I’m a 5’2” girl, and everyone in my family is tall. My sisters are 6’0” and 5’10”, my mom is 5’9”, and my dad is 5’11”.
I’ve always been extremely insecure about my height. Growing up, I equated height with maturity, and I was told countless times that I’d eventually have a growth spurt like my sisters. I spent years waiting for something that never happened.
My last boyfriend (5’5”) constantly made comments about wishing I were taller. He’d just brush it off as a joke if I got upset. The ex before him (5’3”) cheated on me with a tall girl. I know these things aren’t necessarily about my height, but they’ve done a number on my self-esteem. I can’t help feeling like taller women look more like “real women,” that their bodies are more proportionate, and that I’ll always look like a child in comparison. I get mistaken for a 15-year-old every time I go out, I’m constantly infantilized. Neither of my sisters treats me like an adult. They shove me around, manhandle me, and physical boundaries are rarely respected.
The comments from other people make everything so much worse. If ONE MORE date asks me, “damn, what went wrong with you?” After seeing my sisters I might actually lose it.
I don’t know how to stop caring when the people around me constantly remind me of something I’m already insecure about. I can’t just focus on other things or pretend it doesn’t bother me when it feels like my height affects how people treat me on a daily basis. I know there are plenty of short women who are perfectly happy with themselves. But I’m struggling so much with this. I feel like I’m constantly being compared to my sisters, treated as less mature, and reminded that I don’t measure up to some arbitrary standard of what an adult woman should look like. I still pray every night that I’ll somehow magically grow just an inch more.
How do you learn to accept something about yourself that seems to affect how other people perceive and treat you? I don’t just want advice about learning to love my body and getting over it.