4. Size matters
Tall girl, misgendered.
Dear Reader,
Standing at just over 6ft tall and with strapping shoulders I am often mistaken for a feller.
As a child I was a paradox: both tall for my age and a remarkably late developer. Teenagers outside my own group of girls would often mistake me for a brother of one of them. ‘What’s a boy doing here?’
It’s not just my height, though, that will pitch me clean into the ‘boy’ camp.
Reader, I am built like a Lego brick. Not for me the sweeping neck and sleek chesspiece shoulders of Cluedo’s Miss Scarlett: I am blocky and angular, with broader shoulders than I’ve seen on anyone except my own dad. Have a look at Antony Gormley’s striking ‘Angel of the North’ sculpture and laugh with me when I tell you what my husband calls me.
‘Angel of the South’. Yes, really.
#funnynotfunny
I have lost count of the number of times I have been addressed in shops as ‘Sir….. MADAM!’ In a queue for the Ladies in a German shopping centre I was admonished with the words ‘Aber SIE gehören doch DAhin!’ (But YOU belong over THERE!) delivered by a somebody’s-favourite-grandmother type. To her credit, after a closer look both at me and my Union Jack lapel badge, she swiftly apologised, adding the words ‘Ah, Briteeesh!’, as if that explained everything.
I felt embarrassed. Being identified as someone in the wrong queue felt like the end of the world. Still in my early twenties I hadn’t yet grown into myself. I wasn’t used to this big, square body of mine. So I shrank. Shrank away from crowds, from queues, from shopping centres altogether. I even tried to shrink my tall frame into a wannabe smaller one – but this being impossible it meant I just became stooped and hunched and round-shouldered and uncomfortable.
And then – years later – I received a compliment that changed my mind. Someone said something lovely to me about my broad-shouldered frame. Arriving at a smart birthday party wearing a halterneck dress I’d felt instantly self-conscious and reached for a borrowed pashmina to cover my shoulders.
‘Don’t you dare cover up that beautiful back! Let those shoulders show!’ These words from the birthday girl herself hit me. ‘Cover up’? Is that what I’d been doing? Yes, I’d been hiding. Hiding my shoulders. Hiding my height. Hiding myself.
And why, when there was nothing at all I could do about my size, shape or shoulders? I needed to own this. So now I do just that.
Reader, I’m still tall. But now I rock it.
Drying my hands at a pub washbasin recently I was asked by a lady ‘Am I in the wrong one?’ as she came through the door marked ‘Ladies’ behind me. I turned round. ‘No, I’m just very tall’, I replied, with my widest smile.
Feeling that I looked like a man to other people was something I used to find frustrating. But I mind it much less now I’m more comfortable in my own skin, and especially when it gets me a free drink.
How did I get one of those? With the simple reply of ‘Well, hello!’ in my girliest voice in response to the barman’s greeting of ‘Afternoon, gents!’ to me and my husband. Now that made up for a frustration or two.
Cheers!
Love,
Rebecca
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Perhaps you’ve been mistaken for someone you’re not. How did it make you feel?
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this was so great!
I hadn't realized you had your own publication here on substack until today! So I am starting at the beginning to see what you have to say and enjoy your progress. This was a charming piece. Your sense of humor is beginning to come through. And the self portrait was priceless! Go Rebecca.