Here’s three chairs for tall young women Second-last par cuts. Make sure last par stays column ex CRISPIN HULL Thank heavens for all those very tall, young women in their early 20s. It means I can put aside earlier thoughts of lodging a complaint for sexual and disability discrimination. It sounds a bit weird, but let me explain. My disability is having exceptionally long thigh bones and generally being taller than most people. It has meant that for years I have rarely been able to find a comfortable chair.
At work there has been little difficulty. The glories of the computer revolution and occuptational-health-and-safety committees with nothing else to do has meant workplaces have been armed (pardon the pun) with chairs that ride up and down on ozone-depleting gas with backs and arms that would make a contortionist comfortable. At home, however, it is different. Lounge furniture is impossible. I have sat on a thousand lounge chairs in a hundred shops in the past two decades and not one has been comfortable. About 10 years ago, though, I found a lounge suite in a furniture-maker’s shop with a huge base. But the back was impossibly low, so I got him to make one of the chairs with a very high back for me. Bliss. But it was a nightmare for various short guests who disappeared into the back of the lounge along with old biros, two-dollar coins, remote-control duvalackeys and the ever-lost spare set of keys. These guests’ legs dangled like Humpty Dumpty’s.
It became clear this lounge had to go, but only in the unlikely event that something comfortable for me and my disabling thigh bones could be found. More department stores. “”Take me to your biggest chair,” I demanded. “”Hopeless. Too small.” I hounded sales assistants with diatribes about dumb furniture makers. Why can’t they learn from tailors and clothes manufacturers? Isn’t it obvious that people come in different sizes? Why can’t they make chairs in three sizes (large, medium and small) instead of all one size (somewhere between small and medium) so I can have a lounge with one large chair and one medium? It gradually dawned on me. It is because fuirniture manufacturers are sex discriminators.
They manufacture furniture for women, who on average are shorter than men. You see, women, by and large, make the decisions about furniture, because they are thought to have a better appreciation of colours and fabrics. But it is the size that counts. Who cares if a chair is the colour of an American’s golf trousers as long as it is comfortable. Perhaps a sex-discrimination case would shake the furniture manufacturers out of their pro-female bias which has condemned so many tall males to hours of discomfort. This is physical discomfort, not the mere emotional discomfort that is usually associated with sex discrimination. It is a very insidious and subtle form of discrimination.
Here is a whole industry catering for the whole population in exactly the same way and thereby discriminating against one part of the population that does not fit the stereotype of the medium-size, five-foot-eight-inches (or whatever that is in metric) person. It’s no good the furniture manufacturers saying: “”We treat everyone exactly them same.” That is no defence. By treating everyone the same they are clearly discriminating against tall males. Leave aside some of the legal problems, the sheer publicity of a sex discrimination action would force the furniture manufacturers into submission. Anyway, I was about to launch this action when I happened to be in a department store in Albury of all places. And there I found them. Not one, but three lounge chairs that appeared to be made for someone my size. Amazing. After all these years.
I choose the best at great expense, telling the sales assistant of my two decades of frustration. She smiled and said something like: “”People are getting taller, you know. The young people are taller than our generation.” She was right. I recall seeing those tiny suits of armour in the Tower of London of previous generations. The furniture manufacturers are still aiming at the women, of course. That’s where the market is. But the height of the average 20-year-old woman in 1995 is about the same as their father’s, not their mother’s. It’s a very comforting thought.