Taken Seriously by Tracey Connelly

“She’ll be small. She’ll be very small.”

That was what the doctor told my parents when I was diagnosed with Turner’s Syndrome as a baby back in the eighties. At the time they didn’t really consider it much of an issue. Who has a problem with a petite girl?

According to endocrineweb.com the average woman with Turner’s Syndrome will grow to about 4ft 8in. Having been given the treatment from toddlerhood up to the age of twelve I managed to reach the soaring heights of 5ft 1in. I am still much shorter than the average height of the general female population. This is most obvious when I’m standing next to my twelve year old niece who is now head and shoulders taller than me.

I have no issue with this. I walk with my head held high as a habit so it isn’t until people examine me a little closer they realise how short I am (unless I’m standing with a tall preteen.) However, I was chatting with some other TS women the other day and they were venting their frustrations that the fail to be taken seriously with their height. One had even been laughed out of a job interview for appearing too ‘young’.

It made me think of the other week when my niece and I were in a shop. She still had her school uniform on. The woman called to us, ‘girls? You’ll have to use the next checkout.’

She had assumed we were both kids. It’s an easy assumption to make. As I said, my niece is taller than me and just starting high school. I wasn’t offended by this. I found it amusing. However, it did give me cause to consider my fellow TS sisters who experience this kind of treatment perhaps more often and perhaps in a more condescending way. Do we TS women struggle more than the average to be taken seriously? Does our youthful looks and height automatically dismiss us in people’s eyes?