Gadjo Dilo’s Peccadillos #3: Big Bird Bumper Edition

My declaration of admiration for Romanian Hattie Jacques Draga Olteanu-Matei, and some comments on Lulu LaBonne’s blog about the sexiness of taller women, may have given the impression that I’m some sort of size queen. This is not necessarily true. If I’m honest with myself I realise that I’ve operated – non-interferingly, though nevertheless whether I or the objects of my attention have wanted it or not - an equal opportunities lechery policy during my adult life, and that larger ladies get their share. In fact, to stress how equal opportunities I am I have conflated lofty and large-boned into the same category. And here are the stand-outs:

East European Lady Tennis Players

These barely need an introduction. They’re all over 6 feet tall, blond, professional, and very much admired. If you’re a tall lady – even a gangly one - I advise you to get thee to a tennis court. Maybe you don’t even need to do that. Try wearing all-white clothes and carrying a tennis racket everywhere you go. Learn a little Russian or Slovakian. Still not working? Maybe get a job wiping old ladies down in a care home; acquire a large monobrowed boyfriend called Oleg; look very very cool 99% of the time but dance like a mentalist every time you hear the strains of I’m a Barbie Girl or Ruslana’s Eurovision-conquering Dyki tantsi Hutsul classic. Still carry the tennis racket though, especially when dancing.


Me (allegedly…)

I once had a girlfriend as tall as I, exactly 6 foot - that’s 1.8288m to you foreign johnnies – which is tall for a lass. It was also a bit Mrs Robinson, though I think the age difference was only 7 years. Anyway. One year I wanted to buy said girlfriend (who I won’t indelicately include in this list) a pair of stockings for her birthday. So I goes to a lingerie boutique in Copenhagen (where we lived) and tells the bint behind the counter “I’d like a pair of sexy stockings for a lady who’s the same height as I am”; she sniggers, audibly, “oh, and what sort would you, err, I mean your lady friend like, sir?” Ahh, ok, I see the way it’s going, and I decide to play it up, “we'll, she’s quite a hairy lady so they’d need to be something opaque and probably close-woven”, “hmm, yes, and I’m guessing she’s also quite muscular – an athlete or a body builder, perhaps? – so something durable”; “oh yes, absolutely... no, deary, those ones are latex”; “yes, lovely, aren’t they; would you like to buy some amyl nitrite as well?”

When the Fat Lady Sings

It seems to me a woman does better as a singer if she’s “well covered”. There are exceptions - the pixieish Björk for instance - but to sing as low and louche as this (though unfortunately these clips don't really do her voice justice) you need to be Yugoslav chanteuse Ljiljana Buttler. The number of larger-than-life jazz ladies doesn’t need listing here for me to prove my case further. So I’ll leave you with Macedonia's famed, fuller-figured Gypsy-Turco-Iraqi-Jewish adopter-of-orphans (sounds like hard work) and Nobel Peace Prize nominee (for the adopting, I’m guessing) Esma Redžepova, backed by the Romanian brass phenomenon that is Fanfare Ciocărlia: