Tresca Behling is a legendary Bay Area bassist, a fantabulous hair stylist at Glama-Rama, and very tall.
Mark Montgomery French: How tall are you?
Tresca Behling: I’ve been 5′11″ in my life. I’m 55 years old, so I am probably a little under 5′10″now.
Does extreme height run in your family?
Yes. I am a mix of somewhat tall, doughy Midwestern people and then very tall, rangy Kentucky Midwesterners. I got a little of both unfortunately.
How old were you when you first became 5′11″?
When I was in eighth or ninth grade, so at 13 or 14 I was as tall as I was going to get. I grew fast and for a long time it was awkward. It took awhile before I found power in it. When I was 14 I went to a Rather Ripped Records’ anniversary party, which was at a bar. I got in because I was tall and I had makeup on. I saw Snakefinger and Little Roger & The Goosebumps, and it was basically one of the best nights of my life. It was like—“My God, this is the best”—simply because I was tall.
When you reached this incredible height, were coaches running after you for sports?
There was a little bit of that, but I think I looked too much like the stoner/rocker type, and there was going to be no cheese down that tunnel. I got asked all the time. Do you play basketball, do you play volleyball?
I’ve never been asked to play volleyball, ever. And I like volleyball.
I think they imagine you with ponytails and shorts, and…
I used to pull off the ponytail-and-shorts look, back when I had hair. Was there a time gap between being tall and realizing you were tall?
I’ve always been one of the tallest kids in my class. And I was thinking about this—as a girl—girls are cute. At some point, girls become beautiful. Being tall, I just felt like an ogre for many years. It just was never really a positive thing, except when I wanted to go do something rad like hitchhike up to Oregon to go hang in a pot farm when I was 13. I could go do adventurous things, but I didn’t feel feminine.
About the power thing, one day in eighth grade there was this girl named Robin who was hanging out with me and all of a sudden, we were surrounded by girls who terrified me. These were the tough girls, and I had never been tough, and I abhor violence. They surrounded me, they looked at her, and they said, “We’re still going to kick your ass! You think we’re not going to get you because you’re hanging around with Tresca? We’ll get you one day.” I realized that my height was protecting this little woman from five of the scariest people that I knew. That was the day that I kind of realized that I was tall and that it meant something else.
Did you notice a change in relationships with family or close friends when you went from a certain height to your final height?
My mom loved my height. She would hug me and always say, “my enormous Amazonian daughter.” As for friends, in ninth grade I had a crush on this guy Kevin. I liked him, and he liked me too. But it got to this crucial point where actually he said, “listen, I cannot do this because you’re just too tall”. I punched a wall, and I broke my hand.
Oh no!
I had a cast up to here (pointing at her wrist). I was just so pissed off and heartbroken, but I also thought, “what a pussy”. I know very tall women who will not date guys who are shorter than them. I know tall women who won’t date guys under 5′11″. Like, they don’t have to be taller than them, but they have to be at least 5′11″. I have never been that person.
It’s really weird, and it rubs me the wrong way that these women are so…
Height-ist?
Height-ist. I want to feel feminine. I want to be held. When I do date a big guy, it’s fantastic to feel that. It’s not required, but it’s fantastic. Some women really need to feel like the more feminine member of the team and that is completely measured out in height. Which is very abstract to me.
I could imagine someone needing an amusement park style Yosemite Sam poster on the wall stating “you must be this tall to date me.”
My current boyfriend is 6′2″, but my last boyfriend was 5′3″. Basically, what I learned from breaking my hand over that guy was that he was just a big fat pussy and couldn’t handle it. I could handle it but he couldn’t.
I once got out of a car to talk with a guy who was cruising in the car next to me. He stepped out, then I stepped out and he went “Whoa! Whoa!” and got back in his car. I said “Sorry”. I felt like Sasquatch. It was pretty fucking awful.
Do strangers approach you about your height?
Strange, when you’re a 55-year-old woman people don’t approach you much at all. There’s a certain invisibility that starts to happen. But when I was young, absolutely.
How has your height changed your perspective of the world?
I realize that there’s a certain privilege involved with it in terms of feeling safe, as a woman. There probably have been times that I’m completely unaware of when I was coming back from some place late at night by myself where some guy looked at me and went “no, not her” because I was more than he was prepared to handle. If he wanted to dominate something, I was not going to be that dominatable one.
A lot of small women I know have not felt safe in the world. I’m talking as young women. Young women are always the ones that are…
Preyed upon?
Preyed upon. When I was young, guys would flash me.
Whoa.
Oh God, it happened so many times. Right on hiking trails, whatever. There’s so many smaller women who’ve experienced so much more harm than I think I have. I have been date raped by a guy who was 6′7″. Like he had to be that big, you know what I mean? There’s a whole lot of privilege that I’ve experienced, so much that I thought sexism didn’t exist to the degree to which it exists.
