AITA for telling my cousin that I’m taller than him?

A tall 18-year-old woman shared an awkward moment with her shorter 17-year-old cousin at a family gathering. When introducing his girlfriend, the cousin falsely claimed she wore lifts to explain their height difference. Taken aback, she corrected him, asserting she was naturally taller.

The cousin got upset and avoided her for the rest of the day. Her mom later suggested she may have embarrassed him unnecessarily, given his sensitivity about height. She wonders if she was wrong for addressing his comment. read the original story below…

‘ AITA for telling my cousin that I’m taller than him?’

In my family, on my dad’s side, there’s a pretty common trend where all the men are pretty tall and all the women are super short. My grandma is 5 ft tall, and my grandpa is 6’3, for example. This held true for most people, with two noticeable exceptions. I (18 f) am 6ft and my cousin (17 m) is 5’6.

This is a sour topic for him, as the family would tease him for it when he was younger. They also use to tease me for how “manish” my height made me, so I understand how frustrating it is. I never teased him for his height growing up (which is relevant to the story). Recently, my cousin got a girlfriend (18 F).

I don’t know much about her, but she seems nice. She’s around my cousin’s height. My cousin took her to our most recent family gathering at my grandparents house to introduce her to the family. To note, every woman on my dad’s side of my family is shorter than my cousin.

The only two women taller than him there were my mother (who is 5’7) and me. So I stood out a bit when I came to introduce myself. As I went to shake her hand, the girl commented on how tall I was and I laughed, brushing it off. But then my cousin said “Well that’s mostly because she wears lifts. Without them, she’s shorter than me.”

I do not wear lifts, and was confused by him saying this. I asked what he meant, clarifying that I don’t wear lifts and that I’m just taller than him. He got huffy and ushered his girlfriend away. He didn’t speak to me the rest of the day.

I told my mom about it, and while she said she found it funny, she advised that it may have been best not to hurt my cousin’s pride. She said teenage boys are emotional and he’d probably be mad at me for a while after I embarrassed him like that.

She’s probably right; I didn’t mean to embarrass him, especially over something I know to be a sensitive subject. Maybe I could have been cooler about it, since it didn’t really matter. It just took me off guard. It also felt a little unfair for him to single me out and lie about me, especially when I had his back all those times our family would tease him. AITA? 

These are the responses from Reddit users:

Catcon95 −  NTA. The fact he thought he could trick his girlfriend into thinking you were wearing 6in lifts without anyone being able to tell is wild

StAlvis −  NTA. he’d probably be mad at me for a while after I embarrassed him like that.. My dude embarrassed *himself*.

Own_Lack_4526 −  NTA. Your cousin brought this on himself by lying about wearing lifts. However, it’s understandable that he’s super sensitive about his height, since it sounds like the entire family except for you tormented him about it – doubly cruel when it’s something he has no control over.

There’s a 17-year-old in my house. They can be a bit moody. If possible, catch your cousin alone and explain to him that you understand how the family is about height because they’ve been at you for it, too – but that there’s no reason to lie about you in order to make himself look better. You wouldn’t have mentioned the height if he hadn’t thrown the lie out there.

Terrible_Radio7353 −  NTA. 7-inch lifts? You should have taken off your shoes and said “what lifts?” Dude is so sensitive because of a true fact. His life is gonna s**k if he can’t get over it.

Aggravating-Item9162 −  NTA at all. I don’t understand why he would even tell this lie? Like, what did he have to gain from this?

Tdluxon −  NTA I think your Mom assessed the situation pretty well… what he said didn’t make sense and you didn’t do anything wrong responding to his confusing comments, but it probably did embarrass and upset him and he’ll probably be a little sour about it the next couple of times you see him (hopefully he’ll get over it quickly).

Shorter guys are always sensitive about it and teenagers are easy to upset. Don’t feel bad though, he kinda brought it on himself.

Arianoor −  NTA. He straight up lied about you to your face. If you correcting him embarrassed him, good, maybe he learned an important lesson. Also, while I hope you have learned to own your beautiful height, not a lot of women I know would try to trick the world into thinking they were 6 feet tall just for shits and giggles.

VinylHighway −  NTA – it’s good for him to be a grown up now

BringVodka −  😂😂😂 you didn’t embarrass him, he did that all by himself NTA

Human_Type001 −  Next family gathering wear 3″ heels. Tower over everyone in your glorious beautiful majestic height. I am also a 6′ female and for years after so much crap from people I would tell them that humankind gets taller as they evolve and thus I’m more evolved than they are.

They have the short genes that haven’t evolved yet, almost like neanderthals. 😉  Also, I hope you stand up straight, tall and proud. It’s sad seeing other tall women hunch over to be shorter because of remarks made about them when they were younger. You’ll actually get many compliments when you stand tall and confident.

Was it fair for her to set the record straight, or should she have handled the situation differently? What do you think? Share your thoughts below!