By La Linda Loca
How many times, while watching a late-night talk show, have you groaned in disbelief and disgust after listening to some lusciously long-legged, six-foot starlet complain about her pre-pubescent and teenage years, growing up an awkward nerd, a social outcast with no dates? Ugh. Yeah, right--sure!
As her glamazon gams cross and re-cross over the edge of her seat, you sit there on the edge of yours, waiting to see if you can catch a peek of her pert puss, ?a Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (Picture: 1). You sit there staring, head bobbing up and down, to and fro, as if you could actually get a better vantage point by looking in, around, and through the TV. You hope for a deliciously disastrous double-stick-tape snafu, which would allow you to catch a glimpse of her bodacious boobage as it accidentally toppled over the top of her low-cut dress.
Be sure, she's enjoying every man-sized minute of the attention. For she, more than likely, is telling the truth about her younger years and is now relishing what I like to call "The Tall Woman's Revenge". Remember, behind every attractive, willowy woman resides a formerly gangly, geeky girl.
I say this with authority because I am one of those formerly gangly, geeky girls. After years of being the butt (albeit a nice one) of jokes, taunts, and assorted cruelty, I am finally able to kick back and stretch out my always-too-long legs to their longest length, clasp my hands with their elongated fingers behind my head, and laugh my most wickedly satisfied laugh at the expense of all those kids in middle school who chastised me as a freak and a misfit. Today, looking back, I'm glad I grew up a freak and a misfit; that's what makes me so much damn fun today!
I was ruler of the roost until about seventh grade, when my nemesis moved to town. She was petite, pretty, and blonde with petulantly perky pubescent B-cups. I was an extremely smart kid, too tall for my own skin, awkward, shy, with an oft-misunderstood, dry sense of humor and itty bitty mosquito bites for titties. I genuinely liked school and loved to show off my advanced vocabulary with precociously verbose answers in class. My teachers loved me. I had a few close friends and pretty much got along with the rest of the kids. That is, until Little Blonde Satan moved to town.
Having recently run into her (how could I miss her?!) at a high-school reunion, I took sweet solace in the fact that she's put on close to one hundred pounds. We greeted each other and made small talk, as I was, inside, doing an obnoxious NFL touchdown dance, silently screaming, "Yes! Yes! Look at her! She's a pig! She has to weigh over two hundred pounds! And she's only 5'3"! Yes! I've won! I've won!" What I won was the simple pleasure of indulging in The Tall Woman's Revenge. It's a quiet, personal victory usually not shared with others, and then when it's shared, it is only shared with other tall women. Did I mention that we all have a secret international club? Ssshhhhhhh! Don't let them know you heard it from me!
My Kewpie-doll archenemy relocated to my childhood neighborhood with her mother, a teacher who transferred to my school district. This teacher-mom was a too-tan, chain-smoking, blonde MILF divorcee. Her sweet-looking hellion daughter had this innocent, cherubic face, surrounded by a mane of beautiful blonde curls, which, all together, no matter what she did, cried out "INNOCENT" before she even walked into the room. We started out as friends. In fact, I, the gullible kid that I was, introduced her to my friends, who ultimately all betrayed me. She somehow managed, within two months of her arrival, to turn everyone in my grade against me. Even the unpopular kids would no longer talk to me! I was the scapegoat. A pariah.
This tiny, fair-haired fiend single-handedly herded my flock of former-friend backstabbers to orchestrate one of the most traumatic incidents of my childhood: One day in gym class during a game of dodge ball, the tiny blonde tyrant convinced almost every kid in the class to turn in unison and simultaneously pelt me with those hard, red rubber balls, all at once. I ran, sobbing, to the locker room, completely mortified to be such a total geek. I dreamt of killing her, of gouging her eyes out with my bare hands. I capitulated and swallowed my pride.
As is the curse of the tall girl, my plight was always to be placed dead center in the upper row of class pictures. One year I made the mistake of wearing a green dress to school on picture day and the malicious moniker of "Jolly Green Giant" stuck to me like static cling until high school.
Currently I stand six feet tall, no shoes. Add two-, three-, or four-inch heels to that and we're talking drag-queen double takes as I walk down the street. Luckily I reside on the petite, proportionate side of gigantism, and as long as the '80s linebacker-sized shoulder pads don't come back into vogue, I'll be okay.
What works to my advantage now as a woman as a youngster made me consider adopting the all-too-common tall-girl stance: hunched over, shoulders slumped. On the contrary, this popular way of trying to appear shorter went against my innate postural nature, having studied classical ballet since I was four years old.
Therefore, my way to cope with my lanky stature was to wear long skirts (prairie skirts were very popular at the time--thank you, Melissa Gilbert). This way I could shave off an inch or two by standing with my knees bent and no one would know. It allowed me to be shorter without looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. However miserable and lonely my pre-teen years made me, I was soon to blossom into a appetizingly tall teenager, one who could pass for a woman in her early twenties with ease by the age of fourteen and did so on many occasions, but those are stories for another time.
