Handicapped By Height (Travails Of The Tall)

[Kondoru]

I am well built (particularly across the shoulders) and I have difficulty in getting clothes.

This is why I wear mens clothes. (they seem to fit well)

 

[Leaferne]

I often buy men's clothing as well; it seems to be better quality for a lower price, particularly coats/jackets. Women's stuff is usually too small across the shoulders and too short in the sleeve for me. My current pair of winter boots is a men's pair too; when I was shopping, the women's stuff was too flimsy and "decorative".

 

[rynner2]

Tall girl 'bullied' in chatroom

The parents of a 6ft 4in 13-year-old girl from Rutland have called in the police after bullies used an internet chat room to threaten her.
Caroline Stillman was taken out of Uppingham Community College in November after a bullying campaign made her ill.

The family say bullies have abused Caroline via the internet, telling her on one occasion to "go kill yourself".

She says she suffered name calling, was pushed downstairs and threatened with scissors in class, just for being tall.

Her father, Bill Stillman, said the family were forced to remove Caroline from the school as she was being sick after meals because of the bullying.

Caroline said she was "angry" that she was having to miss out on her schooling.

"I want justice because they're still getting their education, having friends and I'm having to stay at home," she said.

Head teacher Malcolm England said bullying had no place at the school.

"We need to tackle these things openly. The school has an anti-bullying charter and we are very upfront with pupils.

"They know we won't tolerate bullying."

Mr England said the school was working with the family to help Caroline return as soon as possible.

Police are now investigating the online threats.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leic ... 679190.stm

 

[lardfan]

Probably not the most constructive response, but my immediate thought is why didn't she just give the offenders a backhand swipe with her mighty arm? She could send the whole bullying lot of them hurtling down the stairs with one light push.

 

[Kondoru]

Because she is a wimp and prefers to kick up a big fuss involving adults and other troublemakers who will bully in return.

 

[rynner2]

I can't believe I've seen such inhumane responses on this MB.

Shame!

 

[Kondoru]

sorry

I for one dont believe that the answer to bullying is victimising the bullies

I have always believed that, even though I was teased a lot at school

 

[jandzmom]

Being bullied because of size sucks. I was my full height -- almost 6 ft. when I was 12, and the kids in school teased and bullied me terribly. My mother (always so helpful) told me to ignore them, and they would stop. But they didn't. I think I told the teachers once or twice, but they ignored the situation, and told me to stop whining.

My older son, J, has always been quite big for his age. (He is 6'3" now, just 15). He was also bullied. He developed a stutter. We moved and changed elementary schools, but things got worse. I complained to the school and nothing was done.

One day in 5th grade, J was jumped on his way home from school by a group of boys who held him down and beat and kicked him. J was so tramatized he couldn't even say who had done it.

Up until that point in his life, we had told him never to hit others, to be careful around other children, so that he wouldn't accidentally hurt them.

After the above incident, we told him he had our permission to fight back.

The next day, the same group of boys tried to jump him. J fought back -- he broke one boy's nose and gave the others lumps and bruises that they wouldn't forget. We got calls from their parents, and we told them their brats got what they deserved. HA!

Best of all, they never, ever bullied J again. Today, he has worked hard to get rid of his stutter, and is a popular student-athlete in his high school. YAY J!

JandZmom

 

[Quake42]

I can't believe I've seen such inhumane responses on this MB.

Shame!

Well I think Lardfan's was probably meant to be light-hearted!

I don't think I can agree with Kondoru thought when s/he says:

I for one dont believe that the answer to bullying is victimising the bullies

because I don't accept that telling someone that their behaviour is unacceptable amounts to "victimising" them.

Once something has got to the stage of death threats then it is really not something you can sort out yourself by having a sensible discussion with them.

My experience is that teachers are generally very reluctant to get involved or even accept that bullying is taking place and they have to be forced to do anything. It really is the old story of good people doing nothing while evil triumphs.

 

[spiritdoctor]

Because she is a wimp and prefers to kick up a big fuss involving adults and other troublemakers who will bully in return.

Why does not wanting to resort to physical violence make you a wimp. Often this is the stronger response. Somebody may also be afraid of doing serious damage to someone and being prosecuted for it especially if they are big. Going to the adults might mean that the bullies are dealt with appropriately whereas if you just hit them they would just find someone else to bully and would never be stopped or met with justice.

 

[rynner2]

Here's a longer story about the girl mentioned earlier:

The girl who was bullied for being tall
(Filed: 11/03/2006)

It started with name-calling and escalated into violence. Caroline Stillman - aged 13 and 6ft 3in tall - tells Cassandra Jardine how she was hounded out of school

One Friday evening in late January, 13-year-old Caroline Stillman was in her bedroom chatting to her elder brother and sister online when a new log-on popped up on her screen. The intruder, whom Caroline knew slightly at school, asked for her name. She gave it.

"F---ing lanky bitch" came the response.

For Caroline, this was not just random abuse - it was the culmination of two-and-a-half years of torment for being exceptionally tall. Most of that time, she had coped with the bullying at school because she had felt safe at home. Now she felt that even this sanctuary had been invaded by the name-callers: she ran downstairs to her mother, Sarah, and wept.

After a brief discussion, the two of them went back upstairs. While Mrs Stillman stood by as moral support, Caroline sat down at the computer to draw out her tormentor - first asking her whether she would feel equally justified in being rude to someone who was short or black or disabled.

The exchange is still on the Stillmans' computer - a litany of crass insults that include: "Trampy bitch", "f---ing dumb ass bitch", "ugly lanky giant" and, finally: "Go kill yourself lanky bitch."

When Caroline showed a print-out of this venomous attack to her father, Bill, he was so appalled that he called the chairman of the school governors, asking for the headmaster, Malcolm England, to call him back. Mr England, however, sent back a message saying that the matter was outside the school's jurisdiction and that Mr Stillman should "do whatever he has to do". Mr Stillman rang the police.

Meanwhile, Caroline dug out a list she had typed of all the bullying incidents she could remember. They cover three sheets of A4 - a shocking testimony to how cruel adolescents can be. A sad postscript says: "I cannot write all of it down because there have been so many that I can't remember all of them."

All of these incidents, she told the policewoman who interviewed her, had taken place during her seven terms at Uppingham Community College, a co-educational school in Rutland for 850 11- to 16-year-olds. The Crown Prosecution Service is currently sifting through her case to decide whether to bring charges against the bullies.

What happened to Caroline shows how easily bullying can escalate even in an apparently well-ordered school in a prosperous rural area. In recent weeks, its pupils and teachers have had to do some hard thinking about what went wrong.

Certainly, there seems to be a stage among girls in the early years of secondary school (as I know from my own daughters) when bullying becomes a more complex issue than it ever was at primary school. With young children, episodes of unkindness can normally be dealt with quite easily; but at secondary schools, battles for status become more serious and girls can become obsessed with comparing themselves with others.

Bullying often starts when they try to boost their own fragile confidence by looking askance at anyone who is out of the ordinary. Being slow or good at academic work, being short or tall, fat or skinny, posh or chav, spotty or red-headed - or even just shy - is enough to make another child an object of scorn. It was Caroline's bad luck to stand out from the crowd in a way she could do nothing about.

At 6ft 3in, she towers over her parents, who are both 6ft - and she was only an inch shorter in September 2004 when she arrived for her first day at Uppingham Community College at the age of 11. Neither at home nor at primary school had she ever been teased because of her height, so she was looking forward to five years in the school where her elder brother and sister had also been educated.

Her enthusiasm, however, was short-lived. As she entered the gates, she heard a girl call out "lanky bitch" in a voice intended to carry. "From that day onwards," she says, "a day didn't pass without someone saying something horrible to me about my height."

To begin with, it was just name-calling. Other girls would call out: "giraffe", "lollipop-stick", "giant", "elephant" - indifferent to the fact that Caroline suffers from Marfan Syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that affects the connective tissue and can cause heart and eye problems as well as exceptional growth.

"On that first day, I came home from school and went to my room," she remembers. "I didn't say anything until, much later, when my mother found me crying. I told her what had happened but I begged her not to go into the school to sort it out - I didn't want to make things worse by making a fuss.

