What Netflix's 'Tall Girl' gets right (and wrong) about being a teenage girl over 6 feet

Spoilers ahead! Some plot points are described here for Netflix’s “Tall Girl,” so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.

Netflix’s “Tall Girl,” a movie about a teenage girl struggling with, as you may have suspected, being super-tall, was met with mixed reactions when the trailer arrived online earlier this month.

Some critics thought the preview seemed overly dramatic: At one point, the main character is told “You’re the tall girl” with such venom, it’s made to seem like an earth-shattering moment rather than an observation about her height. 

Rest assured, “Tall Girl” (now streaming) is much more about a teen’s internal and universal struggle with feeling different than it is about people calling her names just for being 6-foot-1½. And speaking as someone who’s been 6-foot-2 since she was 13, it’s a pretty spot-on depiction of what it feels like to be a teenager towering over your peers. 

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“Tall Girl” stars “Dance Moms” alum Ava Michelle (whose Instagram bio says she’s 6-foot-1) as Jodi, a 16-year-old girl uncomfortable with her height whose point of view changes after an even taller Swedish exchange student (Luke Eisner) comes to town, hailing from a notoriously tall Scandinavian nation.

It also features a show-stealing Sabrina Carpenter as a perfectly over-the-top pageant girl, “Red Band Society” alum Griffin Gluck as Jodi’s short best friend (who gives off some not-so-subtle “Anthony Michael Hall from ‘Sixteen Candles’ ” vibes) and Anjelika Washington playing Jodi’s fabulous friend Fareeda, someone we don’t see nearly enough of.

USA TODAY’s in-house height expert breaks down what Netflix’s “Tall Girl” gets right and wrong about being a vertically gifted teenage girl. 

Right: The little things

• Always getting that back row, center placement in class photos.
• Having terrible posture, because you’re constantly looking down.
• Having an advantage on the piano. (My high school piano teacher repeatedly marveled at how my hand was big enough to span a whole octave.) 
• Struggling to find enough legroom on public transportation.

Wrong: The incessant height jokes

Jodi seems to get hit with a “How’s the weather up there?” joke several times a day. That’s a little much.

And even when people do joke IRL, it’s usually because they think it’s cool and “want to borrow a few inches.” 

Right: Feeling super-uncomfortable with attention

Jodi reveals that she gave up piano because performing called attention to her. “I don’t need to give people another reason to look at me,” she says. At an age when nobody wants unnecessary attention called to themselves, having a half-foot on our peers can feel like a cruel joke. 

Right: Everyone else has body issues, too

While “Tall Girl” takes great care to voice Jodi’s frustrations and anxieties about feeling different, it’s also quick to rightfully point out that she’s far from the only one who feels insecure about how she looks, especially in high school. 

Her older sister Harper (Carpenter) is a pageant queen constantly agonizing over her appearance. Kimmy, the most popular girl in school, worries about other girls being prettier than her. And Stig, the blond ripped-from-an-Abercrombie-ad exchange student, laments feeling like a geek compared to all the “super-good looking, super-popular tall guys” back home. 

Wrong: The impossibility of finding clothes that fit

Fareeda teases Jodi for her outfits – consisting largely of sporty attire and ponytails – for making her look like a “very large little boy.”

But major fashion brands have gotten pretty good at designing for tall women. and there are plenty of newer brands made by tall women, for tall women. If athletic clothing is your jam, by all means, rock it. but there’s no need to feel like you’re restricted to dressing like a WNBA bench player 24/7 just to find pants that cover your ankles.

Right: Having hobbies beyond sports

Bless whoever decided that Jodi didn’t need to play basketball or volleyball, because it lets her real personality shine. She played piano because she grew up loving musical theater, not because a coach thought she’d might make a good center or middle hitter.  

Right: Hesitating to date shorter guys

There are tall women who, as adults, don’t care about their partner’s height, and there are tall women who still aren’t interested in dating someone whose height starts with a “5.” But in high school, the general goal for a tall girl is finding a boy who towers over you. 

So it’s no surprise that Jodi spends most of the movie pining after a 6-foot-3 boy she barely knows while completely disregarding her shorter friend Dunkleman, who’s anything but subtle about loving Jodi for exactly who she is. 

But, just as Jodi learns, being tall is not the personality trait you should be looking for in a romantic partner. To all the young women waiting for your NBA player: Go for the guy who celebrates you wearing 5-inch platform heels and carries his belongings in a milk crate so he can be at your eye level at the drop of a hat (a move Dunkleman actually pulls that’s romantic, despite being so weirdly specific). 

Right: Sooner or later, you learn to love the view 

For all the frustration being tall caused in high school, there comes a point later on when it becomes something to feel proud of. 

When other people start to notice Jodi, it isn’t because of that makeover her pageant-queen big sister and mom (Angela Kinsey) gave her. It’s because, as one character puts it, she’s “so confident and feeling herself.”

And in a moment when Jodi is feeling particularly down, Fareeda hits her with the most relatable line of the movie: “Someday … you’re gonna stand up and say, ‘This is me: I love all 73 inches of myself and there’s nothing you can do that will change that.’”

Eventually, you do. 

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