At 5' 3", I generally don't worry about fitting into showers or having my legs dangling off hotel beds - but for that segment of the population classifed as "tall" (women over 5' 9" and men over 6' 2"), ordinary tasks like flying on a plane, renting a car or getting a hotel room can be a longstanding problem. Six-foot-nine publisher Everard Strong decided to do something about it - he founded a magazine called TALL. From CNN:

"[TALL] is something that's been on my mind for four or five years. I've been involved in magazine publishing for eight or nine years. I love the industry and was always wondering and hoping some publication would come to serve the tall community," he said. "So I decided to combine my interests," Strong said. "There are a lot of products and services. We're not short on any material in the immediate future." [Ha, ha, ha. - Ed.]

Nor does there appear to be a shortage of potential readers. [What's with the "short" puns, CNN? - Ed.] Average U.S. heights have been gradually creeping up for decades, a trend seen in many parts of the world. There are now 8.8 million men over 6-feet 2-inches and 5.5 million women over 5-feet 9-inches in the United States.

The May issue features 6' 5" cover man Ron Perlman, the star of The Name of the Rose, TV's Beauty and the Beast, and most recently, Hellboy. According to the TALL media kit [PDF file], of the magazine's typical reader:

He’s one of the over 12.3 million* American men 6’2” or taller. He is college educated, single, with income above $48,000. His average shoe size is 12.5. He is looking for longer beds, taller bicycles, cars that he can fit in, tools that fit his hands, office chairs, solutions to his back aches, and quality clothing.

She’s one of the 7.5 million* American women who are 5’9” or taller. She is college educated, single, with income above $40,000. She wants clothes that fit her and are in style. She likes to shop by catalog. She wants to be made to feel good.

Did you notice that both the tall men and women are listed as being "single"? Maybe height isn't the automatic path to marital bliss, but tall people earning more money just because they're tall? A widely-circulated article came out about two years ago that showed (other factors considered) tall people earned considerably more throughout their lifetimes than short or average-height people, but there was an interesting twist. From Slate:

So, what's the deal? Why do the tall tower over the short in more than just physical stature? Does height breed respect, so that tall people get showered with riches? Or does height breed self-esteem, so that tall people are more likely to assert themselves? In other words, do tall people succeed because of how others see them, or do tall people succeed because of how they see themselves? That sounds like the kind of question you could argue for years and never settle, but three clever economists have gone ahead and settled it. Their names are Nicola Persico, Andy Postlewaite (formerly a professor here at Northwestern University) and Dan Silverman of the University of Pennsylvania, and they've uncovered a key bit of evidence: Tall men who were short in high school earn like short men, while short men who were tall in high school earn like tall men.

"Short men who were tall in high school"? Did they shrink? I know that some men (like some women) lose height with age because of spinal changes or osteoporosis, but I wonder if the authors are also referring to men whose height was considered "tall" back when they were in high school, but which is now considered "average" in light of the past few generations' "height inflation." The March 2004 full text of the paper, "The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height" is linked here as a PDF file.

---