Believe me, many of the mouth-wateringly tall women you see out there, famous or not, suffered similar fates as children and/or as teenagers. Another tall-woman conundrum is "the shorter boyfriend". This has never bothered me, but I know women shorter than I am who despise dating men shorter than they are. I, in fact, like shorter men. This life trend may have started early on, as I reached eighth grade.
Toward the end of my year in seventh, I decided "to hell" with what my detractors said. I tried out for the school play and got the lead (don't be too impressed--it was just a witch in some play the drama-class teacher wrote). I tried out for cheerleading and made the eighth-grade squad. Since I was in exile, I would wait until the following school year, when a fresh, new crop of young blood would come in as seventh graders, none of whom knew the gangly doofus that I was, and who would only see the statuesque, cheerleading drama queen I was soon to become.
To put the final nail in my outcast coffin, I snagged a cute, albeit one-foot-shorter and one-year-younger, boyfriend. Eric Sward was his name, very swashbuckley-sounding, I thought. He had beautiful, huge blue eyes with the longest eyelashes I'd ever seen. After I proved to be a little too sexually aggressive for my innocently doe-eyed date (not as if I knew what I was doing--I was just winging it), I took up with two seventh-grade twin boys. The twins each stood about six inches shorter than me. However, looking back, I see the twins as an indicator of my kinky nature. I remember thinking that a young Linda sandwiched in between twin-boy bread was a-okay with me. Unfortunately the brothers talked a good game but when it came down to reality, they chickened out.
Even though I love to date men taller than I am, I'm still very attracted to shorter guys. So to all the guys out there under six feet, there's still hope!
And now for my assessment of the ten top Towering Skinfernos who are six feet or taller!
10. Mary Woronov, 6' (Picture: 1 - 2)
This lusciously lanky lass started out as a member of Andy War-tall's eccentric group of Factory freaks. The most famous cinematic scenes of this skintilating superstar's bouncing breasts and bodacious buns occur in her starring role as Mary Bland in the flesh-eating film frolic Eating Raoul (1982).
9. Geena Davis, 6' (Picture: 1 - 2)
Davis el grande, while clad only in bra and panties, towered over Dustin Hoffman in 1982's Tootsie, but her one and only truly skintastic moment unfortunately ended up on the cutting-room floor in Thelma & Louise (1991). There was only a dim glimpse (due to poor lighting) of Davis's delicious derriere that ended up being dumped from the film.
8. Mariel Hemingway, 6' (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3)
Legendary lesbo film femme Hemingway provided some hot girl-on-girl action while playing a champion muff-diving athlete on the fast track to the Olympics in Personal Best (1982). Her firmly fine, petite flesh bulbs erupted into full-blown thirty-six silicone sacks in Star 80 (1983).
7. Elle MacPherson, 6' (Picture: 1 - 2)
Tall MacPerson started as a statuesque model and worked her way into skinema history in the film Sirens (1994), where she frolicked in various states of undress as a hippie-turned-wood nymph(o).
6. Brooke Shields, 6'
There was no shielding Shields from her notorious stage mother when Brooke was allowed to expose both her pubescent breasts and buns at the (under)age of thirteen in Pretty Baby (1978).
5. Uma Thurman, 6' (Picture: 1 - 2)
She's an Uma-zon! The lovely Ms. Thurman exposed her magnificent mams at the age of eighteen, where they were shown in all their gloriousity for one full minute in a bedroom scene with John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons (1988).
4. Shannon Tweed, 6'
A career launched by Playboy can only mean more skin to follow on film. Shannon registers in the Mr. Skin Hall of Fame on the Skin-O-Meter for showing more breasts, buns, and bush than just about any other actress out there. I'm sure she keeps the tongue of long-time lover Gene Simmons busy.
3. Tracy Tweed, 6'
Shannon's not-so-little sis, flame-maned tall-drink-of-wonder Tracy followed her elder sibling straight up the growth chart and into the hards--make that hearts . . . actually, no, just leave it--of fans of softcore skinema.
2. Brigitte Nielsen, 6'1" (Picture: 1 - 2)
One tall Flavor of the week. Most recently seen in the train wreck of a reality show Strange Love with Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, this imposing female figure started her career as a model then moved onto wife of Sylvester Stallone. From there she appeared in the forgettable films Bye Bye Baby (1989) and Domino (1989)--although more memorable were her breasts and buns, all proudly visible in both films.
1. Julie Strain, 6'2" (Picture: 1 - 2)
This gigantically talented actress/director/model has appeared in some state of undress in over ninety films. To view her finest flesh work, rent Masseuse 3 (1998). For a full forty-five seconds, we get to view her gravity-mocking, goddess-great gozongas, gluteus, and gash as she rides the pink pony. You'll feel the strain on your zipper, indeed.
