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.

Are you small and lithe when I was I was regularly assumed to be 20 when I was 35

😂😂 at all those people who can’t believe that not everyone’s life experience is the same as theirs and are bitter enough to not be able to scroll past a thread when they don’t get it….😂😂

I think this is really inappropriate behaviour for a workplace and I’d be reporting it…nobody would accept it the other way round if everyone were saying “omg that person looks SO old” so why is it ok about someone looking young?

I’m sorry this has happened OP and I’m also sorry you’re getting a real lack of empathy here. It must be really frustrating to be constantly infantilised. Sure, I would ideally appreciate fewer grey hairs and wrinkles, but I’m sure I would be really upset to be treated like a child at work.

I look much younger than I am. I’m 48 and bloody love it! It’s genetic, my gran used to be mistaken for my mum. My mum is in her 70s and has not one wrinkle. Dad in his mid 70s also wrinkle free, and has the thickest fullest head of hair I’ve ever seen. Siblings all get mistaken for being much younger. Sister is 50 and I had to ask her if she’d had Botox the last time I saw her as no wrinkles at all and she just looked so youthful

I love it when people ask my age because the reaction is utter shock. It’s amusing, and flattering!

Some people just look young 🤷🏻‍♀️ embrace it. The opposite would be shit.

Sheer envy, there is a lot of it on MN 🤷🏻‍♀️

It does do something to how people perceive you and how much respect you are shown, consciously or unconsciously, if you look a lot younger than you are.

While being ID-ed on the wrong side of 35 still puts a smile on my face, the fact that many of my colleagues act differently around me until they get to know my age (nothing else changes in my performance) says a lot about how young women are treated in society.

It also makes dating a little more complicated. I natually graduate towards people who are about 10 years older than me, so if I then also look 15 years younger than I should it does, at first glance, put a few barriers up.

Having said that, I still prefer looking young to looking much older than my actual age.

I'm mid 40s and look (or get often told) I look early 30s.

I hate being my age as I feel too old for certain things now.

But I do love the shock factor when people find out my age.

YANBU
I get this all of the time!!

What’s more odd is I’m average height, very curvy and have a teenager.

I’m glad I don’t look older than my age but I am never taken seriously and I always thought once I reach my 30s I’d finally be treated like an actual grown up! But it still hasn’t happened yet.

Your colleagues are just trying to be nice so don’t take it to heart.

I have had a few people apologise to me afterwards and they are genuinely sorry and feel bad but they were so taken back at the time.

I now make a point of somehow bringing up my age early on so they can say how young I look etc but then they actually treat me like an adult.

I have an interview next week and I know they’re going to want someone more mature, so I’m thinking of ways that I can bring up my age quite early on in the interview.

I have a question for all the women who genuinely (in their words) looked like teenage school girls when they had babies/got with partners etc. Do you worry that the men you slept with were attracted to teenage girls?

I get where you’re coming from OP. You’ll get people accusing you of humblebragging but it’s actually not nice at all when you live it.

My looks caught up with my age in my mid-thirties so I don’t have that problem now, but I looked a lot younger than my age for most of my 20s and early 30s and I never enjoyed it. The patronising comments, clients never taking me seriously, being left out of conversations because people assumed I was so much younger than them… I don’t miss any of it!

I remember doing a temp job at an office while I was at uni and having one of the secretaries being really weird and patronising towards me, and giving me all these random ‘fun’ jobs to do that weren’t part of my job description… it eventually turned out she had thought I was a school kid there on work experience! So awkward.

There’s a difference between wanting to look good for your age and wanting to be patronised, belittled and and left out because people assume you’re significantly younger than you are. Nobody wants the latter!

There was a thread about this a while ago. The OP was getting nasty comments from friends about how her husband was probably a perve because she looked so young and he was sleeping with her. Most posters still piled on to accuse her of humblebragging.

