What Type of "Tall" Are You?

The most ridiculous thing I ever see are signs that say “one size fits all”. Are you telling me I should wear the same size as my5’3″ tall mother-in-law? I DON’T THINK SO! We learned years ago to never go clothes shopping together.

Photo credit Taradata Magazine

And, you can’t slap a tag on clothes labeled “tall” and expect it to fit all tall people. There are all kinds of different tall shapes and sizes. My biggest pet peeve is when clothing stores stick a “tall” tag on and don’t include a tall size chart. Tall inseams can vary from 31″ – 42″ long. It can be very confusing to sort it all out.
Here we go with generalization again, but I think for the most part, all of us tall people can be sorted into one of the following categories of different tall body types.

  1. All Long Legs. Yep, you have mile long legs. Your legs make up your height. You could have an average torso length or even a short torso length.  A lady at a conference started a conversation with me and told me that she had a 37″ inseam length. I wouldn’t even have considered her “tall” as she may have been around 5’7″. I didn’t believe her, so she pulled up her long tunic to her waist and sure enough she had really long legs and an almost non-existent torso.
  2. All Long Torso – You may have average length legs or even short legs. Take Mike, from Twitter. He is 6’8″ long with just a 32″ inseam. I mentioned to him that’s the longest torso length I’ve ever heard of. He agreed and finding long enough tops is a real challenge. You poor people have a challenge fitting in cars and seats as they just aren’t made for your long backs.
  3. Balanced Tall – This is the group of people that have both long legs and long torsos. I fall into this category as I am 6’1″ tall and have a 35″ inseam length. My torso is also long and tall shirts are needed also.

Where do you fall on the spectrum of tall?