I was molested as a kid. Some guy dragged me off the street when I was 10 and tried to do stuff to me behind a house. This shit happens to women all the time, and at some point it really just stopped happening to me as much. That change definitely shaped my world view. Feeling powerful, feeling privilege. When I feel a little bit unsafe on the street, I pull myself up and I add a little swagger and I know that I can look more intimidating. It’s a little power and privilege in not being as vulnerable as a woman.
When I go to concerts, and this has been since I was 15 years old in punk rock, I will look around me, because I am big and obscure vision, and I will pull all the smaller women around me in front of me. And they’re always very, very grateful, but what this does is clear the line of vision for me, because there’s suddenly a gap of a few feet where there’s nothing but short people, so I can see the stage better.
At The Cocteau Twins there was this very tiny, very stoned woman who I put in front of me and it was sort of like a kangaroo-in the-pouch situation. She was so whacked out on Ecstasy and it was such an amazing show, that I was just kind of a tree and protected her the entire show. So there is a certain amount of protectiveness that comes out with height. And I’ve jumped into some fights, too. It’s the noblesse oblige, except it’s the height oblige.
I assume the fight you jumped into was not at The Cocteau Twins.
No, no, no. This is was something completely else. And what I got for my trouble was I got punched twice in the mouth and my lips wrapped around my teeth, and I went to COMDEX in Las Vegas the next day.
Wow. Heavy. Speaking of heavy, I was curious if the size of the electric bass attracted you to playing it.
No. Why is Barry White so fucking irresistible? Because he’s got that…
Bass!
Women are much more sensitive to high frequencies, so that we can hear our babies crying. When the winds are blowing through the Savannah grasses, back when we were all fucking in Africa, we just had to be tuned to a higher frequency. So it wasn’t the size of the bass but definitely the big comforting sound. It’s also easier to play, even though I’ve got long hands. I love how the bass goes in a song, and I love the feel of bass strings. They’re big and comfy.
I’ve had heavy basses, and eventually it feels everything’s pulling me down, my spine is compacting. I use an elastic strap which allows the bass to move without pulling my body down.
I’ve never heard of this.
They’re the best. When you’re just standing around talking, you can kind of hold it up and bounce it a little bit and take the weight off. It’s really nice.
What surprises you about height that average-sized people don’t realize?
Being pregnant was awesome. I was easily getting in and out of cars, I was still hiking, and I was still washing the car when I was nine months pregnant because I had so much more leverage. My arms were so much longer and my legs were so much longer that I just had more levers. Whereas these tiny women are like…
Useless.
…they’re buried under this giant egg. They’re like “Argh”. I’m like “I’m still doing things”.
Also, in the ’70s, remember those nice high-waist bell bottoms that just totally covered your platform shoes, how cool that looked? Never fucking happened for me. Number one, there were no pants long enough. Levi’s did make a 29-36 for a minute, but I don’t know where those went because they barely have any 36 inseams anymore. Number two, wearing platform shoes, no, that wasn’t going to happen. That was just going to put me in a different alien fit…
When vintage clothes were big in the early ’90s it could never become part of my lifestyle.
The occasional Hawaiian shirt, perhaps.
Yeah maybe, right? I’m not going to find some nice XXL ’30s blazer that just happens to show up from someone’s attic…
I just had a recent insight about that, which was I thought everybody was insanely tiny back then because that’s what we see from vintage clothing. Those are the clothes that survived, which means all the normal-sized people wore their clothes out. These are the size ones and twos that didn’t get a lot of play.
That makes total sense.
At the Rosie the Riveter Museum, there’s a newsreel that says husky girls everywhere are encouraged to work in the factories [inferring] the little petite ones, they can’t possibly do that. They’re too cute to do that, so they hired the husky girls, back in the ’30s and ’40s …
Who were working their clothes until they fell apart.
Exactly.
Riveting things.
It wasn’t like the onset of McDonald’s or anything like that. There were fucking big people all the time. There were some really great late ’60s, early ’70s golf pants that were in really long sizes, bizarre polyester patterns that I found in vintage. I just think that bigger people, maybe we were harder on our clothes and we wore them out.
I totally believe that. It holds so much more weight per square inch.
Those seams don’t have a chance.
Have you met a famous person and they’re like, “My God, you’re so tall?”
I was at the SIGGRAPH convention, watching a computer animation at the Apple booth. All of a sudden I noticed that there’s some little guy who’s leaning on me. I tried to move away from him but for some reason he’s still leaning on me. I looked down and it’s Jerry Brown, who was the Governor of California at the time. I kind of nudged him off of me but I really just felt like a piece of furniture.
Another time I was in the gift shop of the New York Modern Museum of Art. I was from California and it was the ’80s, so I had a blond brushy flattop and I was wearing a vintage Hawaiian shirt and hot pink shorts. I look across the shop and there’s my cousin, who going “Look, next to you”. I looked down and it’s Diane Keaton who was like, miniature. She’s looking up at me like I am an object that she’s never seen before.
Like an alien landed?
Alien. Because in New York at that time everyone wore black.
Right.
I was enormous and colorful. I just looked down, and she kind of smiled surprisedly up at me. Anyway…I have been enormous to some people.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Image Credits: Mark Montgomery French