"After that, I would be moody and silent in the evenings. I knew it was unfair to take it out on Mum, but I suppose I was punishing her for sending me to that school."

As she looks back over the long ordeal that came to a head this winter, Caroline speaks quietly and hesitantly at first. But, as she talks, her assurance grows. "It helps her to feel that she is being listened to at last," says her mother. "She wants to do what she can to stop others being bullied."

The Stillmans' modern home in the rolling countryside of Rutland, just a few minutes from the school, is not adapted for the very tall, so Caroline's head nearly scrapes the top of the door frames. Otherwise, the only special provisions for height are extra-long beds and baths, which have long been necessary because Caroline's elder brother, Samuel, who also suffers from Marfan Syndrome, is 6ft 8in.

Although Caroline talks of becoming a model, she has already developed a stoop characteristic of those who would love to shrink a few inches. Her legs are so long that her knees almost touch her chin when she sits on the sofa, but she dresses like any other girl of her age - today in a denim mini-skirt, wide belt and T-shirt.

"The most difficult thing is getting shoes to fit," she says. Normal sizes stop at 11 and she is 12. Clothes aren't so difficult as Topshop in Uppingham caters for tall girls.

At school, however, no one was interested in finding out what it felt like to be tall, and Caroline was not the kind of sporty type who could use her height to become the secret weapon of the basketball team. Instead, it made her a butt of jokes.

The same thing had happened to another girl: Morgan Mussen, a 6ft tall 13-year-old from Nottingham. She died after taking an overdose of painkillers in 2001 because she couldn't face the school bullies.

In line with school policy, Caroline told her form tutor about the name-calling - the first of several complaints. But, she says, "I was always asked what I had been doing to provoke the bullies. I said that I hadn't done anything - that's why it was bullying. Sometimes, the teacher would tell the bullies not to speak to me, but that meant I was isolated. Anyway, it always started up again."

By the second term of year seven, Mrs Stillman was feeling uneasy about her daughter. A gentle, motherly woman who designs fabrics, she had been wary of interfering too soon - chiefly because of her own experiences as an unusually tall adolescent. She, too, had been called names at school. "It damaged my confidence," says Mrs Stillman, "but I got through, probably because I had a couple of good friends and the school acted quickly.

"My elder daughter had been called 'a man' because she played football and my son had been called 'giant', but they had coped - so I hoped Caroline would, too."

But, after six months, she knew she had to act. By then, her daughter was refusing to go into town after school for fear of meeting other pupils, or hiding in the car when they went shopping. Worse, still, Caroline confessed that the unkind name-calling had now turned into threats.

"At the end of form time in our classroom," Caroline says, describing the incident that marked the shift, "a girl said to me, 'You walk funny.' I left the classroom to go downstairs for break. But, as I was going down the concrete stairs, several girls gathered round me and one put her foot between my legs to trip me up, saying 'lanky bitch'."

Mrs Stillman went in to see Caroline's teacher, who assured her the situation would be dealt with. But the attacks continued. On one occasion, Caroline remembers, "I was in Humanities - history - sitting at a table, when two girls held my shoulders and pushed me back on a table while another stuck chewing-gum in my hair. The whole class was laughing and the teacher must have heard, because after the lesson, as I walked out, she asked if I was OK."

Yet it was not until year eight, when four girls threatened to beat her up during break-time, that Caroline went to the headmaster for the first time - chiefly because his office was nearby. His response, she says, was: "I'll talk to them next week."

She was so frightened that she spent the rest of the break quivering in the loo. Thereafter, she would spend all her breaks hiding in the library, but there were still the corridors to contend with...

The attacks were of two different types. The persistent sneers and gibes came from a pack of girls, led by two individuals. The physical threats came from a pupil in her Design Technology class who would try to shoo her away by poking her with scissors, waving a saw at her or threatening her with a hammer (on one occasion, he hit her with it). Caroline felt unable ever to relax.

Then, last September, at the beginning of year nine, it got worse. Until then, she had had one or two allies, but the bullies took them to the loos and told them not to speak to her. Friendless, she developed headaches and sore throats at the prospect of school and began to be sick after every meal.

