To be so embarrassed about this?

[TheLostNights]

Doing some work in a new department at a different base to cover staff absences.
All my life, I have been told I look incredibly young for my age. All my family do. My parents both look 10 years younger and my aunt who is in her fifties gets mistaken for early 40's.
Anyway, in a packed office one of the women called out and said 'How old are you? We have all been wondering.' I said 37 and there was a stunned silence and they asked me to repeat it so I did. Then it was all 'You're pulling my leg there is no way.' And 'WHAT?!' Literally the whole office was going mad at this revelation and I could feel myself getting redder and redder. I hate all the attention looking like a kid does. They all thought 22 or 23. I am 37 years old and sick of being treated like a kid. I knew they thought a lot younger previously as they asked me if I lived alone (not with a partner or kids) and kept calling me pet names. They were going on about it so much and looking at me as though I was like some weird freak amd even afterwards I could hear mini conversations going on about my age. Part of me is dreading going back on Monday. This is not a boast, who wants to look like a kid barely out of their teens when they are pushing 40? Who wants to be treated like a young kid by their peers because they assume you are so much younger than them? There's nothing to be envied about there.

My thoughts are with you at this difficult time @TheLostNights It must be such a difficult time for you. Peace be with you my child.

😂😂😂

Yeh, stop wearing that crinoline and buy a hoodie

That's a great strategy. Also no need to wear crinolines.

Maybe it's using words like 'abnormality' rather than anomaly makes people think you are younger than you are? I'm not trying to be snarky, but if your speech is 'youth speak' and/or uneducated they may not realise. It's less how you look and more how you speak?

What I’m invested in is posters who bully OPs on AIBU calling them, and anyone else who gets in their way, a liar. That annoys me.

To answer your original aibu, OP, you're dreading going back to work because of these rude and inappropriate colleagues. It's nothing to do with your age or appearance and everything to do with an extraordinary office atmosphere of gossip and bullying.
You're going to have to report this to your line manager.

I don't think people here are calling her a liar insomuch as disingenuous. As in, she's saying she hates it. On some level sure it's irritating. But in reality, bearing in mind social norms in the west, it's like saying, 'oh poor me, I've been told I'm too beautiful to be taken seriously. Oh no! Woe is me.' Yeah right.

I looked about 27 between the ages of 17 and 37, and it was weird both ways; at 37 life events aged me a bit.

Now bus drivers often ask me whether I have a pensioner’s pass, which in my particular area I would need to be 4 years older for. Hoping to look 67 for many years yet.

😂😂😂 - be brilliant when you're 80!

Having a different view point is not bullying someone. I would say don’t post in AIBU if you don’t want opinions but it’s not even your OP.

It’s not a different pov, you simply negated what the OP said. Insinuating you didn’t believe her.

There’s only so young you can be in the workplace. Companies don’t hire fourteen year olds so I don’t know how much it can possibly affect your career to look on the young side.

This has really hit a nerve for you, @IrisVersicolor , hasn't it?
How old do people tell you you look?

What I meant by this is people are not hired if they are underage and whether you look young or actually are young you are definitely not so young that it means you’re incompetent or under qualified so nobody should be giving you a hard time regardless. And I didn’t insinuate anything anything. I said outright I find it difficult to believe that someone can look almost 20 years younger than they are. I also think it’s wrong for anyone to make anyone else uncomfortable or put them on the spot the way the OP described but IMO there are far worse things for people to say to someone than that they look young for their age whatever they’re intention. You don’t like what I said, fair enough. I don’t have anything else to say about this.

Oh wow, that is quite the reach! People think OP is young because she said ‘abnormality’?! (Kids nowadays are saying that all the time, don’t you know?)

And yes, you were absolutely being snarky (a word famously used only by the most mature, educated people, of course).

I don’t give a fuck how old people think I am. I really dislike like unpleasant posters on AIBU who drive OPs off their threads.

This thread reminds me of my fifty something (he won’t tell his age) gay male friend. He does look younger than his age and in the right light maybe ten years younger but no more.

He’s convinced he looks late twenties or early thirties at most. Deluded! When he tries acting the same as his twenty year old relatives at weddings it’s just tragic.

Completely agree. And the subjects of age and weight seem to particularly get people riled up around here. There was a poster a few days ago who was really worried about being underweight and possibly having an eating disorder, and at least half the comments were from people slating her for ‘bragging’ and making sarcastic comments about how they wished they had her problems. The thread had to be deleted, it got so nasty. It never ceases to amaze me how awful some people enjoy being to total strangers when they have the anonymity of an Internet forum to hide behind.

I think a lot of people are missing the point.

I don’t think OP is claiming that she actually looks like an literal teenager/very young adult. I’m sure that if people looked at her closely or looked at a photo of her next to an actual teenager (as someone suggested) they’d be able to tell she was somewhat older than that.

However, she is obviously baby-faced and young-looking enough for some people to mistake her for much younger than she is, and to treat her accordingly. People are acting like the thread is so very unbelievable because I think they’re taking it far too literally and quibbling over what OP might actually look like and whether she genuinely looks like a teenager, rather that realising that some people are actually terrible with guessing ages and that it’s very plausible for those people to assume a more youthful-looking person is decades younger than they are, and to treat them in an embarrassingly patronising way.

If someone says their 70 year old mum looks 45, how else am I meant to take it? And others have said ‘I look 20 years younger’...they’re staying these things as fact. Of course people are going to find it unbelievable. They’re deluded.

@MissingNashville If you read the thread more carefully you’d see that posters are not saying “I look x”, they’re saying “I am regularly believed to be y” which is not the same at all. It’s not about what they think, it’s about feedback, generally unsolicited, from other people. Nor is it about asking other people how old they look when then they’re unlikely to be honest.

The OP is a case in point.

That’s really sad.

that it’s very plausible for those people to assume a more youthful-looking person is decades younger than they are
Decades? Come on, that's not plausible at all.

But what form does this feedback? If you think someone is 25, how do you feed this back to them? What conversations are actually had on the matter?

Feedback take...