60 Moments That Prove Being Tall Isn’t Always Great

Being a tall person is often treated like a prestigious club that everyone wants to join, but nobody tells you the membership fees involve hitting your forehead on every basement beam in the civilized world. While society treats the vertically gifted like literal gods, the physical world was clearly designed by a committee of people who topped out at five-foot-seven. This creates a hilarious biological irony where you are statistically more likely to be a CEO but also statistically more likely to have a showerhead that only washes your chest.

From an evolutionary perspective, our ancestors viewed height as a signal of health and dominance, a trait that continues to influence modern social hierarchies. Research consistently shows a strong link between height and leadership, suggesting that taller individuals are often perceived as more authoritative and intelligent, regardless of whether they actually know how to change a tire or lead a boardroom.

This social prestige even translates into cold, hard cash, which is helpful because you’ll need it to buy custom-length pants. Economists have long documented the "height premium," a phenomenon where every extra inch of stature can lead to a significant increase in annual earnings. In fact, a famous study published by the American Psychological Association suggests that someone who is six feet tall might earn hundreds of thousands of dollars more over their career than a colleague who is several inches shorter.

It seems the "view from the top" isn't just scenic, it’s lucrative. However, this extra income is often immediately swallowed up by the "tall tax," which includes the cost of extra-legroom seats on airplanes and the specialized tailoring required to avoid looking like you’re wearing a toddler’s hand-me-downs.

Physically, being a human skyscraper is a constant battle against the laws of physics. Tall people are subject to the square-cube law, which essentially means that as you get taller, your volume and weight increase much faster than the strength of your bones and joints. This is why many tall people walk with a slight "question mark" slouch, they are trying to fit into a world of low-hanging chandeliers while their lower backs are staging a formal protest.

Scientific studies have confirmed that taller height impacts disease risk in fascinating ways. While being tall is actually linked to a lower risk of coronary heart disease and high blood pressure, it unfortunately correlates with a higher risk of atrial fibrillation and certain types of cancer. It’s as if nature decided to give you the ability to reach the top shelf but decided to make your internal wiring a bit more complicated to compensate.

Then there is the daily comedy of errors that comes with navigating public infrastructure. Mirrors are perhaps the greatest enemies of the tall, in most public restrooms, a tall person can see their sternum with crystal clarity but has to do a deep squat just to check if there is spinach in their teeth.

Airplane travel is a form of high-altitude yoga where your knees are permanently jammed into the lumbar support of the person in front of you. Even the simple act of walking down the street becomes a social event because strangers feel a deep, spiritual need to ask, "How’s the weather up there?" or ask if you play basketball.

Ultimately, being tall is a journey of high stakes and even higher doorframes. You are a natural-born leader who can see over the crowd at concerts, but you are also the person everyone asks to reach the heavy Dutch oven on the highest kitchen cabinet.

It is a life of accidental intimidation and perpetual back-cracking, balanced out by the fact that you can always find your friends in a crowded mall. We might have to deal with "headless" selfies and the tragedy of "short" blankets that leave our toes exposed to the cold, but at least we have the best vantage point for the inevitable robot uprising. Just remember to duck when the robots are built by short engineers.