"The equation of maleness with bigness persists as a dearly loved concept. I’ve heard “Look at the big males” while viewing an elephant matriarch and her offspring in Kenya, and “Look at the big male” while sighting a female musk ox and her young in Alaska, and I’ve gnashed my teeth on both occasions. Authoritative women who correct false impressions are unfeminine and bossy but it is equally true that amateur observers of wildlife tend to assume that the largest animal in any grouping must be a male, and furthermore, that he must be in charge.
Contemplation of a big female mating with a smaller male is so at
odds with our human perspective and the sort of anthropomorphizing that is found in books for children that many intelligent people are surprised to hear that in a majority of species, females do happen to be the larger sex. This is an evolutionary adaptation with probable reproductive advantage for the American bald eagle, the king crab, the snowy owl, the gypsy moth, the chinchilla, the garter snake, the python, the right whale, the humpback whale, the gray whale, the blue whale (thus the largest creature in the world is female), all families of rabbits and hares, the hawks and the falcons, toads, sharks, salmon, flounder, most hummingbirds and turtles, and other fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects too numerous to mention.
Only a half-inch shorter than Prince Charles when she wore her flat heels, Lady Di was reduced in stature by a full head for the postage stamp that commemorated their royal wedding. “She looked up into his eyes” is more than a breathless phrase from a Gothic novel; it is an expression of the heterosexual relationship as we expect to find it. When a woman stands taller than a man she has broken a cardinal
feminine rule, for her physical stature reminds him that he may be
too short—inadequate, insufficient—for the competitive world of
men. She has dealt a blow to his masculine image, undermined his
footing as aggressor-protector. To show a man that he may not be
needed is a terribly unfeminine stance."
