I agree that some people look taller than others at the same height. If you have long arms and legs and a head that is proportionally small to your shoulders you look taller.
Also, the slimmer you are, the taller people will often perceive you as being.
There seems to be a weird thing for a lot of women to describe themselves as short, without distinguishing between the sexes. Thus they’ll say “I’m only 5’3” – I’m tiny!” I don’t know whether it’s part of the social conditioning that women should be little and delicate and fit into a teeny, tiny little space, like a child, so as to leave plenty of room for the Big Important (male) People? Compared with all adults as a whole, yes you are quite short; but compared with other women, you’re just slightly below average.
I know a 6"7 bloke and if you are with him you can normally hear others saying "wow, isn't he tall!" Well yes he is but finds the constant comments quite annoying!
That reminded me of the episode of The Kumars At No 22, where they had a tall guest on (can’t even remember who the guest was) and Ummi introduced him and then her opening question was “You’re very tall – talk about that for a bit!” Quite biting and astutely observational, that was!
There was a recent article on the BBC website about how average heights differed around the world and they were citing the differences as clear proof of how poverty and nutrition affected richer and poorer nations in this way. It did seem to be very much oversimplifying things to me as, surely, genetics and ethnicity play a very large part as well? Would you really have an average Masai tribesperson and an average Tokyo businessperson (both of the same sex) stand next to each other and then conclude that Kenya must be a far richer country than Japan?!