#tall heroines
As I read along a romance book I noticed: all romance books I’ve read have supported the woman being small and curvy while the men are huge and practically dwarf them. Where are the books with short guys and tall girls? Need to see me some of that.
I can’t think of a single one. I’ve read some where the heights match, I’ve definitely read romance novels with tall women, but I can’t think of a single one where the hero is shorter than the heroine.
Anyone else?
As a short woman myself, I have always had a really hard time picturing a relationship with a shorter man… probably because I’ve almost never met any. But obviously that’s not the case for tall women. There is, of course, a strong cultural bias toward pairing women with men taller than themselves, but there are real-life exceptions, so you would think there would be exceptions in fiction, too.
There absolutely is a cultural bias of the men being taller - both in romance as a genre and society as a whole - and I can attest to that first hand, being 6,1". (My partner is 6,0″ and I call him “Shawty” sometimes in a T-Pain voice)
And I do feel super bummed that this idea that the man has to be bigger is so pervasive. Coming from a family of amazon women (all my closest female relatives are my height or slightly shorter) I know how deeply rooted this idea is and how intertwined it is with the idea of women not taking up much space. I can relate to plus sized heroines in that way as they often deal with the expectaion of “smallness” too.
But there is something special in seeing yourself in media and I do have a Goodreads bookshelf with tall heroines (the hero being shorter isn’t a guarantee, so I just list the heroines that are tall) and SBTB did a rec league recently on the subject, check that out too! There are some recs on this old post too!
