I have finally joined the Twitter revolution! Twitter tells me that I'm supposed to invite followers. "Follow" seems rather passive, but I would love for you to JOIN me, @ArianneCohen!

Especially all you Brazilians, who I hear just saw my Martha Stewart Show episode, and have been keeping Long Tall Sally busy!  Now all the Portuguese spam I've been getting makes sense...

It's National Stand Tall Week over here in Britain, and I'm here working with Long Tall Sally on their fantastic campaign to spread the word about all the wonders of the tall life: Mainly, that tall Brits make roughly $800 more per inch per year, according to a survey they did last month.

I'm having a blast: I spoke at two store events this week, ostensibly signing books but mostly spending much of the time in the dressing rooms, which were like a party. I also did a set of morning radio interviews with the lovely Lisa Butcher, 6'0", who designs a line of clothing. When all was said and done, the UK was treated to eleven hours of our chatting! How about l save you 10 hours and 59 minutes. A few fashion tips I picked up from Lisa:

-avoid tops and dresses with a waistline. The waist can't be in the wrong place if there isn't one! Instead, stick to empire waists, or tops with vertical waist seams, not horizontal.
-make sure jeans pockets are centered Jeans pockets belong in the middle of your rear. Not the bottom. (If you're confused, consult a store mannequin.) Low pockets mean you're likely to have half your rear fall out when you bend over, another tall trauma that I thought everyone shared, but it's actually a problem of ill-fitting pants.

Link: www.longtallsally.com

I had possibly my most fun tall appearance yet last night on Livewire Radio, a fantastic Portland radio theater show that puts together two fun-filled hours of musical, literary and comic geniuses, and blows me away every time I attend as an audience member. My six month campaign to get on the show paid off, and I had a blast getting up on stage and telling the audience some of my favorite tall yarns.

You can hear it all here.

Link: livewireradio.org

You can watch the whole show by clicking here.

Thank you to the 150 amazing tall folks who valiantly braved an arctic storm last week to make the Martha Stewart Show's Tall Show amazing!

The show is airing tomorrow, Thursday, February 18th. Local listing times can be found here.

Some stats:
Average guest height: 6'2"
Average audience height: 6'5.5"
Height of cake created by guest chef: 10.5'
Heights of happiness tall viewers will experience watching the show: mountainous

The Martha Stewart all-Tall Show recording just happened, and it was 52 minutes of unbridled tallness. Tall heaven, people: tall audience, tall guests, tall everything. Unfortunately, I signed my life away and can't tell you all about it yet. However, I can tell you about the 30 minutes before the show:

I was sitting backstage in the makeup room rereading my own book (yes, I do that), when in ran the little creature you see at right. Genghis. Genghis is the cutest animal that has ever lived. So I immediately hit the floor to coo at him and offer to subtly remove him from The Martha Stewart Show. And suddenly I see a foot in front of my nose. I look up, and there's Martha Stewart, sternly looking down at us. Genghis is apparently not supposed to be roaming the makeup room. I was so startled that I didn't introduce myself. I just mumbled something like, "I like your dog."

Ten minutes later, Martha turned out to be absolutely lovely. Now, often talk shows shoot multiple episodes on one day, so it is not unusual to be hurried back to the green room by an assistant and then pleasantly abandoned, only to meet the host on live national television. This is not the case at The Martha Stewart Show. You might as well be in Martha's living room. From the moment you arrive until the moment you leave, there's a producer nearby to help. Martha's easily accessible, with her office right in the middle of all the makeup and green rooms. And one particularly lovely producer, Lenore, hung out with the guests until we left, a good hour after we were done shooting. The same courtesy is extended to the audience--after the show, Martha takes the time to answer questions from the audience. It's the most polite ship I have ever encountered.

And yes, needless to say, the Tall Show will be amazing! Details on air dates and times as soon as I know 'em.

Did you know that The Tall Book  is now a math problem? I didn't!

Kevin Mitchell writes in with a biostatistics math problem now in use at Hobart & William Smith College:

The Dinka people live in the southern part of Sudan. Cattle are particulary important in Dinka culture with ownership of livestock serving as one factor in social standing. The Dinka use cattle for other  social purposes. For example, cattle serve as the primary means of settling a negotiated bride price which the grooms family pays to the brides family. There are several factors which may affect this price (see http://www.gurtong.org/resourcecenter/people/profile_tribe.asp). Chief s daughters fetch more cattle in the same way chief s son is expected to pay more cattle for his wife. University graduates fetch higher bride prices, a factor that may positively affect enrolment of girls in schools. In The Tall Book journalist Arianne Cohen suggests that, among the Dinka, women over six feet tall fetch 80 to 100 cows on the marriage market while shorter women bring only 50 or 70, a premium of roughly 30 cattle in such negotiations for taller women.
An anthropologist conducts a small survey of eleven elders in a Dinka village. Based on their experience and knowledge, she asks each to suggest an average bride price for women taller than six feet and for women shorter than six feet; see the table below. The researcher has no basis to assume that the data are normally distributed. Determine a 95% confidence interval for the median difference between the two estimates. Interpret your answer in relation to the claim of a 30 cattle premium for taller women.
Elder     Greater than 6 ft       Less than 6 ft
1                  57                         49
2                  63                         51
3                  94                         74
4                  82                         61
5                  89                         68
6                  85                         63
7                  88                         65
8                  77                         52
9                  80                         55
10               109                        75

Anyone know the answer? Bonus Tall Person Points if you do.

