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There are a lot of day to day struggles of being tall that many normal sized people take for granted. While there are many height advantages we have over many people, unfortunately it does comes at a cost during day to day activities. Being tall isn’t always as nice and easy as one might have previously thought.
While there are many height disadvantages, below I am going to cover 6 of the areas that sometimes get overlooked or forgotten about. These can be in day to day activities or can be advice for when tall relatives are coming over your place for the holidays to help better accommodate their stay.
Buying Clothing Is A Nightmare
When you’re tall, you have larger feet than a lot of people. You know what they say about people with big feet right?. They need big shoes!. Which is often harder to find then you think. That means you may have to order specialized shoes off of the internet because they may not carry your size of shoe at the local stores in your area.
Unless there is a big and tall store with shoes in it, then you’re going to have to special order the shoes that you want to wear and you don’t have as many choices as people with feet that are regular sized. There are generally fewer options because not a lot of people are tall and the demand for the size 14+ shoes is minimal. So often we are left with undesirable shoes as a result.
When you want to wear clothing, you have to get shirts and pants that are a size that stores may not carry. For instance, you may need an extra large tall type of shirt to wear but all you can find are XL and XXL shirts that fit but are too big in diameter. There aren’t many local stores that carry the tall sizes, so it’s hard to find out what fits and what to avoid. Trying on clothing is not even possible when it doesn’t fit right and when the whole store sells clothing for people of a smaller size than you.
Can Tall People Use Exercise Equipment?
Another very annoying struggle about being tall is using exercise equipment. Whether at the Gym of Health Club, you must make sure you get a machine that is capable of handling an extra tall person.
There are two problems to being tall and using exercise equipment:
- Some equipment raises you in the air, so if you have low ceilings, you really need something that is low profile. For example, an elliptical machine designed for tall persons will allow you to work out under a 8 foot ceiling without sending your head through the ceiling.
- Longer legs = Longer strides. Now imagine if you were running or even walking on a treadmill. As taller folks have longer strides, this can be very dangerous if the running deck on the treadmill is short. You could easily get your foot stuck on the rear of the belt and get pulled or thrown of the treadmill. This is why I recommend 60″ long treadmills for tall people.
That is just two examples of daily exercise struggle of being tall. Just about any piece of exercise equipment can be uncomfortable and even dangerous for tall people if it isn’t designed to cater to taller people or folks with longer inseams. So if you can’t go for a run outdoors and want to invest in equipment, be sure to know the requirements for a tall person.
Public Transport Is A Struggle When You’re Taller
There are not a lot of comfortable places for a tall person to sit such as on a city bus. Generally, seats are made for people that are much smaller than a tall person so a taller person is going to have to scrunch up to fit in a smaller space. This makes things like going across the country on a bus something of a nightmare in terms of comfort levels. You won’t be able to be as comfortable because the people in front of you can’t really push their seats forward so you can fit. However, the knees up near your face do make for a good place to rest the iPad or tablet.
Airplanes are hard for tall people to travel on, too. You have to realize that the people in front of you on a plane are able to recline in their seats, and that means a tall person has even less space to work with if that happens. People generally are rude when it comes to reclining in their seats because they only care about how comfortable they are and not the person behind them.
You’re going to want to at least have an aisle seat in case you need to put your legs into the aisle so they don’t get squished under the seat in front of you. This also means if you do recline, chances of your head getting whacked by the person behind you are higher than if a regular height person was to recline.
Being Tall At Home Can Be A Hassle
Homes are not made for tall people a lot of the time. Just things like doorways may be very short and so it’s easy for someone that’s tall to hit their head on the doors they go through in a home. Places like basements that are a little smaller may require a tall person to bend down the whole time they walk through the area. Tall people hit their heads on a lot of things they are not used to because standing up straight in a lot of homes leads to accidents!
The shower situation for a tall person is generally not so good. You have to basically bend down to try and get your head into the water when you want to wash your hair, and you can’t really point the water source at your face because it would fly over the shower walls and cause problems. Basically, if you want to take a shower, you have to learn how to bend down and get everything wet. Unless you invest in a shower head extender which can adjust to be higher up than your height.
It’s also hard to keep your balance when you’re taller and trying to wash different parts of your body because there’s not much to hold onto in a shower.
Something As Simple As Sleeping Is Hard When Your Over 6 Foot
Tall people have trouble finding beds that are long enough to accommodate them. For really tall people, anything beyond the largest bed type will not work. Even if a tall person isn’t wide, they may have to get a bed that’s tall and wide just so they can fit all the way onto it. There are a lot of beds out there and it can take time to find the right one for a taller person. But they do exist and should be affordable even if they are a lot larger than a typical bed for someone would be.
Avoid The Hospital At All Costs
Going to the hospital can be more uncomfortable for a tall person. First, the clothing they give you to wear while you’re at a hospital may not fit all that well. They have gowns, for instance, that may not be long enough to cover everything. Not only that, but the beds in a hospital are generally not that long so they are uncomfortable to sleep on when you’re in a place like the ICU. Just like anywhere else, they build hospitals for people of normal height to use because that’s mostly who they see come through their doors.
Man It Sucks To Be Tall
Being tall comes with its fair share of struggles. You now know more about those struggles and can see why it’s not so easy being tall. There are a lot of issues you read here that you may not have known about otherwise unless you are a tall person yourself.
But on the flip side, there are also plenty of advantages to being tall (That don’t require you to play basketball…). If you play your cards right and work your life around your height advantage, things can become a lot easier. Yea sure, there are lots of day to day struggles with being tall, but it’s also difficult to be short, overweight, financially unstable, low self esteem etc. The point is, play to your strengths and never let your height hold you down.
