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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?

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Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. So for listeners

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Speaker 1: out there who did not listen to the last episode,

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Speaker 1: tis tisk first of all, but just to get you

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Speaker 1: up to speed. In our last episode, we discussed men

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Speaker 1: and height, and especially these hosts of studies about how

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Speaker 1: tallman seemed to have advantages health wise, they seem to

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Speaker 1: make more money, they seem to be more sexually attractive,

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Speaker 1: I mean, just good, good, good across the board. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it seems very good to be a tall man. And

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Speaker 1: it's promised today we're going to talk about women in

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Speaker 1: height because we've discovered that the story is much different

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Speaker 1: than it was for the men. Yeah, it's not all

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Speaker 1: it's cut out to be to be a tall woman, unfortunately.

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Speaker 1: And let's also remind folks that, uh, you know, I mean, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: I have to have a little sensitivity today because I

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Speaker 1: am a tall woman. Absolutely, I'm I'm five ft nine

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Speaker 1: inches and I'm proud of every inch or centimeter. For

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Speaker 1: our metric listeners most of the world. Yes. Um, so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's some bad news. Let's start. Let's get the bad

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Speaker 1: news over with al right. Well, in July, researchers at

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Speaker 1: Oxford University broke the news to Kristen, just to me,

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Speaker 1: to Kristen, uh that actually tall ladies are at a

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Speaker 1: greater risk of developing cancer. Yes. Uh. And this was

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Speaker 1: a study result that was circulated in a lot of

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Speaker 1: mainstream media, so you might have already seen something about this.

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Speaker 1: And just to boil it down to you, for you,

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Speaker 1: a woman's chance of developing cancer rose according to the study.

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Speaker 1: And this is a study, it's called a million woman study,

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Speaker 1: and um it boiled in this particular instance, boiled down

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Speaker 1: to nine thousand women who had developed cancer. Um, and

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Speaker 1: the risk of developing cancer rose by sixteen percent for

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Speaker 1: every extra ten centimeters or four inches in height. And

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Speaker 1: it and it freaked me out, Caroline in particular because, uh,

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Speaker 1: it focused on women from five ft tall to five

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Speaker 1: ft nine inches tall. So let's study I'm in the

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Speaker 1: highest highest risk group. I am not at all, not

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Speaker 1: even close. Uh. Yeah. Well, they actually researchers focused on

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Speaker 1: seventeen types of cancer and the risk increased was statistically

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Speaker 1: significant for ten of them, including breast, ovary and large

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Speaker 1: bowel cancer. And this is not the first study actually

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Speaker 1: to correlate cancer and being tall. And some researchers think

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Speaker 1: that it might have something to do with a protein

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Speaker 1: called i g F one. Right, it's called insulin like

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Speaker 1: growth factor one, and it has a lot of effect

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Speaker 1: on your childhood growth, not so much on adult growth.

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Speaker 1: But some researchers think that it could predispose you to

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Speaker 1: cancer later on if you have more of it, a

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Speaker 1: higher concentration of it circulating in your blood. Right, And

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Speaker 1: the main purpose of i g F one is to

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Speaker 1: stimulate growth in muscle cells, kidneys, bones, liver, lungs, nerves.

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Speaker 1: It kind of makes you get big and strong as

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Speaker 1: you're a child. Yeah. In a study from George Davy

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Speaker 1: Smith Um, he says that more evidence has been found

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Speaker 1: in recent years that i g F one plays a

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Speaker 1: role in cancer. Uh. Something else that's uh that's related

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Speaker 1: to that is calorie intake. Because the higher overall calorie

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Speaker 1: intake earlier in life. You know, if you're stuffing your

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Speaker 1: face full of cheetahs like I did, and it didn't

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Speaker 1: make me grow. Actually, probably why I'm short, um, but

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Speaker 1: no that the higher that help caloric intake earlier in

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Speaker 1: life could actually raise the cancer risk, and they think

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Speaker 1: it has something to do with um more calories, more

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Speaker 1: energy boosting I g F that kind of right. Well,

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Speaker 1: it also makes sense that okay, say, I'm um, I

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Speaker 1: was a tall child and probably had a higher concentration

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Speaker 1: of I g F one that was stimulating all of

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Speaker 1: that growth. I was always the tallest kid um before

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Speaker 1: I started home schooling, how is the tall as kid

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Speaker 1: in my class? And probably because of all of that growth,

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Speaker 1: I had a pretty high caloric intake compared to my

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Speaker 1: shorter classmates. So they're thinking that maybe there's a link

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Speaker 1: between between all of that that calorie intake, because there

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Speaker 1: have been other studies on calorie intake and cancer development

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Speaker 1: down the road that says that you know, lower calorie

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Speaker 1: diets makes you healthier down the road. For instance, if

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Speaker 1: we look at the Okanahan's in Japan, the Okinawans have

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Speaker 1: the greatest longevity on the planet and there also very short.

