Why it is hard for tall women to find love

The challenges of being tall in a city like Nairobi are many. From matatus with seats designed by sadistic midgets, to waiters passing bills to the tallest person. It is never funny, It tell you.

One Aquilina Magare, an incredibly beautiful woman in Texas sent me this message on my LinkedIn: “Loved your article on being a tall man. On a lighter note, you should write one on the plight of being a tall lady and having a terribly hard time finding a tall mate lol (I’m 6-foot tall, love wearing my heels and heck, no there ain’t (sic) enough tall Kenyan men to go around (I’m just saying). Well, have a great day.”

I never quite opened my LinkedIn until when the university forced students to open accounts. That’s when I stumbled on the message. And I thought, well, we have never said something about our tall sisters. It is time we did. Indeed, I pity Lady Aquilina.

Kenya does not just have a shortage of intelligent and sensible politicians; tall men are acutely just as scarce. I don’t know what the national median height is, but we are a country of short, weak men. We have very few, tall, sensible men. No wonder, my clique of tall friends is always a hit anytime they go clubbing. We have snatched so many women from poor guys by virtue of height and stupidity until it stopped being funny. But we did it to teach the young men that life is unfair. Don’t seemingly useless politicians get paid using our taxes?

Now on to tall women. Tall women, especially when they have curves and wear fittingly good heels, can be sexy when strutting down an office aisle. The better if they have well-coiffed natural hair. That is the definition of sexy, more so if they wear some provocative smile to boot. All men in offices love undressing such lasses with their eyes in momentary flights of mental fancy. But most men would rather bag a short woman.

See, height is a function of dominance and leadership. Men always want to be in charge. It is hard subduing a tall woman. She is always an existential threat. It is like she might knock you over. She doesn’t need your protection.

Is it just me, or tall women always come out as combative and often peevish? Some can be intimidating. Like they can beat the living daylights out of you. Tall women are like short men. They suffer TWS-Tall Woman Syndrome. I mean, Naomi Campbell used to be hot and sexy, but she is also very temperamental. More to the point, men perceive women sexually. We first undress them with our eyes, do some mental and visual porn, and decide if a woman falls under our bedroom conquest plan.

That is why we lose concentration in those first moments when we meet a woman and we are trying to measure a few things here and there. You can picture subduing a short woman. But a tall woman is always a challenge, even at the mental stage. They don’t even make beds big enough to accommodate the tall people, so you can imagine two tall ‘thirsty bedmates’ cavorting in a 6 x 4 bed.

And that is the tragedy, my dear Aquilina. Tall ladies scare men away. You come out as too strong and impossible to satisfy (whichever way you want to interpret it). But there are some misguided short men who often go after tall women, may be to make up for their vertical shortcomings, yet few sights are more disturbing as some groom putting a ring on the finger of a bride who has to bend over to maintain eye contact. So, that is the way of life tall women. Deal with it.

@nyanchwani [email protected]