What It’s Really Like Being a Tall Escort: Confessions of a Leggy Luxury Companion
Just another day at the office, Le Meurice, Paris
If someone had to sketch me, they’d begin with one long vertical line. I’m tall – even for Dutch standards (and if you’ve been to Amsterdam, you know that’s no small feat). Since puberty, I’ve been the unofficial, yet reliable meeting point in crowds: “just look for Charlie.” And while I may now cheekily answer height questions with “why, are you jealous?”, learning to own that much height didn’t happen overnight.
Being both tall and an escort comes with its own set of assumptions, occasional curiosities, and a relentless commentary on height from strangers and clients alike. And long before it inevitably became one of my “unique selling points,” it was mostly an awkward fact of my body, one I spent years trying not to accentuate, let alone enjoy.
So here are a few unsolicited tall-courtesan-coming-of-height-confessions: the early years, the perks, the endless questions and observations, the typology of clients, and the myriad ways being vertically gifted has shaped both my life and my work.
1. I was average height – until I wasn’t.
Perhaps it’s a little bit hard to fathom, but in primary school, when we lined up by height for PE, I always ended up neatly in the middle. Then puberty hit, and without any warning whatsoever, I sprouted like Jack and the Beanstalk. Practically overnight, I became a bundle of limbs I couldn’t quite coordinate – long, thin (suddenly underweight), and moving through the world with a good few inches more than I had planned.
I honestly had no clue how I ended up an average-sized girl in a tall girl’s body, although I later did figure out why I kept on growing. Did you know that adolescents tend to stop growing shortly after they get their periods? And did you know that being underweight can delay said period? Voilà, there’s the explanation – aside from, well, just being Dutch, of course. But at fifteen, all I wanted to know was what to do with these lanky arms and long-stretched legs that seemed to have become entirely sovereign entities on their own.
2. Modeling agencies were interested in me long before the boys were.
As my hipbones sharpened and my shoulder blades began projecting like those of real-life winged angels (the longer the legs, the closer to God, I guess), scouts hovered below me with predatory enthusiasm. Classmates, meanwhile, saw a lanky, clumsy creature with elbows and knees everywhere. It wasn’t very “cool” to like me, a newborn baby giraffe.
But I did very much stand out now: not just in the classroom but everywhere – supermarkets, bars, sidewalks, libraries, public bathrooms. And people, bless their hearts, loved enthusiastically and relentlessly reminding me of that fact.
Fantastic read, highly recommend.
3. Everyone felt compelled to announce my height to me.
I can’t even recall the number of times strangers said, “Do you know you’re really, really tall?” – as if alerting me to a new discovery.
A few of the other classics included, of course:
“Do you play volleyball?”
“You should play basketball.”
“You’re taller than me!”
“How tall are you? No, that can’t be true.”
“Do you like shorter men?”
“How’s the air up there?”
“How’s the view?”
“Do you model?”
“Can you reach that?”
“Is it hard to find pants that fit?”
“Is it hard to find a boyfriend?”
And what makes a classic a classic? That’s right: incessant repetition, Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence. ;)
4. People assume tall women automatically wear their height with pride.
But they tend to forget that most people don’t want to stand out; they want to blend in, belong. Especially teenagers. In Dutch there is a saying, steek je kop niet boven het maaiveld uit, roughly translated as: don’t stick your head above the parapet. Don’t stand out, for, figuratively speaking, your head might actually roll as a result. Kind of a creepy one, culturally, if you think about it for too long.
But it was my head that was literally sticking out above said parapet, which was, yes, well, quite daunting all things considered. So at fifteen, I avoided heels, hunched a little, and fantasized about donating a few inches to the universe. Maybe casting some sort of spell would help?
In my mind, every other insecurity would evaporate if only I could be shorter: short enough for hip-hop songs about “shorties” to apply to me for a change. I had internalized society’s norms well by then. To be shorter was to do my gender right, to be feminine, and to be a woman.
5. I admire everything in other tall women that I resisted in myself.
Tall women, at some point, started to mesmerize me (maybe they always did, but for the first time I became conscious of it). Their presence, their stride, the way their clothes draped over their long frames. The way I gained a sudden urge to undress them and kiss their long limbs. How they didn’t apologize for existing at that scale. The way they commanded the room with their beauty, their unique way of inhabiting femininity.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly, at a point at which I also came into my own bisexuality, I began to see those things in myself. It took a while and it wasn’t sudden, but my newfound confidence was there to stay.
