The XX Factor: What women really think.

Julia Childs' Height Was Not a Handicap

A guest post from Arianne Cohen, author of The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life From On High.

At every public appearance I make, someone raises his hand and says something like, “It’s much harder to be a tall woman than a tall man, right?” This point of view was echoed in the current issue of The New Yorker: A story about the director Nora Ephron opens with a quote about being tall from Meryl Streep, who is playing 6-foot-2 Julia Child in the forthcoming movie Julie & Julia. "I mean, it's like having club foot ... it was a handicap of sorts, certainly in the world where she was born," Streep says.

Yes, being tall has its challenges. I know, I'm 6-foot-3. But at its heart, the constant struggle of height is that to be tall is to be public, the constant sense of walking around with a spotlight on you. There's no place to hide, and that's genderless. Tall men are every bit as self-conscious as tall women.

Tall women’s struggles are more subtle. You’re not aware of this unless you’re tall, but there’s a vortex of silence around tall female public figures, and a total dearth of tall female role models. Sure, there are lots of very successful tall women out there. But you probably don’t know ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)