« By Voice Alone | Main | Brookings Benchmarks » Guest Commentary11 Mar 2008 01:21 am A special guest post from Sara: According to the official complaint: Client-9 asked LEWIS to remind him what "Kristen" looked like, and LEWIS said that she was an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and 105 pounds. Since when is 5'5" petite? It's taller than the average height for American women. As a truly petite woman (5'2") I am deeply offended by this defining petiteness upward. Comments (65)
I think this is a mistake that many men make when they hear the word petite applied to the female form. When men hear the word they just think 'small' and at 5' 5" and 105 lbs this woman certainly meets that standard. I think women more often intend the word as it is used in the sizing of clothing. As a teenager I found the whole system for sizing women's clothing absolutely mystifying. I finally have some idea how it all works, or can at least claim to since my girlfriend is unlikely to read this post.... 
Doesn't she have her own blog that you can link to to encourage us to read it? Right, here we go. Perhaps her employer's policy prohibits using the Early Ed Watch for snark on the daily back-and-forth.
I appreciate the tone (really I do). I do think that the average height of U.S. women is 5'4". No stats, just a gut feeling. So I think this getting into the weeds a bit. And lets not confuse "petite" with "short." Petite to me means thin (and not necessarily in a good way, but not necessarily in a bad way), while short just means how tall you are. I find that tallness and shortness are all about the eye of the beholder. I am 6'2", so women under 5'4" are short, while men under 6' are average, and under 5'8" are short. Women between 5'4" and 5'10" are average, and above that are considered tall, at least to me. But I am taller than average, and many people consider me tall, which I do not consider myself to be, just because all of my relatives are as tall or taller than me (including my sister, which is perhaps why I tend to think of women of average height as short, which is my own, admittedly biased, opinion). In any event, petite for women is like wiry or thin or reedy for men. It is about a person's build, not their height. Or at least that is how I think of it. Petite in this context means small (I think), not short. And for what it is worth, a person's height is a really dumb thing to get hung up about, even dumber than other physical characteristics as far as I am concerned (but please don't ask me what physical characteristics are worth getting hung up about, I won't have a good answer, as there isn't one).
I appreciate the tone (really I do). I do think that the average height of U.S. women is 5'4". No stats, just a gut feeling. So I think this getting into the weeds a bit. And lets not confuse "petite" with "short." Petite to me means thin (and not necessarily in a good way, but not necessarily in a bad way), while short just means how tall you are. I find that tallness and shortness are all about the eye of the beholder. I am 6'2", so women under 5'4" are short, while men under 6' are average, and under 5'8" are short. Women between 5'4" and 5'10" are average, and above that are considered tall, at least to me. But I am taller than average, and many people consider me tall, which I do not consider myself to be, just because all of my relatives are as tall or taller than me (including my sister, which is perhaps why I tend to think of women of average height as short, which is my own, admittedly biased, opinion). In any event, petite for women is like wiry or thin or reedy for men. It is about a person's build, not their height. Or at least that is how I think of it. Petite in this context means small (I think), not short. And for what it is worth, a person's height is a really dumb thing to get hung up about, even dumber than other physical characteristics as far as I am concerned (but please don't ask me what physical characteristics are worth getting hung up about, I won't have a good answer, as there isn't one).
Yeah, I've never dated anyone as tall as 5'5". Weirdly, almost everyone I've ever dated at all has been 5'4".
It's about the frame.
The average height of American women is indeed 5'4". When my 5'4" girlfriend refers to herself as short, I remind her of this. "Petite" must have been used to describe some of the prostitute's proportions other than her height. FWIW, I had this idea after the Vitters affair, that if someone could figure out how to run a truly discreet prostitution service, there would definitely be a niche for that in D.C. How would that work? Maybe they could hire only non-English speaking foreign women, who would be less likely to recognize or be able to assist the lawmen; maybe they could eschew credit cards... I don't know. It's a puzzle.