Scale comparison from left to right: Leona Hart, Bianca Lorne, clearly a full-grown giraffe, Sophia Rose.
6. I learned to stand tall and enjoy it.
So here are my answers to the classics (for reference, here are my answers to the classic non-height related questions too):
No, I don’t play volleyball or basketball, ballsports are not my forte (go ahead, make the joke).
Yes, I’m likely taller than you.
I’m exactly six feet and two-thirds of an inch, barefoot, hand on my heart.
Yes, I do very much like shorter men (and women!).
The air and the view up here are excellent, thank you.
Yes, I modeled – and still do every once in a while. But I also really love to eat, which made me opt out of turning it into a fulltime career.
Yes, I can reach that for you.
Yes, trousers are a nightmare.
And no, I’ve got 99 problems but finding a boyfriend ain’t one. ;)
7. I now have quite a few boyfriends and girlfriends, professionally speaking.
My legs do, as people like to point out, “go on forever.” And even if you take my height out of the equation, my legs-to-torso ratio suggests the same. In my work as a high-class escort, that feature became something clients tend to actively seek out.
The long limbs I once wished I could trim are now a distinguishing asset that draws interest from friends around the world. I know – and like! – that I am that tall glass of water, and that some of us are indeed quite thirsty.
8. Not all clients who seek out tall escorts are created equal.
People assume that tall companions attract only one type of client: very tall men with tall-woman preferences. And understandably so: while society reveres and admires tall women (read: models), we also seem quite attached to the picture-perfect ideal of a tall man next to a shorter woman.
Sometimes I joke that everybody loves a tall woman, but nobody wants to walk next to her. Of course, as my track record of strolling partners has by now demonstrated, this isn’t true. Yet from my experience, height does seem to function like a kind of psychological litmus test: people reveal their relation to norms, confidence, and self-image instantly in how they respond to it.
Some of my clients arrive already knowing exactly what they want: the proportions, the aesthetics, the visual impact of a tall muse. And then there are the modelesque tall men, women, and couples mostly looking for their aesthetic equal.
Some are certified short kings and queens. They are often unbothered, confident, and love the contrast. Maybe they’re even a little smug about it – and, might I say, rightfully so.
Others are simply curious, and may have never been with someone taller before, approaching the experience like a small personal experiment. Some are startled in the doorway but recover; some are delighted; some are almost studious about it.
The range is broader than people imagine, but to me, any person who walks proudly next to a taller woman gives off that sexy “genius film director and his muse” energy that I am indeed quite partial to. I personally adore pictures that are perfectly imperfect, pairings that seem unlikely in society’s eyes (on that topic, I’ve always adored watching documentaries about unlikely animal friends), and the streak of rebellion against height gender norms my lovers must possess if they are to take me by the arm.
A bath I actually fit in
9. Height taught me how to take up space – and allows others to do the same
This is the part people rarely think about: when you’re tall, you learn early on that your body is impossible to ignore. As a teenager, I occupied an above-average amount of space whether I intended to or not. For years, I worked against that, folding myself down, unsuccessfully shrinking, minimising, and negotiating the inches away.
Now, in my work as well as in my personal life, I do the opposite. I’ve grown into my body, and I expand into my height fully. As if to say, in clear body language, that to be a woman is not to shrink oneself, but to confidently take up space (no matter your height, baby).
And in doing so, I’ve noticed that this seems to automatically give other people permission to expand into whatever it is they’ve been resisting in themselves: be it ease, confidence, curiosity, vulnerability, exploration, or all sorts of beautifully pent-up desires.
In closing (let’s level?)
So perhaps you could argue that my height creates room, not just above me, but for those around me. And of course, clients may come to me because I’m tall, but they stay for reasons that have nothing to do with inches or centimeters (choose your measurement system wisely).
Height is really just the opening note. Everything else that matters – the things of actual substance, be it connection, chemistry, humour, warmth, intellectual discourse, and ease – happens at eye level. Wherever that eye level may be: vertically or (let’s face it, much more commonly) horizontally.