u/romanticresignation

I’m having an identity crisis - am I tall or average? I’m 5’8, I know that’s objectively tall since the average for US women is often cited as 5’3.5 or 5’4. In real life, I get called tall fairly often. I've read that 6'1 men are percentile equivalents to 5'8 women and that's usually considered tall without debate, but 5'8 women seem debated.

However, there's a lot of people online (especially TikTok) who say that 5'8 is "not tall", "slightly above average", or even just straight up "average". A lot of people seem to define "tall woman" as 5'9+ or 5'10+ from what I noticed.

I'm also Chinese-American, and most women in my family are under 5’5 so I’m noticeably taller than them. But I still wear regular sizing and don’t usually need “tall” clothing, which makes it feel ambiguous.

I personally think 5’7+ counts as tall for (American) women, but that seems to be quite an unpopular opinion in some spaces.

Where do you draw the line, and does your cultural background play a role? Is 5’8 tall in a statistical sense but not in a social sense? Do people subconsciously adjust their definition of “tall” upward for women because very tall women are more visible in media/modeling?

Every single time I ask a question on there out of curiosity, especially ones with a more personal context, there are always a bunch of people in the comments being morally superior and saying things like "why do you care?" A lot of them don't even engage with the actual topic.

That basically defeats the purpose of that sub. It's literally called NoStupidQuestions. If someone is asking in good faith, why is the default response to psychoanalyze them or imply that they're shallow for being curious?

It just doesn't feel like a safe space to ask things anymore, which is ironic.

Anyways. Just unsubbed.

If anyone knew any subs where I could actually ask questions and not be piled-on or talked down to, I'd really appreciate recommendations.