Recently, Netflix has been on a real coming-of-age streak. In just the last two years, they released “To All The Boys I Loved Before”, “Sierra Burgess is a Loser”, “Swiped”, and more (even some without Noah Centineo). Their most recent venture into the world of adolescence is “Tall Girl”. A movie about, you guessed it: a tall girl. Specifically, a 16-year-old girl named Jodi, who stands at a statuesque 6’1”. Despite her being a conventionally attractive white girl, Jodi is very self-conscious about her height. Which, to be fair, is a reasonable thing to be insecure about.

I’m 5’6”, so I’m clearly not the spokesperson for The Tall Girls and Women Society, but growing up, the taller girls I knew were always talking about how guys were intimidated by them, and how they were uncomfortable doing things like wearing heels because they were already taller than everyone else. On social media, tall girls chronicling their experiences growing up has been a trending topic on more than one occasion. According to Healthline, the average American female is 5’4” so Jodi is above average. She is taller than most of the boys at her school and everyone in her family, including her dad. To really drive it home, they cast Sabrina Carpenter, who stands at a whopping 5ft, as her big sister, and Angela Kinsey, famous for playing the tiny, cat-loving Angela on The Office, as her mom. Netflix recently released a short trailer for the upcoming movie, which was met with a very significant response on social media. It… wasn’t positive.

I’m gonna be honest. I thought the trailer was really cute and was/still am fully prepared to give Netflix another hour and 30 minutes of my life to see what’s up with Jodi, but a lot of people disagree with me. The majority of tweets I’ve seen have been questioning Netflix’s decision to highlight tall white girls as a group who get bullied. Claims that the movie is trying to compare the experience of the vertically gifted to that of minorities and disenfranchised groups are being met with thousands of retweets and likes and I am genuinely confused. I watched the trailer and never once did I get that impression. She’s a girl who is tall, who is bullied because she’s tall (which is a thing that happens) and they’re showing how she deals with that and struggles to accept herself. Where is the comparison? 

As a kid, I was bullied. And despite the fact that I am a black girl, I was bullied for things other than my ethnicity. I had glasses, I was dorky and awkward. I was flat-chested until like the age of 20. I say all this to say that you can be bullied about literally anything. Especially when you’re a kid. If you’re different in even the tiniest way, they’re gonna notice it and best believe you’re gonna hear about it. I also think it is important that we acknowledge that being a minority or a member of the universally discriminated doesn’t always mean you have to have been bullied. Since we seem to be getting more teen movies about marginalized groups, can they make something other than the persecution their characters have to endure the main focus? 

 Regardless of race, if a movie comes out that speaks to tall girls, or girls that are “late bloomers”, short boys, non-athletic boys or any other attributes that society deems worthy of bullying, that’s ok. We shouldn’t immediately think they’re being compared to coming-of-age movies about minorities. Because they aren’t even close to being the same. But, jumping to compare when no comparison is being made is like when someone is going through a hard time and they’re told: “You know how many people are worse off than you?” It’s a true statement, but that doesn’t lessen their feelings, or make them invalid. 

“Tall Girl” is available for streaming on Netflix on September 13th.

See for yourself and share your thoughts! Here’s a link to the trailer:
https://youtu.be/NfpXeLVzJIw

https://www.healthline.com/health/womens-health/average-height-for-women