Okay, some of the previous posters have more or less implied this, but I'll be blunt. Given the context, I'd assume LEWIS used "petite" to suggest that "Kristen" had small (that is, smaller than average) breasts. Bob
other than the hypocrisy, what disappoints me about spitzer is his total lack of respect for the game: he was a "difficult" John and used an inappropriate form of payment - everyone knows you pay hookers with cash if you are going to play the game, respect it
Ach, how confused you all are! :-) Culturally, petite means tiny/doll-like, relatively short, but not just short, more importantly: having a small bone structure. A short boxy farm wife built like an ox is not "petite." (You can still have big breasts and be petite! Especially these days! Think Pamela Anderson.) In womens' clothes size, it really does have a very special technical meaning totally apart from the cultural meaning: It is not just short (short hems on pants and skirts) but short-waisted. (Guys have the long or short sleeve or jacket measurement that gets at this, the long or short middle section.) Specially-labeled Petite sizes for women are tailored with a short middle section and for short legs as well.
What Mike said is the truth, height alone isn't sufficient. And the first poster is awfully rude.
FWIW, I had this idea after the Vitters affair, that if someone could figure out how to run a truly discreet prostitution service, there would definitely be a niche for that in D.C. How would that work?The CIA uses blind people at the concession stands inside the headquarters.. so as to not compromise any NOC types. Maybe we can extend this to whores. Cut their tongues out and we've got one more problem solved!
It's about the frame. That's what I'd say as well. Thin, small frame, between 5'0 and 5'7 and I might classify that woman as petite, rightly or wrongly.
I know the feeling. I'm 6'1 (which puts me above average, demographically), but my three living, male, blood-relatives are 6'3, 6'5 and 6'11.
C'mon now, Fred. English-speaking prostitutes don't know a Senator's a Senator because they watch CSPAN. No, I'm sure the Mark Vitters of the world tell their escorts exactly who they are and what they do, just to feel important. If there was a non-English-speaking prostitution ring, politicians like Vitter would start carrying photos of themselves speaking on the floor of the Senate.
To qualify as petite a woman should be both shorter and skinnier than average. But one can imagine a situation where an average height is counteracted by exceptionally below average weight to still qualify. The average American woman weighs about 140lbs, so Kristen, weighing in at 20% less than average, does indeed qualify as petite.
When a pimp calls his hooker "petite", governor Spitzer expects a beauty both frail and perky. Anything else he would consider a false advertisement.
Yeah, I'd imagine in this context, petite = slightly healthier than anorexic. As for starting an escort service, cash only seems prudent. And where to find women won't talk? The trick (so to speak) is look at who, by long custom, British royals take as mistresses--- respectable married women who have a reputation to lose. Finding women like that to turn out is a problem, there probably aren't enough such women with hooker fantasies, so recruiting probably involves drug addiction and/or blackmail. As a practical matter, you'd be smart to exclude public officials and celebrities from your clientele. Since public figures have less legal protection from libel suits (and have journalists looking to bust them), they're bound to ruin the whole deal. Why risk getting your other rich clients caught in the net?
Personally I would call a 5'5" woman who weighed 105 lbs. "really skinny, like, breakably so." So I don't really have a problem describing her as "petite," even if she's a little above average height.
I thought you as (I presume) a blond would be offended by the characterization of a non-blond as pretty.
By petite Sara, I assumed they meant stupid. I see you agree.
Since when is 5'5" petite? Maybe the 5'5" height includes 6-inch heels.
I know exactly how Sara feels. I am a guy who is 5'5" tall. I remember David Eckstein, who is 5'7", being referred to as "diminutive."
British royals take as mistresses--- respectable married women who have a reputation to lose. Makes sense in theory, but you're missing something that would come into play in practice. That's Britain. This is the US. We have guns. They do not. If you serialize clandestine, paid affairs with married women, making them prostitutes, you're eventually going to pick a playmate with the wrong husband, which will, in turn, get you shot and killed.
I am deeply offended by this defining petiteness upward If prostitution were legal, this sort of thing could be better regulated. Maybe the industry needs its own Sarbanes-Oxley to set norms and standards of disclosure.
