Being tall and single not easy for women

CLARE McMeniman was always taught to embrace her 184cm but only recently has she felt comfortable enough to stand out from the crowd. Being tall has always been an advantage in the sporting arena for the Queensland Firebirds netball player. But the downside has been a smaller pool of potentially taller boyfriends for the athletic 22-year-old – as well as the way people tend to stare.

Tall and short love in picturesThese days McMeniman is no longer stressed about finding a taller partner, especially with the success of friends and Queensland Firebird team-mates Janelle Lawson, 192.5cm, and Meegan Rooney, 184cm. She's also learnt to live with the uninvited comments people tend to make about her height when she goes out with the girls.

"There is only a small percentage of tall guys and a small percentage of tall girls but Janelle and Meegan haven't had any trouble finding tall boyfriends," she says. "Most of us have been tall from an early age, so you are either self-conscious about it or you embrace it. "You do stick out and people look at you. It's something you do grow into with time."

Lawson, 20, says romance was the last thing on her mind when she first attended the Australian Institute of Sport, in Canberra, more than two years ago. Now she realises she was entering a natural dating environment. For many sports at the AIS, height is a prerequisite – including sprint swimming, basketball and volleyball. Lawson has been dating Australian volleyball representative Bradie Foster, 19, and 204cm, for the past 10 months but with her move to Brisbane she is not just missing Bradie but also the comfortable environment of the AIS.

"You do obviously feel a lot more natural in that environment because everyone at the AIS is so tall, while moving to Brisbane it's going back to reality," she says. "I'm still getting used to being stared at all the time. "Myself and a couple of other girls in the Firebirds are extremely tall and most people are not used to seeing that. We are at heights that are even tall for a guy to be. The taller you are the more difficult it gets to find a match."

Rooney, 24, has been dating taller club rugby union player Ben Bruggemann, 25, for about four years and says it's natural for a tall, single woman to automatically notice tall and good-looking guys.

"I love being tall. A lot of men have small man's syndrome issues but you do get the shorter guys who are confident," Rooney says.

None of the three girls could imagine dating a man considerably shorter, even though the short-man tall-girlfriend syndrome has become common among celebrity couples such as Tom Cruise (170cm) and Katie Holmes (175cm), French president Nicholas Sarkozy (165cm) and former model Carla Bruni (178cm) and Rod Stewart (178cm) and Penny Lancaster (185cm).

"I like to feel like the woman; you want your man to be bigger and stronger," Rooney says.

Lawson says her 185cm-tall sister's boyfriend is about 20cm shorter than her sibling but they have made the four-year relationship work.

"My sister ideally wouldn't want a boyfriend who was that much shorter than her but until you are in that situation you don't know how you would be," she says.

"At the end of the day they really love each other. The height difference doesn't bother him. He's very outgoing and he's got a confidence about him. He wouldn't care what other people think, he's carefree. His personality won her over."

McMeniman has dated boys who were a similar height or slightly shorter but she says many men do not want to date taller women who would seem even more intimidating if they were also successful, high-achieving and self-confident.

"A guy from work said to me, 'You are lovely but you are so tall, you are too tall for me'," she says. "Your height is not something you can change or work on."

The Firebirds regularly socialise together after matches and the three girls say nothing creates a bigger stir at a nightclub than when the whole team walks in together, with the players attracting a lot of stares.

"People can get quite rude, people just stare at you, a tall group of women in an enclosed environment," McMeniman says.

Lawson, the second tallest in the team behind 196cm-tall West Indian import Romelda Aiken, especially receives a lot of comments, about half of which are positive, including, "Oh my God, you are beautiful and tall". The negative half includes being called a "freak" or "huge".

"You just learn to laugh it off, brush it off," she says. "The guys who are truly confident in themselves are not the ones making those comments, it's the ones who are insecure that say the stupid comments."