'Tall Girl 2,' Zendaya and Tom Holland and the stigma around tall women dating shorter men

Spoiler alert: The following post discusses the ending of Netflix's first "Tall Girl" movie, so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.

Tall women don't often see themselves or their romantic plights represented.

Netflix's "Tall Girl 2" is streaming Friday, the sequel to the streaming service's 2019 film about a 6-foot-3 teenage girl who falls for an even taller foreign exchange student before realizing she's in love with her much shorter best friend.

“I’ve always had a crush on her, but society has deemed it socially unacceptable for a tall girl to date a short guy," Dunkleman (Griffin Gluck) says in "Tall Girl 2" of his girlfriend, Jodi (Ava Michelle), reflecting on why it took so long for the two to get together.

Jodi's journey to self-love and finding a romantic partner in "Tall Girl" is reflective of how many tall women feel when it comes to dating: that their height complicates their journey to find love.

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Take, for instance, the real-life example of Ali Jackson, a 34-year-old New York City-based dating coach. She's known on social media by her brand name, Finding Mr. Height, a playful reference to her 5-foot-11 stature.

It's not that Jackson hasn't been open to going on a date with a man shorter than her – it's that shorter men, in her experience, often vocalize their discomfort with dating a taller woman.

"I wish that I didn't care," she says of the height of potential suitors, blaming social stigmas that dictate women should be "small and dainty" while men are "big and protect us."

"Not only am I just predisposed by everything around us as we're growing up and learning what we're attracted to, but also the men that I'm dating have issues with it," she adds. "I can work on myself and be OK with it as much as I want, but I have found that (some of) the guys are not."

Sometimes, the men Jackson meets off dating apps round up their height and are then surprised or upset when she ends up being taller than them.

"Society tells men that being small is bad and not masculine," she adds. "And so I have often found that the guys that I date are even more sensitive to being smaller than me than I am sensitive to being bigger than them. … There might be some guys who are totally cool with it, but the vast majority are not and I'm going to protect my emotional safety."

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Tall women are rare: The average adult woman's height in the U.S .falls between 5-foot-1.3 and 5-foot-4.1 according to a 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. So many search for mirrors of themselves in media, of which there aren't a ton. But there are celebrities such as Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Kevin and Eniko Hart, and Zendaya and Tom Holland who have helped increase visibility in real life. For some, "Tall Girl" was the first time they saw their own height experiences on screen.

"I identified with feeling outside the norm," Emily McBride, 26, says of the first movie. "But I think something that frustrated me was it felt like in the end she was (only) validated because a guy liked her."

At 6-foot-1 – not including the platform Doc Martens or other heeled shoes she's prone to wear – McBride doesn't view anyone's height as a "deal breaker." She dates a "pretty equal mix" of shorter and taller men, and has only been out with shorter women, but would be open to dating women taller than her, too – she's just "so used to being the tallest woman in the room."

"As I've gotten older and (am) coming into my own sexuality and realizing I'm queer, framing relationships from that lens has changed my perspective on height," she says. "It's made me more accepting – obviously, it would be super-rare if I meet a girl that's taller than me, but height has become even less prioritized in my mind."

Queer dating is "just more laid back and there isn't this weird kind of patriarchal 'the man has to be stronger and larger' weighing on it," McBride adds.

That patriarchal idea does have some bearing from a biological standpoint, says Gordon Gallup, an evolutionary psychologist at the University at Albany.

"Do women like tall men? The answer, cross culturally the world over, is yes," he says. "Women tend to preferentially date and eventually mate with men (who) are taller than they are."

To the women who do feel strongly that they want their partner to be taller, Jackson notes that's OK from a social standpoint ("You're allowed to be attracted to whatever you want to be attracted to"), but there's a right way to go about it.

"If your dating app profile says like, 'No short guys,' that's rude," she says. "You can have your preference without belittling the other people that don't fit within that preference."

And plenty of women stress that finding someone they love is most important, no matter their height.

Wendy Zipes Hunter met her husband more than 30 years ago at a party. At 6-foot-1, she was the tallest woman there; at 6-foot-6, he was the tallest man. Now, they share three sons in their 20s, who all stand between 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-10.

Years later, Hunter still believes there's "a little stigma" when it comes to height differences in relationships. She's enthused to see these recent examples of confident tall women in media.

"It does help normalize things in the world," Hunter says. "Tall girls should not be limited to just date tall guys. Same thing for shorter men. If they're attracted to a tall woman, go for it. It's such a silly thing when you think about it – it's just a height difference. That's all it is."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Tall Girl 2': Zendaya, Tom Holland & the stigma of dating shorter men