As a 6ft woman, I’m confused why people care about a couple’s height difference

As a tall woman, I can’t believe people still care about the Zendaya and Tom Holland height difference — but this time it’s mostly women to blame.

Everyone is still buzzing about the fact that actual goddess Zendaya is taller than the other half of her very cute couple, Tom Holland. As a six-foot cis woman I’m just here to say: a giant who cares?

In 2021, are we really still concerned about a woman being the shortest one in a heterosexual relationship? You only have to watch interviews like this one to see that the two of them are completely unbothered by the height difference.

Apparently yes, because the poor lovers have had to answer the height question time and time again, with ridiculous headlines like “Zendaya faces questions about being taller than her boyfriend Tom Holland”.

Honestly, how many questions could there actually be? The answer is absolutely zero, at least, zero that aren’t deeply rooted in misogyny.

Fellow tall female, Jameela Jamil, also weighed in on the issue with a very good Instagram post:

“Why do we gatekeep with such stupid rules? It’s mortifying,” Jamil wrote in the caption.

“Who cares?” she continued. “As long as Z and T are both tall enough to see each other’s hot as f**k faces or hear each other’s hot as f**k voices … they’re all good. And they didn’t ask our permission for it to be accepted.”

Reportedly Zendaya is clocking in at 5 foot and 10 inches, while Holland is five foot eight inches.

If the internet can’t comprehend those two inches of difference, then prepare to have your minds blown: I’m a full two inches taller than Zendaya (if only I was also as glam, but you can’t have everything), and the shortest man I’ve dated seriously was stretching to make five foot seven. I often wore my high heels when going out with this guy too.

You know what difference it made in the dynamic of our relationship? None. Well, I could see a bit better in crowds than he could, but frankly that was a bonus for everyone involved.

Actual footage of the happy couple not caring at all about their respective heights.

I have to tell you, the cis men don’t care. In fact, more often than not (in my experience) they’re pretty indifferent to it, and it’s far from unusual to come across a guy who actually loves it.

I’m not saying they never care, but I promise you the ones who make a fuss are not the ones you want to be dating even if you’re the tiniest woman in the world — they’re all fragile ego and insecurities.

The same goes for women who demand a man has to be over six foot to get a look in. To be totally honest, I’ve had far more women than men in my life worry about why I still wear heels sometimes and whether I’m taller than the man I’m dating. The weird thing is, this always seems to come from women who are above average height, but still not that tall. Most of the genuinely tall women in my life are dating men shorter than them.

Even my current boyfriend, who hails from a part of the world were traditional gender roles are far more pronounced than in Western countries, just doesn’t care.

Who cares who's taller when you gaze at each other like this.

I’m only a couple of centimetres taller, and it’s something he definitely noticed when we first started dating (I honestly didn’t, I thought we were the same height, but I lost that bet) but it hasn’t been mentioned again — until I brought up this whole Zendaya kerfuffle.

So why do people care? Because women are supposed to be small and fragile? Because men have no worth if they don’t tower over you? Because all our egos are really that fragile? Because we still think good relationships are about aesthetics over compatibility?

I think we can all be a bit more mature and modern than that.

It’s hard enough to find somebody you enjoy spending all your time with in this world, how silly to cut those options even further by placing height restrictions on it too.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite poems of all time by Imani Cezanne, and one of many very good lines, “where are the men … who will crawl up a woman to get where the gettin’ is good”: