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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be so embarrassed about this?

252 replies

TheLostNights · 10/09/2022 22:37

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.

OP posts:
IrisVersicolor · 12/09/2022 11:04

Johnnysgirl · 12/09/2022 10:53

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?

In workplaces, in social life, official life, in life generally, sometimes age comes up. I’ve given examples already.

FirewomanSam · 12/09/2022 17:05

Johnnysgirl · 12/09/2022 10:53

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?

Some random examples, off the top of my head:

Someone I worked with was talking about the old modem dial-up tone, then stopped and said ‘oh you’re probably too young to remember that’. I was older than her.

Someone asked me if I’d ever bought a CD, assuming that I would only ever have downloaded/streamed music - I was born in the 80s.

A nurse didn’t believe that I’d had a smear before because ‘we only start them at 25’ and she seemed to assume I was younger than that. I was about 32.

A colleague who asked if I had kids (no) then told me I had ‘plenty of time yet’ because she had hers at 33 and 35. I was 34.

General career advice from more senior and only-slightly-older colleagues that centres around wistful anecdotes about their first jobs or when they were fresh out of university, clearly assuming that’s the stage you’re at.

I don’t think I even looked remarkably young (and certainly don’t any more - aging seemed to happen overnight when I hit about 36!) but some people are just terrible at guessing ages.

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