You probably don't know about the super-secret Tall Book team. There is one, and a pivotal part of said team is Bill the Barnes and Noble Guy. Today he writes in with an observation:

Just a casual observation: The book draws bizarre behavior from people when they pick it up to look at in a bookstore.  I've noticed that tall women act like they are doing some sort of guilty pleasure--like the book was an x-rated movie they wanted to see but are shy about admitting it.

I guess the subject matter of height gets people's attention but no one really talks about it out in the open. People look guilty when they see that I notice what book they are reading. Who would have thought the title The Tall Book would have so much effect?

Now I can check write guilty pleasure off my to-do list.

I had a blast talking tall yesterday for an hour on Philadelphia's NPR station (which, I might add, I was raised on--I went to high school at Germantown Academy), on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane. Marty's a pro, and asked quite possibly the best tall questions I've fielded in six months of talking tall. 

I'm out of breath at the beginning because I got caught in New York City traffic, and ran the final ten blocks in the rain to get to my publisher's landline in time. (Producer on cell phone 9 minutes before start: "Arianne, this is a live interview. This is a disaster.") Yes, like many many authors, this author has asthma. It's usually not a job hazard. Listen here.

Today's the big day: The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life From On High is now available nationwide!....except I hear that bookstore shipping is running a little slow in some regions. Which means that it's time to tell the world not to mess with tall folk!

Three great ways to get a Tall Book in your hot hands by tomorrow:

1. Order at BN.com ($13.00 each, or a mere $11.70 if you're a BN member!)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Tall-Book/Arianne-Cohen/e/9781596913080

2. Order at Amazon.com ($13.60, shipping free with two-or-more!)
http://www.amazon.com/Tall-Book-Celebration-Life-High/dp/1596913088

3. Call Your Local Bookstore
Call up your local store and ask them to have copies in stock for you to pick up in 48 hours. Bookstores don't know to carry a book unless customers say they want it, so this is a great way to support The Tall Book. Yay Team Tall!

Today I finished my 6th Tall Book magazine photoshoot. Whenever models say that modeling is work and really hard, ignore them. It's fun. Really fun. There's a staff of 2-to-7 focused on making you look hot. And then you turn on good music and goof around and make faces at a lens for three hours. This, anyway, is what I do. Compared to my usual job of staring at a computer screen, it's professional ecstasy.

Tall photoshoots are particularly adventurous. Today's required standing on a tall rock in 4" heels in the middle of a Manhattan intersection at rush hour while the photographer risked his life in the bike lane to make me look "tall." Every time a truck honked I nearly fell off my rock.

Previous 'tall' photoshoot poses include: Me on a ladder. Me touching my toes. Me on a tiny four-foot podium in stilettos with nothing to hold onto. Me on an icy roof ledge.

Lessons learned:
1. Photographers are not particularly concerned with your personal safety.
2. Tallness only exists when others are in the frame. On our own, us tall folks are lovely and proportional and perfect.




 

What are the products that you really wish were sized differently? (I know I know, airplane seats. Besides airplane seats people.) Is there something that you just feel isn't made for tall people? This can be anything--the seating at Starbucks. The elliptical trainer at your gym. Kitchen appliances that don't fit longer fingers. The seating on your city's public transportation.

We're making a list of companies to contact over at the Tall Activisim page, so please email in your ideas.

Shoot an email to arianne@ariannecohen.com, with the Subject Line "Tall Products," and we'll make a little list here.

Sometimes it's awkward being tall. Such as when it comes time to hug/kiss/otherwise-greet folks that are much smaller. This is particularly true when you're a tall woman (me!) hugging a much shorter man, and you fear smothering them in your cleavage.

I learned a secret while researching the book: Do it first. If you throw your arms out for a hug, you're deciding that there's going to be a hug, and which way the arms are going to go. If it's someone you don't want to hug (such as the opposite gender), clasp your hands behind your back and lean in for a cheek kiss. If you want to shake hands, throw your hand out for a shake. In short: Just do it, and do it first.

This strategy was a breakthrough for me. I wish someone had told me twenty years ago. Would've saved me some incredible awkwardness, like the time I was leaning in to cheek-peck my much-shorter New York Magazine editor goodbye, and he suddenly turned and I kissed him on the mouth. 

In doing The Tall Book, I came up with a theory on why tall folks don't always know what fashions flatter them. There are indeed a few stylists out there who specialize in dressing tall, normally-proportioned bodies. One of the ongoing sagas of this project was trying to connect with some.

Because fashion people are HARDER TO GET AHOLD OF THAN CELEBRITIES. I spent three months leaving messages for one such stylist. I left messages on her personal answering machine, with her assistant, with her managing company, with her two agents, and at her office. She thought the book was a great idea! She scheduled a phone interview! She canceled, she rescheduled, she canceled. Repeat. The book went to press, fashion-free. This is why tall people dont know what to wear.