We can expect big ideas from a tall First Lady

 
Tall girls who wear green become the Jolly Green Giant.

Tall girls who wear yellow become Big Bird.

Tall girls wear shoes other girls consider boring.

Tall girls learn not to bend to the buffeting winds of rudeness.

These are all generalizations. And here's another one: If they're lucky, tall girls become tall women of striking self-confidence. Come January, we may have one such woman in the White House.

Michelle Obama is 5-foot-11. She is taller than 19 of our presidents. She is taller than many supermodels, including Tyra Banks, Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum. And she stands just an inch below our tallest -- and perhaps greatest -- first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

She wears her height like an athlete or a model.

I wondered what growing up tall might suggest about her character, if there are lessons tall girls learn that average girls don't.

Here's the answer: To grow up taller than your peers is to be forced to accept yourself. To grow up tall is to make accommodations. And to be tall is to command attention and often respect.

"When I enter a room, people take note," says Kristin Schenden-Russell, a 40-year-old metro Detroit TV producer and publicist. She, too, stands 5-foot-11. "People remember your height even if they forget your name -- 'Oh, you're the tall blonde.' "

Of Michelle Obama she says, "I noticed her height right away, in her personality. She seems to be more dominant and assertive" than women of average height tend to be.

My oldest friend is almost 6-feet-tall, and grew up a head taller than her friends. She felt set apart, unable to crouch low enough to "huddle with the other girls when they were whispering together." She said she learned to sew at 12 because commercial kids' clothes didn't fit. She still hates shopping.

Well into middle-age, perhaps because she never felt part of the "in crowd," she is a woman of substance. Unlike tall women who become models, she spends little time on fashion or girly things and is notable for her self-confidence and grace.

One tall woman blogged: "Being tall gives you a certain cool edge because it is not something other people can obtain by hard work, positive attitude or plastic surgery."

And one man noted tall women "make the best mates because they were never stuck up in high school."

Tall women don't have their heads in the clouds. They tend to be realistic and pragmatic, having seen people at their worst. Here's what one woman said on www.tallwomen.org: "I designed my own T-shirt and proudly wear it all the time on weekends. It reads on the front 'WOW, I'm tall' and on the back 'Yes, I'm 6'1, yes, I played basketball, yes, my parents are tall, yes, my kids are tall, yes, you can stop staring.' "

We don't know Michelle Obama well enough yet to know how her height shaped her character, but it strikes me as a birthright that might ultimately inspire us all.