I'm related to Finn McCool

Recently I've been noticing a lot that I am really tall.  I'm about 6'2' or 6'3", which puts me pretty solidly above average height-wise, and I've probably got like another inch or two to grow.  I'm thinking 6'5" will be what I stop at.  My height comes from my mom I think, she's around 5'11", which is tall for a woman.  If you've read my blog you'll know her maiden name is McCool, and there's a giant in Irish myth named Finn McCool.  Her dad used to joke with her and tell her that they were related, and that's why she's so tall.  I kind of like that idea, that I'm related to a mythical hero, and I guess it would explain my height (although I think I'd probably be taller if I was descended from a giant (yeah sub-parentheses to point out the descended pun!)).

What I hear a lot though is that I don't actually look that tall from far away, like I'm built like a normal sized person, but that up close I'm all of a sudden (the? I never quite got this idiom) huge.  I like that I'm only tall when I want to be and I don't feel uncomfortably tall in most situations.  I don't have the tall guy slouch that I see on a lot of tall people, like they're trying to make themselves shorter, mostly because my mom would always yell at me for my posture (thanks mom).  Good posture adds like an inch to your height, and I feel like standing up straight changes your whole attitude and demeanor.  You can be more commanding and powerful, or protective and comforting.  However you choose to use it, good posture definitely makes you feel more confidant.  

Being tall is a big part of my personality (see, more puns!).  I think the reason I've been feeling that so much lately is because I've been hanging out with more short people lately through Drama Club (not that you guys are all short, but there's more underclassmen in that group than any of my other groups of friends.  Although some of you are really short).  In my other groups of friends I have taller friends (shout out to Pam Larsen because she asked me to!), and I've been thinking about how our height and other physical things contribute a lot to our personalities.  I feel like I have a tall guy personality, I'm confident and kind of aggressive, but in a kind of relaxed way.  I think we kind of are shaped by the kind of person we seem to be, we grow to fit the personality expectations created by the way we look.  You can look at a person and say "oh that person is a nerd" or "an introvert" or "a jock" or "popular" etc.  And generally we're right in those assessments, because I think they become sort of self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you look at little kids and the way they interact, I think there's a natural propensity for them to organize themselves according to surface assessments.  "Oh that kid looks like me" or "dresses like me."  And who we become friends with really shapes who we are.  Our friendships shape our value judgments and our personalities, and our friendships are shaped (at least initially) by surface judgments.  As humans I think we're a lot more superficial than we think.  It's something I noticed in doing things like Model Congress and Model UN.  You have large groups of kids trying to get things done, so it's a good chance to figure out the way we work.  It generally happens that some people become leaders, as would be expected, but surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly) most of those leaders I feel are the more attractive people.  We're much more willing to approach attractive people, and for some reason we often defer to them.  If you look at leaders of countries or things like that I think that they're fairly often more attractive than average.

That same attractive bias was visible when I did NJSP interviews too.  It was a small group of kids, and I felt like the group that were ultimately picked were on average more than normally attractive.  It's not an absolute rule by any means, but more attractive people tend to be more confident and assertive.  Our attractive bias probably comes from our mate-selection instincts, so athletic looking people, attractive people, and people who seem smart (sometimes) have an advantage in groups of peers.

Generally I don't make normative statements, but I wonder whether this is something we should try to fix.  I think it's an inherent part of our nature and our society, but I think there are still ways around it.  Like I said, the attractive bias isn't an absolute rule, but we still rely a lot more than we think on initial impressions and superficial judgments.  It's not really something we can fix, but if we understand it we can try to avoid that kind of thinking for ourselves (although it's often still unavoidable), and we can also use it for ourselves.  I was taking an SAT course, and one of the tutor's points was that studying for the SAT is really valuable, because it's much easier to improve your SAT score than it is to improve your GPA, and in terms of college acceptance they mattered about the same.  Whether or not his point was valid, the same principle could be applied to our surface appearance.  There are a lot of things we can do to change our looks, some drastic and some minor, although a lot of them only require a little bit of effort.  I'm not saying that we *should* value surface appearances though, I think it's bad policy to be shallow, but I'm saying that *since* a lot of our society is very shallow, at least subconsciously, we should try to use that to our advantage.

No matter what, I still think we are heavily shaped by the expectations placed on us based on superficial things like physical appearance.  If we recognize that, I wonder if we can change that.  Every once in a while you'll meet someone who surprises you, who completely blows your expectations out of the water.  So while sometimes we get bad situations, there are some people who are able to move past that.  I don't claim to understand that, but I can at least say I admire it.

As for me, I don't think I can change the fact that I'm related to Finn McCool.  Tall is in my blood, so I have to be happy with it.  And as for shaping my personality, I am who I am and I don't think I can do much to change that.