As Tuesday night’s debate approached, Kamala Harris’ height — she’s 5 feet 4¼ inches tall — came up as a potential issue during the weekend event.
Former President Donald J. Trump, whose height has been recorded 6-foot-3On their social media platform, Truth Social, pointed out their size discrepancy, saying that no accommodations should be made to make them appear closer to the same size.
“No box or artificial lift will be allowed to stand during my upcoming debate with Comrade Kamala Harris,” he wrote. He added that such accommodations – which he claims Michael Bloomberg once demanded – would be “a form of fraud”.
Ms Harris did not comment on whether she had requested a lift of any kind. But seeing the candidates side-by-side can make many debaters aware of their actual height — a reality previously masked by what some call tall energy.
Ms. Harris’s relatively modest height and how people misjudge her has been brought up before.
In signature prosecutorial fashion, she addressed the issue during January interview with Katie Couric in which Ms. Couric recited a Wikipedia entry that mistakenly listed Ms. Harris as 5-foot-2. Ms. Couric, not just under 5-foot-4, said she was excited to learn that “Kamala is as short as me.”
“That’s absolutely wrong,” said Mrs. Harris with a smile that suggested she was used to such comments. “With heels, which I always wear, I’m 5-7½, thank you very much.”
The average height of an adult American woman is 5 feet 3½ inches tall, According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (For men, it’s 5-foot-9). But that is beside the point. Even in his beloved Chuck TaylorsThat height offers little in the way of support, Ms. Harris, to many of her supporters, seems is taller than her.
For some, it’s because Ms. Harris uses tall energy, a vertical position usually associated with a statue, but sometimes preferred by more petite women. Vocal powerhouse Kristin Chenoweth, m 4-foot-11He has So do the 5-foot-1 Lady Gaga and the 5-foot-2 Reese Witherspoon.
“Tall energy is confidence that is above average height,” Nicholas Rule, a University of Toronto psychology professor who researches social perception and cognition, said of the concept.
Mr. Niyam said that people tend to respond in certain ways to tall people for evolutionary reasons. In most nonhuman primates, size determines who wins the battle for reproduction. That is why animals enlarge themselves when they feel threatened. Some studies show why that is tall Candidates generally won the election; They are considered more impressive, more formidable and stronger. And that’s why other studies have shown that tall people often are awarded With more money, more promotions and more dates.
“Being tall makes people think you’re more capable, and being a winner gives you more confidence,” said Barry Bogin, emeritus professor of biological anthropology at Loughborough University in England and author of “Patterns of Human Growth.” Mr. Bogin, 74, said he was 6-foot-1 in his heyday and recalled getting into trouble while goofing around with shorter friends in elementary school. “The teacher said she expected more from me,” he said. “It was a backhanded positive response.”
Tall energy — or its corollary, short energy — has never been more apparent than when pandemic restrictions began to be lifted and colleagues began meeting each other face-to-face for the first time, coming face-to-face with the people they were (or not) like the “Brady Bunch.” Communicating in the square for months or even years. The results, for some, were mind-blowing.
That was certainly the case for Camille Sweeney, one of the authors and creators of Future Me, a career prep program in New York. She was thrown for a loop when she first met some members of her online writing group in person. Mrs. Sweeney expected the organizer, a philosophy professor, to be younger. “She was smart and perky and wore big glasses, and I thought she was small,” Ms. Sweeney, who is 5-foot-8, recalled. Instead, the professor was lithe and willowy and about six feet tall. “Someone’s perception of you is one thing, and it was like a blind date,” Ms. Sweeney said. “I was intimidated – and I’m not short.”
Ms. Sweeney admits that her own prejudices may have affected her perception. Her mother, a “small but mighty force,” is only 5-foot-2. Mrs. Sweeney associates brevity with get-it-dones, which the philosophy professor clearly possesses.
Same goes for Kristen Berman, the 5-foot-1 chief executive of Irrational Labs, an applied behavioral science consulting firm in Oakland, Calif. She often hears that, despite her height, she gives the impression of being taller.
“People are surprised when they meet me,” she said. She can’t really square her small stature with her own image. “When I look at other women my height, I wonder,” she said. “I don’t see myself as that short. Playing it bigger, louder, with more humor can make a difference. I think it’s a learned behavior over time.”
However, just to be extra safe, she always stands straight, shoulders back, sternum forward. And she wears heels to networking events.
Long and short energy are not only female traits. Tom Cruise is about 5-foot-7, but some fans may be unaware of that. “Part of it is the way he carries himself,” Adam D. said Galinsky, author of the forthcoming book “Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others,” who is a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School. “What you might call tall energy, I call being-in-control energy,” he said. “This guy knows what he’s doing. They make people feel safe. They’ll have your back.”
For that, James Madison, the fourth president of the United States, known for his contributions to the Bill of Rights, Was only 5 feet 4 inches tallSome believe he was too short than that.
While Ms. Harris is running against a tall man in the presidential election, Mr. Rule and Mr. Galinsky stressed that their size should not be a liability, as women are expected to be more slender than men. If she were running against, say, Michelle Obama, who is 5-foot-11, or Nikki Haley, who is 5-foot-6, it might be a different story.
And finally, the actual height of the individuals is not the issue; What matters is how tall they are seems.
No one knows that better than Ms. Harris. “My the mother In a video posted on Facebook for Mother’s Day in 2019, she said she was all of five feet tall.
Post Trump mocked Harris’ height. But his fans see a certain size. appeared first New York Times.