At six-foot-seven, when Ashley Adair walks down the street, people stop, their mouths drop open, and the cell phone cameras come out.
Some would be uncomfortable with that kind of attention. Adair’s reaction? She wears high heels that make her height closer to seven feet, and squeezes her body into tight fitting sweaters and micro-miniskirts.
She loves the attention. She came to our attention when she approached one of our favorite photographers, Howard Huang (remember Musto as Lohan?), about doing some publicity shots for her.
As a way of introducing herself, she sent along a YouTube video made two years ago when she was stranded by a friend in Times Square and it nearly caused a riot.
In the video, she’s wearing a very small dress. The material fights her like a sweater shrunk in the wash. As she walks rapidly past gawking tourists, she has to keep pulling down her tiny skirt. The men shooting the video appear to be losing their minds.
“That ain’t no lady! That ain’t no lady!” the cameraman can be heard yelling as he keeps trying to convince his friend to get closer to Adair.
Adair says she’s used to that kind of freakout. “Women will say ‘you’re so tall already. Why wear heels?’ But you just can’t wear flats with a sexy outfit,” she says.
She didn’t always feel so sure of herself. As a high school student in Washington DC, she wore frumpy clothes to de-emphasize her height, which, back then, was a mere six-foot-three.
Adair tried basketball, but soon lost interest. It was a low point. When an older sister began dressing up to draw attention to her height (she was six-foot-one), Ashley began to see the possibilities. “Guys went crazy,” she says.
Adair is hoping to kickstart an acting career with the glamour shots — she thinks she’d make a great action-movie villain. And in the meantime, she’s been using her minor notoriety to meet actual celebrities.
For her career’s sake, one can only hope more people like Russell Simmons take such an interest in Adair’s, um, assets.