As Caroline has been telling me her tale, Mr Stillman has been listening with scarcely suppressed rage - directed particularly at the bullies and their parents. "They do it because they can get away with it," he says. "I brought my children up properly, though some have criticised me for it. We have family meals." It was after one of those family meals last October that he finally realised the seriousness of what had been happening to his daughter. "When she talked about being sick," he says, "I thought she meant she was just coughing up a little phlegm. But one day, after dinner, I happened to go upstairs to the bathroom and found the evidence in the basin."

Until then, Mrs Stillman had handled the matter, leaving her husband to run his advertising and marketing business. But now he took over. He took Caroline to their GP, who said they had "a very depressed girl" on their hands and signed her off sick from school.

Mr Stillman was adamant that she should not return this term, although Mr England - by then fully in the picture - told him that the bullies had been dealt with. The two sides are not speaking and, while Mr Stillman is happy to express his feelings about the school, Mr England refuses to reciprocate. "I cannot discuss an individual student," he says.

What he can do is try to make plain that the school is not only thinking seriously about the issue of bullying now, but that it was already doing so while Caroline was there. Accordingly, he has assembled for my benefit a panel of those involved in reviewing the old anti-bullying policy. The new guidelines were launched in November 2005 - by coincidence, shortly after Caroline stopped going to school.

The four school council members, from Year 11, have been joined by a girl who left the school last year. She says she objects to the impression created by Caroline Stillman's case that bullying is rife. Of the six pupils around the table in the school's conference room, only one - a boy - has had direct experience of bullying.

Also present are the year head responsible for pastoral care and a parent governor who has been asked to oversee anti-bullying policy. Evidently, a great deal of soul-searching has been going on.

The most interesting insights come from the pupils. Boys, they think, bully in a different way from girls: male antagonisms are normally one-to-one, and they tend to lead to a physical fight and then blow over. Girls are different: they tend to whisper and rumour-monger, while their fall-outs are more long-term and harder to resolve.

It is fruitless, the teenagers feel, to look for and support potential victims because you cannot predict an individual's sensitivity. They also think it would be wrong to crash down too heavily on bullies on the first offence because they might just be "mucking around", without understanding the effect they are having.

To prevent bullying taking hold, the pupils believe everyone in the school should know that it is not tolerated. If something does arise, there should be a range of people to whom the bullied can go for help. And, rather than immediately exclude the bullies, they feel that the school's attitude should be to "understand and condemn".

There should be clear expectations of what consequences will follow for repeated offences, starting with supervised break-times and ending with suspension. Parents, they believe, must be involved in changing a child's behaviour.

Such discussions have resulted in the introduction of a log of all incidents; of a mentoring box, in which first or second-hand reports of bullying can be posted; and of a proper structure for whom to involve, at what stage, inside and outside the school.

The crucial point, they say, is that every pupil should be involved in devising and signing up to the "anti-bullying charter" that hangs in every classroom. "If they don't keep to it, they can be made aware that they are letting their fellow students down," says Mr England.

Despite all this, the headmaster does not expect to eradicate bullying - it is "endemic" in school life, he says. "What changes is the form that it takes. Kids - sorry, students - used to write on toilet walls; now, they send each other texts."

Attitudes on how to deal with bullying have also changed: "When I was at grammar school," he continues, "children were left to sort it out themselves. Now, they are expected to talk about it."

The rapid increase in reports of bullying that Childline has logged over the past five years - from 21,000 to 33,000 calls a year - might reflect this greater openness; it could also be, as Mr Stillman believes, that children increasingly lack a moral compass and are unduly influenced by bullying behaviour in films and on television.

Now that bullying has become such a high-profile issue at Uppingham, it may be that other pupils will not suffer as Caroline has. But it is too late for her to consider returning to the school.

The Stillmans would like her to go to a private school, where they hear that swifter, more radical action is taken to protect children. Unfortunately, they cannot afford the fees.

While they decide what to do, Caroline is being educated - after a fashion - at home and gradually regaining her confidence. The messages of support she has received from other bullied pupils (at her school and elsewhere) have been encouraging.