So Matt is dating a midget? Sir!!! I take extreme umbrage at the ungentlemanly aspersion you cast upon a lady with whom you no doubt have no first hand acquaintance! What world is this where one may malign the beloved of our gracious host at the drop of a hat? For shame! Yours truly,
The new petite is extremely thin and at 5'5" 105 she is getting into stick figure territory. Petite clothes size no longer has much to do with the term. What ever happened to that DC madam with the big list of clients that was going to be fully revealed. Is she even alive?
Petite clothing is designated by height, not on frame or other factors. That is probably what Sara is talking about here. I agree that the word itself probably just means that Kristen was thin, although at 5'5" and 105 pounds that should have been pretty obvious anyway.
Why hasn't someone suggested "Don't get married!"? That way there is no embarrassed, insulted, pissed off wife. No disappointed children. Fool around all you want with anyone you want. If your current girlfriend starts whining about lord knows what bullshit kick her to the curb. Quit giving out or suddenly finds exotic sex too much trouble? Bam! Dump her shit and her frigid ass in the fucking gutter and find someone else. 6 months to a year, that's about how long one lasts before she expires (almost literally) in the sack and then you gotta move one. Eliot effed it all up tying the knot. You want Wesson oil, rubber sheets, toys, Tantric marathons, maybe another chick at the party and a crescendo of spit and shit and cum and piss and sweat all over the bed and floor and walls?! DON'T GET MARRIED!
As a 5'2 woman I too am offended by the moving of the bar to 5'5. She would definitely be too tall for my pants. A woman that's 5'5, 105lbs falls under the category of "emaciated" not "petite".
5'5" and 105 is indeed emaciated--speaking as yet another 5'2 (and a half) woman. You don't think they're shaving a few pounds off "Kristen?" And if they aren't, you better be darn sure her breasts aren't real.
"Petite": 5' 5" and 105 pounds is, at least, extremely slim. I wonder if the woman's picture is going to surface and we'll find out that Spitzer has a creepy fixation with hookers that look like schoolgirls. If she had knee socks and a plaid skirt in her carry-on, you'd have to think his political career is over.
This goes back to high school fantasy. I think that she is the embodiment of the high school cheerleader type that Elliot the uncool , bespectacled grind desperately wanted, but who wouldn't even look in his direction. Now he can get the fantasy of finally nailing his once unattainable ideal, at $3500 per night.
Was spitzer the uncool nerd type in high school? He strikes me as having been a hopelessly rich trustfund kid.
I think this Sara should not be so offended, as I have met very few American women who weigh less than 130 pounds. By that metric 110 is very petite.
If she had knee socks and a plaid skirt in her carry-on, you'd have to think his political career is over. You mean if he gets his civil rights back after his Mann Act time in the pokey.
So why is it Spitzer will give a hooker $3000 plus for a date but Matthew won't take Sara to a decent restaurant? I know ,I know. He spent his discretionary income on a flat screen TV so he could watch basketball. Time to set the hook Sara. Gaff this fish and pull him in. Those eggs aren't getting any younger. You don't want to have children at age 37 and end up with a teenager looking like Matthew but with Down's Syndrome. Which would be a remarkably pure exemplar of a Harvard legacy, come to think of it.
Oh dear Sara. Ah, I don't know how to put this delicately. . . Sara she's a prostitute. As has been pointed out before, in this context "petite" means that she doesn't have huge breasts.
Oh dear Sara. Ah, I don't know how to put this delicately. . . Sara she's a prostitute. As has been pointed out above, in this context "petite" means that she doesn't have huge breasts.
Forget petite, what does she mean when she describes herself as "American"?
A David Eckstein reference! I've been waiting for one forever. Also: petite does not mean short waisted. It just means short legs. A shirt for a short torso is just a small.
Forget petite, what does she mean when she describes herself as "American"? Not Russian.
Being 5'5" and 105 lbs is not "emaciated" or "extremely thin". Audrey Hepburn circa "Roman Holiday" was 5'7" and 110 lbs (she was also "petite" as the term was being used in the context of the governor's communication).