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Speaker 1: For instance, the average height of an eighty seven year

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Speaker 1: old man Noquanalwa would be four ft nine inches, pretty short,

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Speaker 1: and they also have a very healthy, low calorie diet.

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Speaker 1: So you know, there are all these different pieces to

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Speaker 1: this height cancer puzzle. It seems to affect women more

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Speaker 1: than men, so it might be something to do with

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Speaker 1: calorie restriction interacting with i g F one, which stimulates growth.

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Speaker 1: Doctors are still working it out. Yeah, some of the

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Speaker 1: other longest living people in addition to the Japanese were

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Speaker 1: Chinese people and greats, and all of them are shorter

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Speaker 1: and way less than the average Northern European and Northern American.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, when it comes to women

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Speaker 1: in health, being shorter is not always a positive indicator

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Speaker 1: of health because, as NPR reported recently, the average height

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Speaker 1: of women in fourteen African countries has actually shrunk, which

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Speaker 1: is suggesting not necessarily that the adults aren't as healthy,

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Speaker 1: but that childhood living conditions have not improved despite improvement

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Speaker 1: and infant mortality rates. Because when we talk about where

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Speaker 1: our height comes from around it comes from our genes,

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Speaker 1: but the rest of it comes from environmental factors, especially

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Speaker 1: childhood nutrition right childhood disease as also. Um. Yeah, in

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Speaker 1: this study where they looked at just all over the world,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen countries, women actually gained height, and in twenty

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Speaker 1: one they stayed the same. Um and researchers found that

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Speaker 1: changes in height were associated with income. Actually, affluent women

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Speaker 1: grew taller, I guess because they have more access to healthcare,

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Speaker 1: better nutrition, all of those things. Um, So it's kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting to see how there's there are these positive

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Speaker 1: and negative correlations with women in height in particular, but

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Speaker 1: in terms of in the in the US now we're

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Speaker 1: shifting to a Western focus culturally, height and women hasn't

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Speaker 1: been a pretty story. Tell me about it. Well, I

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Speaker 1: had never heard about this before until I started researching

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Speaker 1: on on tall women for this episode. And fifty years ago, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: It's not that long ago, not that long ago at all.

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Speaker 1: In Europe and in the United States, pediatric and chronologists

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Speaker 1: used to treat tall girls for their height because being

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Speaker 1: like it was a health issue. Yeah, well it was

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Speaker 1: a stigmatizing thing. If you were an extremely tall woman,

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Speaker 1: you were not as socially desirable. You're kind of an

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Speaker 1: odd ball who just passed. She can find a basketball player,

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Speaker 1: I know. But back you know, during that time, you know,

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Speaker 1: women weren't being raised to be basketball players. They were

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Speaker 1: supposed to be housewives. You know, they needed to to

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Speaker 1: attract a mate so that she could get married and

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Speaker 1: cook meals and have babies. One example that Hannah Echo

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Speaker 1: points out in Bitch Magazine when she's talking about this

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Speaker 1: tall female stereotype is Julia Child. If you've ever seen

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Speaker 1: Julian Julia, there's a great scene between Meryl Streep and

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Speaker 1: Jane Lynch, one of my favorite I love ackers um,

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Speaker 1: and they're, you know, they're both very tall women, and

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Speaker 1: they're just kind of talking about how they sort of

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Speaker 1: ostracized growing up because they were so tall. But going

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Speaker 1: back to these these end of chronologists, they essentially gave

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Speaker 1: these tall girls estrogen pills that they would take every

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Speaker 1: day because estrogen would stunt their growth. Because, like we

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Speaker 1: talked about in the male Height episode, the stuff that

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Speaker 1: makes guys so tall is tasterone. But thankfully, with the

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Speaker 1: advent of things like institutional review boards and upperment in

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Speaker 1: medical morals, yes medical ethics, that practice um went away, thankfully,

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Speaker 1: but the tall female stereotype has stuck around. I'd say,

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Speaker 1: I'm not at five nine, I'm not a super tall woman.