Even more importantly, she has heard from others with Marfan Syndrome. She is not alone, she now knows, in being a foot taller than her peers.

link


edited by TheQuixote: created hyperlink to stop page break

 

[Xanatico]

I just found out that the Thesselonian in Troy killed by Achilles is 2.12 meters. I though they had used CGI in the movie to make him look bigger. I'm 1.96 and he could make me run screaming home to mommy.

 

[rynner2]

Model ordered off bus for being 'too tall'
By Sally Pook
Last Updated: 2:35am GMT 17/01/2007

A model was told to get off a London bus simply because she was too tall.

Josephine Kime, 23, who is 5ft 11in, was boarding the bus when the driver ordered her to leave, claiming he would not be able to see past her. He then allowed a shorter woman onto the bus.

Miss Kime, who has modelled since she was 14 and has presented several television shows for Sky and ITV, was on her way home to Chelsea when the stand-off took place.

advertisement"At the time it was a bit of a nightmare but now I find the whole incident ludicrous and highly amusing," she said.

"To begin with, I thought the driver was joking. I had just got on the bus and it did not seem very full. But then he became really impatient and angry.

"This was holding the bus up, but the people who had got on before me were very good at sticking up for me. One said, 'She is not going to lie down in the bus'."

However, the driver did not relent and Miss Kime was forced to get off the bus near Green Park, central London.

She added: "I was shocked and bemused. I am hardly a giant. I travel to and from work by bus every day and my height has never been an issue.

"I could not believe it when I got off and he then let another, shorter lady on in my place."

A spokesman for London United, the bus operator involved, said: "We would like to apologise to Miss Kime. If appropriate, disciplinary action will be taken against the driver."

http://tinyurl.com/2c86mu

...claiming he would not be able to see past her

was she going to sit on his lap? :shock:

 

[Beakmoo]

Here's a longer story about the girl mentioned earlier:
To begin with, it was just name-calling. Other girls would call out: "giraffe", "lollipop-stick", "giant", "elephant" - indifferent to the fact that Caroline suffers from Marfan Syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that affects the connective tissue and can cause heart and eye problems as well as exceptional growth.

At school, however, no one was interested in finding out what it felt like to be tall, and Caroline was not the kind of sporty type who could use her height to become the secret weapon of the basketball team. Instead, it made her a butt of jokes.

"At the end of form time in our classroom," Caroline says, describing the incident that marked the shift, "a girl said to me, 'You walk funny.' I left the classroom to go downstairs for break. But, as I was going down the concrete stairs, several girls gathered round me and one put her foot between my legs to trip me up, saying 'lanky bitch'."

This is fecking outrageous. If someone has Marfan's the last thing you want to do is go tripping them up or chucking them downstairs, it could burst the main aorta of their heart and kill them instantly, or detach their retinas. She's highly unlikely ever to play basketball for the same reason. The girl is disabled and this should be a matter of criminal prosecution, it's not a simple bullying issue.

 

[OneWingedBird]

it makes you wonder if there'd been a prosecution already if she had, say, a better known condition like cerebral palsy and they'd been calling her a spaz and spakka... certainly i'm sure (or at least i like to think) it would certainly have been dealt with if it was a racial issue... and i don't see why discriminating over disability should be any different...

Josephine Kime, 23, who is 5ft 11in, was boarding the bus when the driver ordered her to leave, claiming he would not be able to see past her. He then allowed a shorter woman onto the bus.

that's bloody bonkers... either there's something else going on or he was taking the piss... i'm 6"1' and much that i hate having to stoop on busses 'cos the ceiling's too low, i've never been asked to get off one yet... and you're not telling me there aren't lots of people who use london busses who are her height or over?

 

[Peripart]

.. i'm 6"1'

Six inches and one foot? That's tiny! Ha ha - look at tiny BRF!

Hang on, did you mean six feet and one inch? Aaarghh! Giant! Run away!

Sorry, you scared me there for a moment, don't know quite what came over me. It's all right now. I'm OK. Just so long as you don't have red hair or anything...