I wasn't going to comment, because you guys have it well in hand here -- but I do have to point out that Audrey Hepburn was not petite. She was anorexic. And she was definitely emaciated.
Was Spitzer the uncool nerd type in high school? He strikes me as having been a hopelessly rich trustfund kid. It's not either/or.
DonBoy, Not having gone to an elite prep school for rich kids, I couldn't say for sure, but something tells me it has different social demarcations than a public high school, e.g., not everyone who gets straight-As is considered a nerd, there's less of a dichotomy between the scholars and the athletes, etc. Also, parents don't pay $20k+ per year for their children to be ostracized, so I assume schools like this put some attention into the participation of the students in social events as well. I'd venture smart, rich kids such as Spitzer wouldn't go through a high school like that without a date.
I think the weirder part is that he describes her as "American." What does that tell you about somebody's appearance?
Petite, in clothing terms, does usually refer to clothing designed with someone with a shorter torso in mind. I have a friend who is 5'8" who buys dresses in the petite section because she has a short waist. She doesn't buy pants there, however, because they're too short. The readymade clothing industry isn't finely graded. Petite, in the sense most people are discussing here, can actually refer to either height or bone structure. According to the OED, petite refers to: a woman or girl: of small stature and build; (formerly freq. depreciative) {dag}slight, little (obs.); (now usually in positive sense) attractively small, fine-boned, dainty. Also of a person's stature or figure.
Okay - I can see why most women would be confused, as 'petite' sizing goes up to a 14. To most women, 'petite' means 'short'. However, the word actually means 'small and slim', not short. In the case of describing a prostitute, the word would probably imply 'small-boned, thin, and small-breasted'. And as others have observed, at 5'5'' and 105 - that's a teeny, tiny woman. Unless she has bird bones, a very slender woman at that height would weigh around 125.
Whether 5'5" and 105 pounds is "extremely thin" or just thin depends on whether you're closer to being a teenager or middle aged. If you plug it into a BMI calculator, it corresponds to a BMI of 17.5, which would officially be considered to be underweight, but teenagers, if I remember right, get more leeway on low BMIs. At any rate, "petite" probably does refer to her frame rather than her height. (And speaking as someone who's 5'5" and no longer 105 pounds, I certainly don't consider myself petite, though my 6'4" and over 200 pound husband keeps telling me I'm small.)
I'm glad Lynn has gone to the BMI, which is where I went after I saw that stat. Spitzer likes them thin.
don't think they're shaving a few pounds off "Kristen?" Unfortunately, her weight probably isn't the only thing that "Kristen" shaved :(((
Lmao @ the BMI. Anybody using the BMI as a reference should be aware of the problems with it. A person with a slim build and slim bone structure will be indicated as 'underweight', even if they are not. A person who is muscular (particularly if they are shorter than average) will always always be described as 'overweight'. To put it bluntly, the BMI sucks a scientific or diagnostic tool
Soullite: You might indeed be right in that clearly, 'Kristen' is an outlier and the BMI does not deal well with outliers. Nevertheless, BMI confirms what our eyes/minds tell us: 5'5" and 105# is pretty skinny.
If you consider women's clothing sizes, a 5'5" 105 lb woman would most likely wear a petite size. I'm that same height and 20 lbs heavier and I usually have to buy "petite" sizes because otherwise the shoulder width is too wide and pant legs are much too long. So if she wears petite sizes and is thin to boot, I don't see the wrongness in being called petite.
I'm 5'2" with a medium frame. I easily maintained a weight of 98-102 until I was 21 (ate everything, never exercised) and I was always slim, never gaunt. My (lazyass) adult weight is 120-125. If I were more active, I could probably get down to about 105-110, but I'm not worrying about it. But I know women of my height who have very fine frames, and they are correspondingly lighter. So I think a 5'5" woman could be at 105 pounds without being anorexic or gaunt if she truly was fine-framed. It's possible that "Kristen" is slim without being gaunt, it's possible that she's just damn skinny, and it's possible that she's rounding down the scale a bit.
