By Matt StoneJuly 18, 20260 comments
We don’t actually know how tall women are supposed to be
We know how tall they are. The CDC has those numbers. US women average 5’4″. US men average 5’9″. Five inches. That’s the gap. That’s what we call biology. That’s what we point to when we want to explain why men are bigger, stronger, faster. That’s the data we use to set expectations, to design clothing, to determine what “normal” looks like for half the population
But we’ve never run the experiment. We’ve never seen what happens when you let girls eat
According to the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, US boys aged 12 to 19 consume roughly 2,500 to 3,000 calories per day during peak growth years. US girls the same age consume roughly 1,800 to 2,200. That’s a 700 to 800 calorie daily difference during the most critical developmental window of a human life. This isn’t because boys are hungrier. It’s because boys are allowed to be hungry. Boys are expected to eat. Boys are told to finish their plates, to bulk up, to grow big and strong. Girls are told to watch their figures. Girls are told they eat too much. Girls are told to be small.
And then we measure them and say, “Look, they’re smaller.”
No shit. We made them smaller
Nutrition during adolescence isn’t a minor variable in human growth. It’s the variable. The body builds itself from what it’s given. During puberty, the body is laying down bone density, muscle fiber, organ capacity, and height that will last a lifetime. If you restrict calories during that window, you restrict growth. Not temporarily. Permanently. The height you don’t reach at 14, you don’t reach at 30. The muscle you don’t build at 15, you don’t build at 40. The development you steal from a teenage girl doesn’t come back.
We know this because we’ve seen what happens when you feed populations properly. Height is one of the most responsive measures of nutrition in human biology. The Dutch were among the shortest people in Europe in the mid-19th century. Today they’re the tallest in the world. What changed? Caloric availability. Protein access. Distribution systems. The genetics didn’t shift in four generations. The food did. South Koreans gained roughly three inches in average height over just half a century as nutrition improved. Same genetics. Same people. More food.
And we’ve seen what happens when women specifically are fed properly. Scandinavian women average 5’6″ to 5’7″, two to three inches taller than US women. Maasai women in Kenya, raised on protein-rich diets without Western diet culture, average 5’7″ and carry significant muscle mass on tall frames. These aren’t different species. These are women whose cultures didn’t tell them to starve themselves during puberty. The genetics aren’t dramatically different. The food is. The permission is.
So when someone suggests that US women would be at least an inch taller if teen girls were allowed to eat as much as teen boys, that’s not speculation. That’s a conservative estimate based on what we already know about nutrition and growth. An inch is nothing. It’s the minimum we’d expect from closing a 700-calorie daily gap during peak growth years. The real number could be higher. We can’t say for certain because we’ve never tried
But height is just the visible marker. What we’ve really been restricting is far more consequential
We’ve been restricting muscle. We’ve been restricting bone density. We’ve been restricting the full expression of what a female body can become when it’s given what it actually needs
The average US woman has less muscle mass than the average US man. This is presented as biology. And some of it is. Testosterone drives muscle development. Men produce more testosterone. These are facts
But they’re not the whole story. They’re not even most of the story
Women produce testosterone too. Not as much as men, but enough to build significant muscle when combined with adequate nutrition and training. The problem is that we’ve never given women the nutrition and training to find out what their testosterone can actually do. We’ve fed them less. We’ve trained them less. We’ve expected them to be less. And then we’ve pointed at the results and said, “See? They’re less.”
This is the same circular logic that corrupts everything we think we know about women’s bodies. Women are smaller because they’re less fed. They’re less muscular because they’re less trained. They’re less developed because they’re less nourished. And then we use their smallness, their lack of muscle, their underdevelopment as proof that this is what they’re supposed to be
It’s not what they’re supposed to be. It’s what we’ve made them
Consider diet culture. The average US girl starts dieting at age 8. Eight. She hasn’t even finished growing and she’s already restricting the fuel her body needs to grow. By the time she hits puberty, she’s already behind. She’s already operating at a deficit. And the culture that put her there tells her it’s for her own good. Tells her she needs to be thin. Tells her she needs to take up less space
Eating disorders disproportionately affect women. Anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, orthorexia. These aren’t personal failings. They’re the predictable outcome of a culture that tells women their worth is inversely related to their size. That the smaller you are, the better you are. That hunger is virtue and appetite is sin
And then we measure the results of this systematic starvation and call it biology
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. There’s a claim floating around that if cis women weren’t consistently starved their entire lives, we’d see a lot more cis women with the kind of bodies we currently associate with trans women. This is where people get defensive. This is where the conversation shuts down. But it shouldn’t, because the underlying logic is sound
What do we associate with trans women’s bodies? Broader shoulders. More muscle definition. Different fat distribution. Taller frames. These are the characteristics we point to when we want to say a trans woman looks different from a cis woman. But what are these characteristics, really? They’re the characteristics of a body that wasn’t starved during development. They’re the characteristics of a body that was allowed to grow. Trans women, regardless of when they transition, developed under male nutritional expectations. They were allowed to eat. They were expected to grow. They were given the fuel their bodies needed to reach their full height and muscle potential during adolescence. Then some of them transition. Hormone therapy changes fat distribution, muscle mass, skin texture. But the skeletal structure, the height, the bone density that was laid down during puberty, that doesn’t change. That’s permanent.
So when we look at a trans woman and say she looks different from a cis woman, we’re not just seeing the effects of testosterone. We’re seeing the effects of being fed. We’re seeing what a body looks like when it’s allowed to fully develop. And we’re calling that “male” because we’ve never seen what “female” looks like under the same conditions
This isn’t about trans women being women. They are. This is about what we’ve done to cis women’s bodies and then called natural. This is about the fact that the “feminine” body we hold up as standard is the body of a person who was systematically undernourished during the most critical developmental period of her life
The implications are staggering. Every study that compares male and female body composition is comparing fed men to underfed women. Every study that looks at strength differences is comparing maximally developed men to developmentally stunted women. Every study that claims inherent biological difference is tainted by the nutritional gap we pretend doesn’t exist
This doesn’t mean there are no biological differences between men and women. There are. Chromosomes exist. Hormones exist. These shape development in real ways. But the size of those differences? The magnitude? The gap? We have no idea what the real gap is because we’ve never measured it under equal conditions. We’ve only measured it under conditions of systematic female deprivation and called the results nature
We’ve kept women under wraps for centuries. We’ve told them to eat less. To take up less space. To be smaller, quieter, less demanding. We’ve built an entire culture around the constraint of female bodies. And then we’ve pointed at those constrained bodies and said, “This is what women are supposed to look like.”
No. This is what women look like when you starve them. This is what women look like when you deny them the fuel they need to fully develop. This is what women look like when you prioritize their appearance over their potential
We’ve only seen the shadow and called it the shape
The question isn’t whether men and women are different. They are. The question is how different they’d be if we stopped making women smaller on purpose. If we fed them like we feed men. If we let them grow like we let men grow. If we stopped punishing appetite and rewarding restriction
It’s time to find out what women actually look like when they’re allowed to be fully human. It’s time to feed the girls. It’s time to let them grow
We might find that the gap isn’t what we thought. We might find that women are capable of far more than we’ve ever allowed them to be. We might find that the bodies we call “male” are just the bodies of people who were fed
But we won’t know until we stop believing the lie that this is how women are supposed to be
It’s not. It’s just how we’ve made them
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media –X, Instagramand Facebook. Subscribethe Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visitdavisvanguard.org/donateor give directly throughActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues
Breaking NewsOpinion
Tags:
Adolescent DevelopmentBody CompositionBone Densitycultural normsGender DifferencesNutritionWomen’s Health
