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I'm watching a stand up of Janeane Garofalo. She is saying she hates high fashion and models and then she says:

You know, and when there are statistics, you know. Five-ten, one-twenty, fuck you. And stop making me feel bad about the way I look at myself. Stop it, TV. And stop it, movies...

Can anyone help me and tell me what "five-ten" and "one-twenty" refer to?

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  • Aside: "you know: five-ten, one-twenty" is a phrase providing an example of "statistics". – user66219 Mar 4 '17 at 4:45
111

Very plausibly sizes : 5 feet 10 inches, and 120 pounds. Models are notoriously required to be tall and thin.

EDIT In metric that's around 1.78 m and 54 kg.

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  • 3
    You are awesome for including the conversion to metric. Thank you! Without it, that is a completely obscure statement; with it, slightly less so. – KlaymenDK Mar 6 '17 at 9:50
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    As an additional conversion, in traditional British measures this would be "8 stone 8 pounds", 1 stone being 14 pounds. So a British speaker (of a certain generation) might have expressed the same as "five-ten, eight-eight", or more clearly "five foot ten, eight stone eight". – IMSoP Mar 6 '17 at 11:50
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    Good answer! And simply because I can nitpick: one usually write metric lengths as 1.78 m, writing it as 1m78 does not make sense since the fraction is part of the same unit. – Mrkvička Mar 6 '17 at 12:25
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    @Mrkvička Ah, I see checking Google that indeed "1mXX" for heights seems to be a French convention that isn't as common in English. I'll change it then. – Oosaka Mar 6 '17 at 15:24
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    I didn't know the French actually wrote it 1mXX, I thought that was just when talking - all texts books we had when I studied French wrote it the "normal" way of 1.XX m or, rather, 10.YY € (as it was more common with numbers for prices than length in the sentences we learned); I guess it was written that way to make it easier to learn. Well, one learn something new every day, just unfortunate that I cannot give you an extra +1 for it... – Mrkvička Mar 7 '17 at 7:49
19

She is referring to a typical model's height and weight, '5 foot 10 inches tall and weighing 120 lbs'. Not sure how this converts to metric but would indicate a tall, thin person in US.

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14

They refer to the model's physical measurements: 5'10", 120 pounds.

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