A couple of months ago, I rewrote an old post on this blog about the “curvy” Flamboyant Gamine. This blog has been around for a long time now, and the older posts date from before David joined the Facebook groups and changed the way all of us see and work with his system. It feels like the most appropriate thing for me to do, rather than make a whole bunch of posts private, is to continue to rewrite posts to update them to how I understand the Kibbe Metamorphosis system to work now.

Today, I’ll like to go back and write about height in Kibbe. This is a subject of some controversy. You can find all kinds of things on the internet, like height is just one factor of many, and shouldn’t be given more weight than something else. But let’s remember the basics of yin and yang. Yin is short and rounded; yang is long and angular. Your height is key to this very fundamental aspect of yin and yang.

1. Why can’t certain Image IDs be taller?

R, TR, SG, FG, and SC all top out around 5’5″ (SC 5’6″). Why? Because the taller you are, the more prominent yang is, and it starts to become too much length (yang) for these balances. TR is much more yin than people seem to think, especially. Gamines need to be compact, and you would lose that compactness with more length. SC, of course, needs to be moderate, with extra yin, and you cannot have that with length.

2. Why are tall women limited to three Image IDs?

Literal length is automatically yang. At a certain point (which seems to be around 5’9″), a woman automatically has a dominant vertical (Dramatic, Soft Dramatic, or Flamboyant Natural). You automatically have a strong vertical, because it’s literally there. And then what you have is vertical, vertical with curve (and perhaps width), or vertical with width. There is no way to get to moderate, or juxtaposition. You always have that vertical you must honor, because it’s literally there. You cannot ignore it while dressing, or you’ll look like you’re wearing the clothes of a much smaller person.

3. But [celebrity] is taller!

First, celebrities are not intended as data points. They should not be used as points of comparison. They are there as “lodestars,” i.e., inspiration. Some celebrities David has seen in person; others he hasn’t. There is far more emphasis placed on celebrities around the Kibbe-focused internet than there should be. The best examples of an Image ID are people who have actually gone to Kibbe and been given a Metamorphosis by him. Celebrities are fun to watch on screen for inspiration, but should not be taken more seriously than David’s own words on an Image ID. Please, please never bring up Rihanna being 5’8″ and in TR to me ever again. If she is truly 5’8″, she would no longer be in TR. Same with every other celebrity listed with a height taller than the range for the Image ID.

4. Why can shorter women be in the taller IDs?

Women who are shorter but in a taller Image ID (i.e., a 5’3″ SD) are there because they still have a vertical that needs to be addressed in clothing, even if they aren’t literally tall. But you cannot have it the other way around, because literal length always has to be addressed.

5. But what if people are taller in my country?

Your Image ID is the same no matter where you are. It’s not relative to your surroundings. If people tend to be taller in your country, that just means there are more yang people in your country. How your body needs to be accommodated in clothing doesn’t change. This is the same for ethnicities. You are assessed as an individual.

Conclusion

Basically, height comes from the way yin and yang works. If you think about it in terms of the basics I have in the beginning of this post–yin is short and rounded, yang is long and angular–it helps makes sense of why height plays such an important role in your Image ID. If you think about what “moderate” means, for instance, and why Cs are described that way, the fact that Classics aren’t going to be 6′ tall makes perfect sense. And if Gamines need to be compact, they just can’t be tall either. And so on. Thinking about yin and yang will help you make sense of the question of height.