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If you were to imagine a typical firefighter, chances are you'd picture a white man in firefighting gear—and there's a good reason for that. According to the National Fire Protection Association, 96% of career firefighters in the U.S. are male and 82% are white. Firefighting has long been a white male dominated field for various reasons—but in some places that's starting to shift.
The height of the average American woman is 5'4, and 5% of women grow to 5'9 or taller, according to the Center for Disease Control. While tall women are in the minority, the downsides to being tall are nowhere near as bad as the way they're presented in Netflix's new teen rom-com, "Tall Girl."
The movie is about a 6-foot-1-inch tall high schooler named Jodi who feels uncomfortable with her height after years of bullying. As a rom-com lover and tall girl, I wanted to like "Tall Girl," I really did. Lead actress Ava Michelle, who plays the titular tall girl, delivered a very relatable performance as Jodi, and the film did have its moments. But "Tall Girl" inadvertently sends the message that not being small and dainty is the worst thing that could ever happen to someone. It's not.
The movie got blasted on Twitter for presenting being tall as adversity.
While the majority of cosmetic ads promote unobtainable beauty standards and feature a limited variety of models photoshopped to "perfection," some companies are making it their mission to be more inclusive. Ulta Beauty is one example, whose ad featuring a woman in a wheelchair made a big impact on a little girl seeking acceptance.
According to Carolyn Anderson, her four-year-old daughter, Maren, is a "dance-loving, baby doll-toting, bike-ridinglittle girl with the most infectious giggle and smile." She also has a rare disease caused by a gene mutation, so Maren uses a wheelchair and doesn't talk very much. "Since day one, she's shown great motivation and tenacity and worked hard to overcome the challenges of her rare disease,"Anderson told Scary Mommy. "All she wants is to be accepted for who she is, and represented like everyone else," her mother said.
Maren had been learning how to use her new wheelchair and was finally to the point where she was more comfortable going out with it in public. On one outing, Maren was completely taken aback by the Ulta ad. "On this particular evening, Maren was cruising on the sidewalk in her wheelchair with a confidence we had not seen before," Anderson told Good Morning America. "She was so eager, we could barely get her to stop at crosswalks. Then, she suddenly stopped and focused all her attention on this image of a woman in a wheelchair like hers. It was amazing."
On June 26, 2018, a 28-year-old Puerto Rican Bronx native made some remarkable women's history.
