejected for my height as much as my age.
Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it...
As I've got older, I've learned to appreciate and celebrate my size. Even I admit, I've got a cracking pair of pins. And my tallness features heavily in my comedy. One of my jokes is about being 6'1” and at my first ever gig, I got off stage and the first thing a [random] man said to me was “you're not 6'1, I am” as I looked down at him, a good two inches shorter than me. He wasn't the first to deny my height, and I doubt he'll be the last.
When I see young, beautiful, tall girls slouching to make themselves smaller. I feel it hard. I remember that awkwardness, the embarrassment of being taller than all of my friends. I wanted to nibble a mushroom and shrink. But now aged a marvellous 53, I want them to follow in the footsteps of all the great tall women in the world – Nicole Kidman, Sigourney Weaver, Geena Davis, Taylor Swift, and that one who played Wonder Woman, Queen of the Amazons.
As I strut around Cusco, leaving a trail of gaping mouths in my wake, I want to remind my young tall queens that amazing things can happen to us Amazons.
Just stay out of the gutter.