Me too.🙋🏻‍♀️

I've also had other humiliating experiences as well as the ones I've wrote about already on this thread.
At 23 on my first day at work I was told by a male colleague 'Oh bless you. You only look about 12.'
Not able to buy a pair of scissors at the age of 28 as they assumed I wasn't 16 yet.
Work colleagues were all going out to the pub, one of them went to invite me but then said I was too young at only 17. I was 25.
I've done everything I can to appear older but you can't stop genes and it is in the family.

I don't know why looking young means people think you are calling yourself beautiful as I am definitely not and anyone who sees me would know that. They would just see a kid like face, flat chested short person. I don't see how anyone could be envious of that.
It's nice to see I am not alone either way so this thread has helped and generally, the comments have been supportive

From a biological standpoint, the look of late teenage girls and early 20s women are probably naturally more attractive than that of older women - simply because women peak in fertility in their late teens/ early twenties.

However, preferring a certain look and being attracted to an actual age group are two different things. I certainly don't act 15 years younger than I am. By the time people get to sleep with me, they will know very well that I'm not a teenager, and hopefully be more into my personality than my looks.

I do think people who are genuinely attracted to young teenagers or children are also attracted to the power differential and the immaturity that a young person brings.

Hard to advise or sympathise without a photo OP

I've been patronisingly told (in the last year) that my carefree attitude will change when I get older - by someone in their early 40s. I laughed and replied that as I was half a century old I think I'll keep my ironic sense of humour and attitude, as it's clearly not putting lines on my face.

That's even letting the grey grow through and never colouring it.

Last time I was ID'd for a bottle of wine I was 44. One of my sisters is the same. We get it from our father, who's mid 70s and could pass for early 60s.

There have been times when it's been irritating to be talked down to. Or when I've had to fight to be taken seriously in a professional setting because the assumption that I couldn't have the years of experience I claimed.

No it isn’t.

I get you OP, it's awful. I had this all the way through my career, people assuming I was younger than I was, which combined with the fact that I was promoted quickly caused a real disconnect in their heads.

People commenting on how young I'd had my kids, I had them in my late 30s!

Going completely grey in my 50s is when I finally stopped being asked for ID to buy alcohol.

People who don't have this don't understand how annoying it can be. It feels like you are being accused of being an impostor, and like your life's experience doesn't count for anything because of some fluke of genetics.

Carry on being this angry and bitter and you'll look ancient in no time.

No but I used to worry other people might think that when it’s far from the truth. Fortunately, I don’t look like a teenager anymore- just look mid/late 20s while he looks his age early 40s. Some rude people have joked about him being a cradle snatcher or sugar daddy but that doesn’t bother me as much as the thought of people thinking he has/had a weird attraction to young girls.

I have a question for all the women who genuinely (in their words) looked like teenage school girls when they had babies/got with partners etc. Do you worry that the men you slept with were attracted to teenage girls?

I wouldn’t say I look school aged. Most people now say late teens/early twenties.

I do get a lot of attention from men though even though I’d say I was quite average looking.
And I have thought several times whether it’s because they think I’m younger.

I don’t know if it’s just in my own head but they seem to cool off a bit when I mention my age.

It’s odd though because I would rather have someone with a good job, car, degree etc rather than someone who’s just out of college or whatever - yet I feel they’re put off by my age.

Most of the time I don’t get a pervy vibe from it though.
Maybe more of a they want to take care of you vibe or that you’re younger and more fertile or more easily mouldable.

I don’t know myself so it’s hard to explain yet I definitely feel something.

@TheLostNights I had a middle-aged colleague who kept talking wistfully about her own ‘first job’ when she was in her early 20s and trying to offer me career advice… I was in my 30s and had been working for over a decade. No matter how many times I tried to tell her this, she seemed to forget.

I also had a colleague whose whole attitude towards me changed when she found out I was the same age as her (actually a few months older) and had more experience than she thought. Prior to that she had been really nice and helpful, albeit in a slightly condescending way. Then she got really weird with me and I realised she had enjoyed the idea of taking a young, inexperienced colleague under her wing.

Classy

Exactly this.

Why am I picturing Wee Jimmy Krankie?