Walk Like a Princess

Hello beauties, today I thought I’d share a little story that helped me find peace with my body size, particularly my height.  For those of you that don’t already know I am 6’3″ and my last name happens to be Short.  I know, I know, oh the irony!  Believe me, I’ve heard every tall and short joke imaginable.  Being the tallest kid in class was something I learned to expect and accept early on.  However, it was when puberty hit and I found myself towering over all the boys that I started to feel a bit awkward.  People told me not to worry, that eventually the boys would catch up.  And while a few of them did (although they seemed to be attracted to shorter girls, but I digress), most did not!

To add insult to injury, there was never any shortage of people ready to inform me of just how tall I really was, as if I were not already aware.  Thank you, Captain Obvious!  Those comments and jokes would have inevitably worn on my self esteem as badly as they worn on my nerves, were it not for a particular comment made by my freshman Spanish teacher, Mrs. Guiot.  One day at the end of class as all of the students were spilling out into the hallway she looked up at me and in her saucy Latin accent, told me how beautifully I walked. I was a bit surprised, but listened as she talked about how often tall girls will walk with their head down or slouch to appear closer in height to their peers.  “But you don’t do that”, she said, “you move gracefully and dignified with your head held high……you walk like a princess!”

Now, I’m willing to admit that if I was walking with my head held high and a straight back, I’m certain it had nothing to do with attempting to walk like a princess and everything to do with that fact that I was concentrating on sucking in my stomach.  (In case I forget to mention it, I have also been team plus size since puberty?)  But as I walked away, I knew her words had an impact on me.  And while I couldn’t tell you what the Spanish lesson was that day, the lesson I did learn was that my height and long limbs gave me a certain presence that not a lot of people have.  So who am I not to own it and work it?

Throughout the years, I have grown to love and appreciate my height, although adopting a “work it” attitude is still a work in progress, and part of the reason why I started Statuesque Glam.  But I still have days where I wish my height didn’t have me standing out in the crowd.  And that is when I hear Mrs. Guiot’s words in my head, … “walk like a princess!”  My freshman year of high school was also the year that Mrs. Guiot retired from teaching.  How lucky was I to have crossed paths with her and to have her say those words to me?  Words that I still refer to some twenty plus years later.  I wanted to share this story to pass on her words to someone who may need to hear them and I hope they have the same impact.

So this is dedicated to my statuesque beauties out there when the world has you feeling like you’d rather be a shrinking violet, I suggest you instead . . .

 

…and then walk like the princess that you are!

Thank you so much for reading and muchas gracias to you Señora Guiot, where ever you are!