A six-foot-tall ex-accountant has removed any embarrassment about her height by using it to her advantage on subscription video site OnlyFans, where she rakes in up to £80k ($100k) a month from gamblers who pay to see her on camera as a giant and kicks her leg to the top of the fridge.
Maria Temara’s happiness came in August 2021 after a series of setbacks that ended her relationship and her job being cut during the pandemic, when she turned to TikTok and brought her 6 foot dog walker mom, Christine Temara, 60, and her 6 foot grandmother. , Susan Clifford, 82, to create high-themed videos that went viral.
More used to diving into pictures and hanging in hallways to hide her height – which she reached when she was 12 years old – suddenly Maria, 27, from Florida, USA, celebrated online and now has 379.5K views of her body positive content on TikTok.
She’s even started maximizing her stature by wearing sky-high heels when she goes out, saying, “I’m starting to feel proud of being tall.
“Last year I wore 6” high heels to a bar with my friends for the first time and I felt great.
“Everyone looked, but I was proud. If people don’t like me because I’m tall, that’s their problem.”
Now she makes a great living by being tall, and for years Maria hated coming from a “family of giants” that included her six-foot-tall father Mike Temera, 61, and her six-foot-tall basketball player brothers Shane, 26, and Troy, 24.
She said: “I’ve always hated being so tall and wished I could be like one of the little girls.
“When I first posted a video saying I was 6 feet and 200lbs, I couldn’t believe the answer. Everyone was so positive and sweet.”
She added: “I went from the person no one ever wanted to everyone who thought I looked good.
“So many girls sent me a private message saying it meant so much to them to have someone to look up to.”
Taller than her brothers until she was 13, when they suddenly shot past her and bought clothes in the adult section during high school because of her height, standing out from the crowd also led to bullying.
She said: “I was always a head taller than everyone else.
“I used to be bullied for being so tall.
“People called me a boy because I was bigger than everyone else, which was really hard.”
Marie added: “It was the hardest when I went to high school because that’s when you start to like boys and I was so much bigger than them.
‘I would like them, but they wouldn’t want me back.
“I would meander down hallways and take pictures. I would lean down or lean to the side to look shorter.”
Because she was taller, her style was also severely cramped.
She said: “The girls’ clothes I wanted to wear didn’t fit. I had to go to the women’s department, but I always wanted to wear the cute little girl prints.
“At school some desks and chairs were too small for me, so they had to buy me a special chair because my knees touched the desk.
“It was things like that that made me realize I was different.”
When they got home, the family enjoyed seeing how they all held up.
As they grew up, Marie noticed their height on the wall and enjoyed being taller than her younger brothers until they had a growth spurt and caught up with her.
She laughed: “It was a competition in the family to be the tallest.
“Unlike school, I wanted to be at home longer. In class I was desperate to be shorter.”
Encouraged by her mother, who played professional basketball around the world for six years, Marie found some pride in playing the game too, but she still felt paralyzedly self-conscious most of the time.
She said: “It was nice to be around other girls who were tall who played basketball as there are so few of them, but I still wanted to be smaller.
“I was such a girly girl and I loved all the hair and makeup. I really wanted to wear heels, but I never did, I was so afraid of being too tall.”
After leaving college, Marie attended Morrisville State University and majored in accounting.
Her personal life was much less successful as a working accountant, which she did for four years.
She said: “Dating was really hard. I used to only look for tall guys.”
She added: “But now it’s important to like ‘short kings’, so I like the short guys now too, and since I’ve been making videos I realize that they like me too.
“They say they’re short, but they like that I’m tall and want a tall woman.
“There were a lot of guys who said I was too tall, or that my height would come up while chatting on a dating site and most of the time they weren’t interested after that.”
But Marie had been dating for a year and a half, but her relationship naturally came to an end in August 2021, a year after she lost her job in April 2020, when the pandemic hit.
Still, Marie refused to be broken, turned her losses into a shot and started making TikTok videos about her height, which went viral and got 3 million views.
She said: “I lost my job during Covid and then I had a breakup and I decided to post something on TikTok about what it was like to be so tall.”
She added: “I didn’t know what to expect, but it exploded and it went viral instantly.
“I was so shocked – I thought, ‘Wow, people really like this.’
“So many people said they thought I looked so good and thanked me for sharing and said they finally have someone to look up to.
“I even got my mom and grandma to join me for videos!”
Marie quickly gained thousands of followers, discovered a newfound confidence and soon worked with several brands on Instagram as a fitness model.
Marie is eager to promote body positivity and also likes to share videos about her weight on TikTok.
She said, “I’ve always weighed over 200lbs and right now I’m 207lbs (14th 7lb).”
She added: “I hated my weight – I would never step on the scale and I would be so ashamed of the doctors.
“But now I love it. I am huge in my fitness and have exercised for 15 years which is probably why I weigh what I do.
“I do about two or three hours every day, mostly lifting weights.
“Still, when I say how much I weigh, so many people are shocked. They don’t realize it’s okay to weigh over 200 pounds – it doesn’t look bad.”
Selling and posting photos of herself on OnlyFans allows Marie to earn between £60k and £80k ($75k – $100k) per month.
She said: “Someone suggested I try OnlyFans after watching my TikTok videos, so I started in 2021.
“Now I earn in a month what I used to earn in a year.”
Despite the lucrative advantage she has now found in her height, Marie says there are still drawbacks.
“My feet are always hanging off the bed,” she said.
“I have a Ford Mustang and it’s so small I have to flatten myself and stretch my legs all the way – I need a truck!
“I also have to duck under shower heads because I’m always too tall to fit under them.”
Marie has still not turned her back on accountancy – a career she loved – and is thinking of starting her own business in the future.
But for now, she’s happy to make the most of her newfound fame while spreading a positive message about looking different.
She said: “When I think about how far I’ve come, I feel emotional.”
She added: “I just don’t want other young girls to feel the way I felt and if I can help people feel more confident and proud to be tall then that means everything to me.
“I want people to know it’s okay to be different.”
A regular co-star in Marie’s TikTok videos, her mother, Christine, is proud to finally see her daughter happy and embrace her height.
She said: “We’ve always been a very long family.
“I used to be quiet and shy in school because I felt so different about being tall.
“But now that I’m home with the family, it just feels normal.
“It’s only when you leave the house that people come up to you and ask how tall you are or what the weather is like there!”
She added: “It makes me happy that Marie is happy now.
“I am so proud that she is spreading such a positive message.”