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Speaker 1: I don't feel unless I put on some some stilettos,

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Speaker 1: I don't feel I rarely feel awkwardly tall just when

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Speaker 1: I'm standing next to you. Yes, when you're in flats

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Speaker 1: and I am in heels, it is quite a sight

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Speaker 1: to see. But I mean, being tall isn't all bad

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Speaker 1: that there was no evidence on okay Cupid that tall

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Speaker 1: women still can can find a mate, right, Oh, absolutely

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Speaker 1: there was, Yes, speaking from experience, tall women can date successfully. Um.

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Speaker 1: But we talked about this okay Cupid trends blog post

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Speaker 1: on height and how it related to the number of

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Speaker 1: sex partners that people related and also how attractive they

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Speaker 1: were on the site, And we talked about the male

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Speaker 1: portion of it last time, and about how a lot

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Speaker 1: of guys lie about being um taller than they really are,

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Speaker 1: and for women, as you can imagine, the story is

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Speaker 1: a little bit different. It's not so much that women

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Speaker 1: are lying about their height, but a five four woman

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Speaker 1: on okay Cupid get sixty more contacts each year than

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Speaker 1: a six footer six footer um And nevertheless, on okay Cupid,

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Speaker 1: women who are five ten reported the highest number of

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Speaker 1: sexual partners. But at the same time, the blog post

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Speaker 1: did make a somewhat snarky at side, saying it was

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Speaker 1: a little they're like, well, maybe you know they're they

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Speaker 1: have these sexual partners because they're just desperate and taking

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Speaker 1: whatever they can get, whereas the short youth can just

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Speaker 1: pick and choose. Yeah, And to that I say, um, no, no.

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Speaker 1: But let's go away from Okay Cupid a little bit

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Speaker 1: and talk about evolutionary biology, because when you go into Google, uh,

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Speaker 1: the question that comes up for men, is our taller

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Speaker 1: men more attractive? And for women are shorter women more attractive?

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Speaker 1: And evolutionary biology might say yeah, yeah, they actually researchers

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Speaker 1: think that the height differences are going to stick around

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Speaker 1: because men tall men seem to go for short women. Now.

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Speaker 1: In the last episode, we also referenced a study of

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Speaker 1: ten thousand people born in the UK in a single

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Speaker 1: week in March. N and researchers then went back and

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Speaker 1: examined their life outcomes, and one of the findings was

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Speaker 1: that tall men were less likely to be child and

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Speaker 1: childless and single in adulthood, and on the flip side,

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Speaker 1: shorter women seemed to be the more sexually attractive among females.

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Speaker 1: And Dr Nettle, who was one of the main researchers,

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Speaker 1: said that maybe shorter women have a greater reproductive success

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Speaker 1: because their shortness might signal more fertility. Right, because tall

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Speaker 1: women that their height is perhaps a signal that they

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Speaker 1: had later a later onset of puberty. But at the

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Speaker 1: same time, in the New scientist Daniel Nettles, same guy

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Speaker 1: says he's not really sure why the shorter women, like

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Speaker 1: why men might prefer shorter women because he says, quote,

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Speaker 1: there's no evidence that shorter women can see more quickly

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Speaker 1: or are more fertile in a contemporary population. So Nettle

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Speaker 1: is talking about that. UM. Even though previous studies have

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Speaker 1: shown that smaller women are more likely to die in childbirth. UM,

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Speaker 1: people are still drawn to evolutionary cues and that shortness

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Speaker 1: might be some kind of fertility cue, even though, like

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Speaker 1: you said today, there's not the major fertility difference based

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Speaker 1: on height. Right. And I actually in one study that

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Speaker 1: now that women have more access to cesarean section that

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Speaker 1: more tall babies are being born and more small women

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Speaker 1: are actually surviving childbirth. Really, so yeah, no, no high

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Speaker 1: disparity going away anytime soon. Right. Yeah, they really don't

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Speaker 1: expect that to ever change. UM. But if we look

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Speaker 1: at just what people find attractive, UM, if they're asked

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Speaker 1: to rate the attractiveness of one woman compared to another

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Speaker 1: woman based on height. Here's one finding from Brunnel University.

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Speaker 1: They found that shorter, slimmer females with long, slender legs,

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Speaker 1: a curvy figure and large breasts, well I'm the most attractive. Sure, sure,

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Speaker 1: and give me Brad Pitt and Clive Owen together. They're

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Speaker 1: a little dash of Ryan Reynolds in there. Yeah, sure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, but it seems like though from that maybe, uh,

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Speaker 1: the ideal woman is on the middle of the spectrum.

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Speaker 1: You know, she's got the long lady's legs and the

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Speaker 1: shorter woman's Torso no, wait a second, that is not ideal.