 

[Beakmoo]

it makes you wonder if there'd been a prosecution already if she had, say, a better known condition like cerebral palsy and they'd been calling her a spaz and spakka... certainly i'm sure (or at least i like to think) it would certainly have been dealt with if it was a racial issue... and i don't see why discriminating over disability should be any different...

The point I was making is that her life is in danger. Assuming she hasn't had the surgery (and she probably hasn't yet) her heart could literally come apart if she's shoved in the wrong way. She could also go blind. If I were her mother she wouldn't be going to that school. What's the point of integration if there's no education of the healthy kids going on, and no safety for the disabled kid?

 

[Leaferne]

that's bloody bonkers... either there's something else going on or he was taking the piss... i'm 6"1' and much that i hate having to stoop on busses 'cos the ceiling's too low, i've never been asked to get off one yet... and you're not telling me there aren't lots of people who use london busses who are her height or over?

That's what I was wondering...surely there are plenty of men (and some women too, of course) who are 5'11" and over. Where would she be sitting that she'd obstruct his view?!

 

[Anonymous]

Ding ding!

 

[stu neville]

That's what I was wondering...surely there are plenty of men (and some women too, of course) who are 5'11" and over. Where would she be sitting that she'd obstruct his view?!

Until recently I was six inches taller than that, and I'd think quite a bit wider, too, and I've never, once, been told I couldn't get on a bus because I'd obstruct the driver's view. In fact it's only ever happened when there was obviously no more room.

 

[Leaferne]

I would imagine excessive width to be more of a problem on a bus than height.

 

[escargot]

Stu, what do you mean, 'Until recently I was six inches taller than that'?
Have you had your legs off?

 

[stu neville]

Stu, what do you mean, 'Until recently I was six inches taller than that'?
Have you had your legs off?

Nah, back operation - had two fusing vertebrae. So I'm now about 6'3", but able to stand up straight in less than one minute without horrid cracking noises.

 

[Anonymous]

No way was you 6'9"! You probably just back-combed your hair quite a bit.

Everybody! Stop being considerably taller than me!

This is not a request.

 

[Beakmoo]

No way was you 6'9"! You probably just back-combed your hair quite a bit.

Everybody! Stop being considerably taller than me!

This is not a request.

Ok, I've stopped.

 

[mindalai]

Yeah, me too. In fact I've probably stopped being taller than just about everybody else on this board.

 

[Mr_Seaweedski]

.. i'm 6"1'

Six inches and one foot? That's tiny! Ha ha - look at tiny BRF!

Hang on, did you mean six feet and one inch? Aaarghh! Giant! Run away!

Sorry, you scared me there for a moment, don't know quite what came over me. It's all right now. I'm OK. Just so long as you don't have red hair or anything...

Mmmm red hair, I'll be dreaming of an Auburn Warrior Princess tonight!!!

Back on topic, I'm just short of 6'2" and the number of people who claim to be that height while looking at my nose is quite impessive. As a regular user of busses, I can't imagine how a 5'11" rail thin model would stop a bus driver from concentrating on the job in hand(as it were)...... oh, hang on, maybe I can.

 

[MaxMolyneux]

I mostly hate the leg room on buses!

I end up using two seats and sit sideways (unless someone wants the other seat )because I bend the chair In front with my knees a bit.

I would imagine excessive width to be more of a problem on a bus than height. Smile

Both for me, If someones sitting next to me. Width a little more being really muscular and broad shouldered.

 

[stu neville]

No way was you 6'9"! You probably just back-combed your hair quite a bit.

No, I wasn't. I was 6'5", and then lost around two inches of height due to an operation. I was previously six inches taller than the girl about whom we were speaking.

And I don't have any hair on my head (well, I do, but it's about a millimetre in length.)

Buses are resolutely not designed for anyone over six feet tall, though, let alone broader than average.

 

[Anonymous]

I mostly hate the leg room on buses!

I end up using two seats and sit sideways (unless someone wants the other seat )because I bend the chair In front with my knees a bit.

And you constantly ripping your t-shirt off infront of all and sundry can't help matters! :shock: