Biologically speaking, women are slightly shorter than men. That’s been a pretty good system so far, and despite Anakin Skywalker’s claims of the contrary, the system works. But like all things in life, genetics also has outliers that completely ignore how the averages work and makes someone insanely tall or incredibly short.
Today, we’ll be looking at some of the tallest women that are going to stretch (get it?) your beliefs because, well, they’re huge. Enjoy!
Gitika Srivastava
The first but not the last basketball player on this list, Gitika was born in India and measures 6 ft 11 in (about 2.1 meters) tall. Her father was a 7 ft 4 in tall basketball player, so it definitely was a genetics thing. While she’s not the tallest on this list, she was probably pretty annoying to play against.
Yao Defen
She was the tallest living woman according to the Guinness World Records. And since they can’t make beer worth a damn, we at least have to put some stock in their ability to measure things and write them down for posterity. The sad part about Yao’s story is that the cause of her gigantism was a brain tumor, which led to her untimely demise at the age of 40. She measured 7 feet and 7 inches (about 2.30 meters), which makes her physically capable of headbutting most ceilings.
Zainab Bibi
This Pakistani woman measured at 7 ft 2 in (2.19 meters) and was the tallest living woman before she passed away in 2003. She died at the age of 46 after suffering from diabetes and osteoporosis. She also regretted not getting the necessary government support for her illness in the earlier stages of her life.
Malgorzata Dydek
What do you do when you’re 7 ft 2 in (2.19 meters) tall? You play basketball! As a career move that can only be described as “cheating”, Margo was known as the tallest professional female basketball player. She passed away in 2011 at the age of 37 due to cardiac arrest.
Malee Duangdee
The tallest woman in Thailand who sadly passed away at the very young age of 24 measured 6 ft 10 (about 2 meters) in tall. Like most people suffering from gigantism, her size was the result of a brain tumor she had ever since she was 9 years old. It eventually led to her death through a heart attack.
Sandy Allen
Scratch what I said about the Guinness World Records book, since apparently they couldn’t figure out whether this woman or Yao Defen was the actual tallest. Sandy also measured 7 feet 7 inches high and in pure Guinness fashion, they said “close enough” and just put two people on the top spot.
Uljana Semjonova
Another basketball cheater, Uljana was a 7 ft (2.1 meters) tall Soviet-Latvian basketball player. Unlike most other people suffering from gigantism, she’s actually had a full life and despite being born in 1952 is still alive today at the age of 69.