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Speaker 1: That is actually my body type for Okay, I am

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Speaker 1: five for two I have. I was told by a

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Speaker 1: guy at one of those like wilderness outfitter places I

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Speaker 1: needed a pack of a pack and he gets me

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Speaker 1: he's looking at me and he's like, this is weird.

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Speaker 1: Why isn't it fitting you right? And he's kind of

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Speaker 1: like adjusting it and shaking the pack so that it

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Speaker 1: fits me better. He goes, oh, I know what it is.

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Speaker 1: What he said, Oh, well, for your height, you have

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Speaker 1: really long legs but a really short torso, so it's

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Speaker 1: great your ideal Caroline. Well for having babies, maybe even

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Speaker 1: not for wearing a pack. No, but this is but

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Speaker 1: they were asked to. This is based on these three

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Speaker 1: D optical scans and people volunteers assessing how attractive the

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Speaker 1: bodies of the opposite sex were. And I mean, and

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Speaker 1: that's that's it. This isn't about having babies or fertility.

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Speaker 1: And a similar study of attractiveness using these body scans

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Speaker 1: people like to make to make body scans and have

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Speaker 1: other other folks rate the attractiveness. This involved Australian and

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Speaker 1: Hong Kong men and women rating the attractiveness of body

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Speaker 1: scans of Chinese women. And they did that because they

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Speaker 1: wanted to to try to eliminate they wanted to control

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Speaker 1: for any type of cultural bias for a specific height.

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Speaker 1: And in that study they found that scans of taller

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Speaker 1: women who had longer arms were also rated highly. But

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Speaker 1: in this one leg size, unlike the Brunell University study

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Speaker 1: that favored the long slender legs, legs size did not

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Speaker 1: contribute significantly to the ratings. So who knows, as long

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Speaker 1: as you have slender arms, slender arms. Yeah, that's that's

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Speaker 1: what it is, Michelle Obama arms. Maybe that's why we're

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Speaker 1: so obsessed with Michelle Obama's arms, because that's really the

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Speaker 1: one yeah, the one cultural strand throughout she and her cardigans,

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Speaker 1: he cardigans. Um. But one question that was burning in

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Speaker 1: my brain was evolutionary biology is telling us, you know,

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Speaker 1: shortness and female signals fertility, which might signal heightened sexual attraction.

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Speaker 1: At least among tall men. They seem to prefer shorter women. Uh.

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Speaker 1: These other these body scan studies seemed to say that

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Speaker 1: women and people prefer the hour glass, very Marilyn Monroe

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Speaker 1: esque shape. But what about the tall rail thin model conundrum.

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Speaker 1: You mean those walking clothes hangers. Yes, it seems like

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Speaker 1: that's kind of in in Western culture, at least, that

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Speaker 1: is held up as some kind of um ideal physique

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Speaker 1: for women. Yeah. Well, there's actually a Ford models blog

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Speaker 1: on my space. Someone is still in my space. Um,

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Speaker 1: and and there's basically saying that women are expected to

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Speaker 1: be walking hangers. I didn't just pull that out of

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Speaker 1: thin air. Um. But that body type helps the clothes

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Speaker 1: to be the focus, You're not distracted by their feminine wiles.

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Speaker 1: You know, you're looking at the clothes and they're just

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Speaker 1: hanging kind of straight and flat. So that's it. So

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Speaker 1: so from what I'm getting for all of this, Whereas

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Speaker 1: in the last podcast, we were able to establish from

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Speaker 1: many studies that tallman seem to have a lot of

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Speaker 1: luck in terms of sexual attraction success, health, height all

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Speaker 1: that women, it's all over the place. We can't figure

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Speaker 1: out whether, you know, there's the tall model ideal, there's

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Speaker 1: the Marilyn Monroe kind of curvaceous Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez like,

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Speaker 1: I'm my I'm making our blast gestures with my gesticulations

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Speaker 1: with my hands for those of me not in the

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Speaker 1: in the studio right now. Uh, And we we have

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Speaker 1: people liking long arms, legs maybe maybe not. Maybe you

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Speaker 1: like legs, maybe you don't. Yeah. The only thing that

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Speaker 1: we can really determined from all of this is that

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Speaker 1: tall women might be at a greater risk for developing cancer. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know why why. I'm just I'm now

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Speaker 1: curious to know why that is. Why there isn't a more,

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Speaker 1: um more sustinct answer to the at least for the

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Speaker 1: sexual attractiveness part. I assumed that the evolutionary biologists would

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Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, it's it's short swear. They didn't

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Speaker 1: seem to have a definite answer as to why men

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Speaker 1: men prefer short women or women. Short women are perceived

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Speaker 1: as more fertile, yeah, or if or if short women

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Speaker 1: even are more preferable. So I don't know. Maybe the

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Speaker 1: takeaway is Tom, and have all the luck and just

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Speaker 1: women awesome. You know you're great at any at any height,

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Speaker 1: any size, and and love your body the way it

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Speaker 1: is because gals, um, we're attractive universally. Yeah, that my

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Speaker 1: my study conclusion. So with that, I'd like to open

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Speaker 1: it up to listeners. Maybe you can help us solve

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Speaker 1: this puzzle tall women out there, let us know your

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Speaker 1: thoughts too, though, Um, is it is? It? Is there

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Speaker 1: something to this tall female stereotype. Has anyone ever tried

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Speaker 1: to make you seem less tall? Have people told you

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Speaker 1: to stop wearing high heels? Yeah? I do think it's

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Speaker 1: interesting that if you look at pictures of Carla Berney

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Speaker 1: next to Sarkozy, she is often in flats. She is,

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Speaker 1: and she's still taller than him that I know, But

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Speaker 1: that's probably why she's in flats anyway. Right in, If

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Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on height men women. All of

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Speaker 1: that are address is mom stuff at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com and speaking of which I have an email

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Speaker 1: here in response to our episode on male birth control

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Speaker 1: is happy, It's not that happy, um, And I just

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Speaker 1: you know, I appreciate all of these perspectives because you know,

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Speaker 1: we're women talking about male birth control, and uh not,

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Speaker 1: not all the guys agree with what we have to say.

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Speaker 1: For instance, Brian wrote in really taking issue with the

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Speaker 1: notion that men could not be relied upon to take,

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Speaker 1: say in oral contraceptive like a lot of women take.

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Speaker 1: He said, you insinuated several times that men might not

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Speaker 1: be trustworthy to take a pill every day. Any evidence

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Speaker 1: that men might be less trustworthy than women to take

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Speaker 1: a pill is going going to be pretty flimsy. Men

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Speaker 1: have to trust their wives slash girlfriends to take the

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Speaker 1: pill now, and I'm sure you know they sometimes forget,

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Speaker 1: true and sometimes they even forget and don't tell their

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Speaker 1: partner whoops, were having a baby. Nothing different if men

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Speaker 1: are taking the pill and there might be and that

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Speaker 1: there might be an outbreak of unexpected pregnancies or even

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Speaker 1: STDs because of irresponsible men on birth control. This is

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Speaker 1: exactly what men deal with now. When sex presents itself,

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Speaker 1: whether a one night stand or during the course of relationship,

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Speaker 1: men have to decide how trustworthy the woman is. Again,

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Speaker 1: nothing different if men are taking the pill practice safe

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Speaker 1: sex indeed, um, And we also have an email here

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Speaker 1: from Elizabeth Well Beth as she goes by with um

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Speaker 1: a request. So I want to open up to other

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Speaker 1: listeners as well. Right, that's right. It's one thing that

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Speaker 1: crosses my mind during almost every episode is LGBT recognition.

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Speaker 1: Many of the examples brought up in your podcast about

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Speaker 1: heterosexual relationships. I realized that this is probably because the

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Speaker 1: studies you're citing are about heterosexual men and women, but

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Speaker 1: it can feel a bit alienating at times. Maybe a

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Speaker 1: special LGBT focus podcast, or try seeking out research that

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Speaker 1: has been done that includes LGBT people. Yeah. And I

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Speaker 1: wrote Beth back and said, you are absolutely right, Um,

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Speaker 1: as we bring up a lot of times in the podcast, Uh,

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Speaker 1: the focus of a lot of these relationships studies are

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Speaker 1: on heterosexuals. And I just wanted to open this up

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Speaker 1: to listeners. If there is an LGBT related topic, narrow

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Speaker 1: topic that you would like us to focus on, let

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Speaker 1: us know, because we are more than happy to you

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Speaker 1: research that it's not nothing intentional that we're that we're

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Speaker 1: not talking about more LGBT LGBT issues. So with all

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Speaker 1: that said again, our email addresses mom Stuff at how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. You can also find us over

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Speaker 1: on Facebook, where we would love to see leave a

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Speaker 1: comment like us all that good stuff, and you can

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Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. And then finally,

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Speaker 1: during the week you can read our blog It's stuff

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Speaker 1: Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff

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Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we

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Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow the

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Speaker 1: house Stuff Works. I frone app has a ride. Download

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