Fred, The no credit cards wouldn't work, it was the series of $9,000 cash transfers that drew the feds attention to Spitzer and uncovered this ring. I think what you't need to do is set up a legit buisness that could bill large amounts as a cover, something hard to trace. I think I just came up with it, a great idea for a plotical thriller. The cover business would be selling high end wine. You deliver a few cases of 3 buck chuck but on the books call it something else.
"Nevertheless, BMI confirms what our eyes/minds tell us: 5'5" and 105# is pretty skinny." Exactly. Whatever the BMI's limitations as a diagnostic tool, it's quite adequate to the purposes of this discussion - establishing how far and in what way the woman in question deviates from average. She's not short, but she's very skinny. Unless she's a teenager, in which case she's still skinny, but less of an outlier (but I assume she isn't, or the escort business in question would be in even more trouble than is reported).
Chuck: "Forget petite, what does she mean when she describes herself as "American"?" Based on my experience, they mean it in "The Good Shepherd" way: WASP. Fred: "Also, parents don't pay $20k+ per year for their children to be ostracized..." And yet, it happens. Whether the school is international, domestic private, or public, the kids find ways to differentiate themselves into cliques. "I'd venture smart, rich kids such as Spitzer wouldn't go through a high school like that without a date." Unless you're in a school where everyone would count as rich from "our" POV. As I've learned up close in my neck of the woods, there are different kinds of rich.
Aside from the "petite" thing, here's what struck me about the quote from above: Spitzer has done this so many times that he has to be reminded which one was "Kristen"?
Andrea Corr is 5' 1-1/2". She also has very small tits and slim legs. That's "petite". Salma Hayek is 5' 2". She is definitely NOT "petite" because she has huge tits and a voluptuous form. "Petite" doesn't have everything to do with height, although frequently being short is lumped into it. My question is: this nut ran up $80,000 worth of bills on these broads? At $5,500 an hour? I do know there are "courtesans" who charge at that level. I was referred recently by someone to an ad for a woman who specifically charges incredible sums for her "companionship" - up to $40,000 for a WEEKEND! Here she is: Chloe Bancroft: Here are her rates: "You should match my other suitors, or else I'll feel like you don't care. Now I seem to expect £5,000 for an evening; £10,000 for a slumber party, and £20,000 for the weekend. Should a few amazing encounters occur, we may slip into another type of arrangement appropriate with new developments—I'm an enthusiastic participant in every story worth telling." For those rates, she'd better look like Salma Hayek and screw like a top-ranked porn star!
5'5'' and 105 pounds doesn't seem unhealthily thin....I know a girl who's about that height and only 90 pounds, she seems pretty healthy.
Mystery solved: Now you can see for yourself what "Kristen" looks like. From her MySpace page, via Yahoo: "Kristen" .
I wavered within a few pounds either direction of 105 pounds for about ten years, until I reached my mid twenties (and I'm 5'5"). I'm not saying that's always an unhealthy weight; I'm saying it's a thin one. Her breasts look bigger than I remember mine being when I was that weight, though.
She doesn't look to be 105 lbs in that photo to me either. She looks like she has some muscle tone too. At 5'5" and 105 lbs, I think a girl would look bonier.
I would have assumed that "petite" referred not specifically to height, but the woman's figure. Some women are small-boned, small-breasted, and delicate looking, regardless of height. I would think that a man looking for a hooker would be more concerned about this kind clue to the woman's "look" than he would be with height. 105 lbs for a 5'5" women seems kind of low, suggesting a tather "slight" or "petite" look, compared with women of the same height and a higher weight, bone-size, etc. Many men seem to find this look less threatening and thus more attractive. Spitzer may be attracted to that type. Just guessing, but I think it should be clear that "petite" does not refer specifically to issues of height.
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Heads in the Sand
So Matt is dating a midget?
Posted by JFD | March 11, 2008 1:35 AM