Dialogue: Now for the long and short of it

By ROANNE PARKER

Everyone else has had a go lately, so here's the thing with Christine Rankin and her short skirts and jewellery: she's very tall - that's it in a nutshell.

For a few brief months when I was 13 I enjoyed, or rather despaired at, being the first person in my year to hit 175cm. The boys were so insecure about this twist of puberty they were merciless in their ridicule. I'm still 175cm, while Ms Rankin, I believe, measures up at about 180cm.

When you know that, it all suddenly becomes crystal clear. Striving for fiscal responsibility, she buys clothes off the rack, of course, and I know myself that an above-the-knee skirt on a shorty hovers just below my hamstrings somewhere. The Winz boss is simply blessed with lovely long legs that poke out from under her normal-length skirt.

As for the earrings: well, my darling grandmother told me that she would have to put a brick on my head to slow my sprouting, and obviously our Christine's did the same. She's not silly; she realises that a red brick is hardly appropriate headgear for a public figure.

So Ms Rankin sensibly weighs her earrings before purchase and when she finds a pair that balances the brick on the scale, she wears them, day in, day out, in an understandable yet futile attempt to shrink herself back down to a non-threatening height. So the boys will stop teasing her. If only they would.

We all try to hide the bits about ourselves we can't change. Sometimes it's great to be a tall woman, head and shoulders above the crowd, first to spot a bargain in a retail-sale bun-fight, first to spot the man to avoid in a crowded room.

And it's a lot easier to hide five kilos on a tall body. That's kilos of fat, of course, not class-A drugs.

Regardless of these good points, it would be true to say that most tall women have resorted to the bent-knee stoop from time to time.

Now I don't want to seem to be pointing the finger here, but it is short men who are responsible for a lot of that height discomfort. Why on earth do we bother trying to bolster the ego of a little thing we might miss altogether if he didn't insist on jumping up and down and shouting when we walked past?

All women know all about short-man syndrome, and while I can appreciate that short men have truly had some shitty cards dealt, they never get over it, poor darlings, do they?

It's a known fact that most top-level bodybuilders are kind of cube shaped - 150cm tall and 150cm wide and deep. And often a 150cm neck circumference. But what else can they do to prove they are real, testosterone-pumping he-men?

Sadly, the recent platform-shoe trend was female gender-specific, so no luck there. Nothing even comes in wooden crates any more, so carrying a podium is out. And to top it all off, I bet they have to spend a fortune on having their pants shortened. Talk about adding insult to injury.

At least men who go bald can shave their heads, whistle nonchalantly and pretend they never had any hair in the first place. Is it a coincidence that the bowling-ball look is tres chic now and the fashion industry is controlled by a bunch of Kojaks? Whatever, the girls love it; like moths to a shiny flame.

On behalf of myself here I have to mention the comb-over. You know who you are, and you should be told that we all know you are bald, especially on a windy day. It's a razor you'll find one day in your gym-bag, not a cake of soap, and when you do, please take the hint and use it on your noggin.

In years to come, our children and theirs will hardly believe that we bothered with these feeble, pathetic attempts to deal with the dodgy deck of features we were dealt. They will go with the vagaries of fashion and get themselves fixed to suit. Not too trendy, though. They're still not sure how many nose jobs you can have to suit each trend before it all starts falling off, a la Michael Jackson.

In the meantime we fix what we can, disguise what we can't and mock those who don't. It all reminds me of that old bumper sticker: "I may be fat but you're ugly - and at least I can diet."