Kylie Kelce says she was 'ruthlessly bullied' for being tall. How height can impact women and girls' body image.

Kylie Kelce stands out as a podcast host, WAG, pregnant mom of three and Taylor Swift-adjacent person. She also stands tall. The 32-year-old opened up about her height in the latest episode of her podcast Not Gonna Lie and she shared that being 5’11” was something she “struggled with” for a period of her life.

“In high school, I’m pretty sure I was already 5’10” as a freshman and let me tell you something, the boys were not [5’10”],” she said during a conversation with influencer and body neutrality advocate Drew Afualo. “I got ruthlessly bullied by a couple of people. … The worst of them was a guy whose insult was always like, ‘You’re huge; you’re a man.’”

She said that she had “always been taller than most guys” but felt “normal-sized” when she was around her family and her 6’9” dad. When she later married former Philadelphia Eagle Jason Kelce, she felt the same around the 6’3” football player and his fellow offensive linemen. But seeing her stature as a positive feature took time.

“People taking issue with my size, they’ve always tried to use words that when directed towards a woman who’s supposed to be dainty, who’s supposed to be fragile, who’s supposed to be sort of this delicate something, and you’re going to look at me and be like, ‘You’re huge,’” she said. “I would be like, ‘I’m not big, I’m tall.’ Or like, ‘My thighs aren’t big, I’m strong.’ … I had to switch the narrative of not allowing those words to hold the weight that they expected them to hold with me.”

Kylie’s body image took a hit and that’s unsurprising, according to Tanya Farman, an Indiana-based psychologist who penned her dissertation on the experiences of tall women, herself included. “I’m 6’2” and I probably experienced some of that bullying at younger ages. I myself did not grow up in a family like Kylie where my whole family was really tall, so I was a bit of an outlier,” Farman tells Yahoo Life. Despite the research that reveals the positive qualities attributed to tall adults, she and other experts acknowledge the toll that it can take on adolescents.

Why young girls can be insecure about height

During adolescence, appearance-based insecurities are extremely prevalent. While height might not be the primary concern, Sophia Spencer, a psychotherapist specializing in social psychology, tells Yahoo Life that it is “a particularly vulnerable issue” because it cannot be changed.

“Unlike other physical insecurities, such as acne or hair loss, height is immediately visible and unable to be modified or concealed. This can mean during adolescence, tall girls feel constantly physically exposed, have heightened self-consciousness and likely receive unwanted comments about their height,” she says.

Farman notes that for her it was “easy to hang my woes” on being tall, despite the myriad of reasons she might have been struggling with self-esteem as a teen. “I put all of my eggs in that basket. Like, if I was just shorter, I wouldn’t stick out in this way,” she says.

The desire to fit an idealized aesthetic plays a major role for young girls. “Broader beauty standards emphasize a preference for women to be ‘petite’, ‘dainty’ or ‘light,’” says Spencer. “Traditional gender norms also suggest women should be shorter than male partners, and during adolescence this is particularly hard if a girl is taller than her male counterparts.”

According to psychologist Robert Roopa, tall girls might “be believed to be or expected to be more mature simply because they may look older, and they may also be stereotyped to play certain roles simply because of their height, like playing center in basketball,” he tells Yahoo Life.

For Farman, playing basketball and volleyball gave her height purpose. “But I could see for the women where that might not be part of their identity or their story, that it would kind of exacerbate sticking out, perhaps, at those young ages,” she says. The same goes for the idea that tall women have an advantage for modeling if they have other idealized features to fit.

When height becomes an advantage

Studies have shown that being tall signifies a certain level of status, prestige and leadership over shorter individuals, and that taller people generally live better lives. So there are certainly advantages to it. However, Roopa says that perceiving your own height that way becomes easier only the further away you are from peers who may judge it negatively.

At 45, Farman says her height is still something that people might comment on, though it happens less often and she perceives it as more complimentary or observational than negative. Spencer suggests that having a neutral perspective on it by “viewing height as a physical feature, no different to feet or arms” is most helpful for combating insecurity.

Neutrality is the route that Kylie is taking. “As long as you can look yourself in the mirror at the end of the night and say, ‘Am I kind? Am I a good person?’ Those types of things … who gives a f*** if you tower over every kid in your class,” she said.

Kylie opening up may already have made a difference. “Listened to it with my kids in the car and my daughter who gets tortured for being short was very enlightened and empowered,” read an Instagram comment. “She literally said, ‘I hope Kylie finds that mean guy and reminds him that tall strong girls marry NFL players, not some random guy from school.’ 😂💀”