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.

Posted to soon.

... And I see thousands of people and their birth dates every year. Many of them look good, but how many of them look 29 years younger, or like a teen when they are mid 30s? None.

So everyone who is "embarrassed" about this, consider that you don't look that young so there is really nothing to be embarrassed about.

OK. I must have been imagining a lifetime of comments then.

I’m nearly fifty and I look maybe 8 or 10 years younger depending on how much sleep I’ve had and the lighting. I’m autistic and childlike in my mannerisms and speech and I’m only 5’1, slim and have very long hair. I obviously like it because I wear factor 50 every day and use tretinoin.

it doesn’t get mentioned very often because people just assume I’m in my early forties I think, but I’ll feel a bit awkward sometimes if I’m asked certain questions, such as how long I’ve lived in the area. I sometimes get asked out by men in their thirties and I don’t have the heart to tell them I’m post menopausal and fifteen years older than them.

Nope your not imagining it people don’t get it if it’s not happened to them. As per my previous comment, I don’t think posters are getting that the comments have been said in a negative way over a long period of time (for me anyway) I do get that people saying it now I’m late 30s are saying it in a positive way maybe but I’m associating it with all the negative comments I have had previously which has changed how I perceive a “oh you look so young for your age” comment compared to how someone else might take it.

Oof, envious! ;-)
My DD wasn't allowed to buy a knife or wine or something, forgotten what now.. she's 39!

@Clarefromwork

Yes, exactly that Clare. There is a big difference between someone saying 'Oh, I thought you were a few years younger than that. You look great!' throughout your lifetime, to people assuming you are decades younger than your age and treating you as an abnormality when they realise how wrong they are.

Yep it's horrible.

I've fortunately not changed job loads so I've not had such negative experiences but gets so bloody tiresome.

to people assuming you are decades younger than your age and treating you as an abnormality when they realise how wrong they are.
I refuse to believe there are people who look decades younger than their actual age.

I assure you that this is my experience @Johnnysgirl . Whether you choose to believe that or not is something I cannot control. What I can assure you is that this is not a stealth boasting thread or me saying look how beautiful I am. It's so far from that it's not funny.

It's awful, I get asked for ID when I take the kids to see PG films even though I'm 80 years old.

I'd love to see a photo of someone looking decades younger than their age... Any takers? And I don't mean someone who looks 30 odd claiming to be 75

Nor am I imagining the 10s of thousands of people and their DOBs I've seen over my 18 year career, none of whom looked like that.

But sure, there could be people out there. Maybe they all happen to be on this thread, what a coincidence.

Of course I've heard comments along those lines, and even made them myself. But what's meant is you look a couple of years younger, or you look good for your age. Not that you literally look decades younger.

Thinking that would be like me getting a compliment "wow you look great", and taking that to mean I should be a model.

Ha! Me too. Last week I was taking a tour of my daughters nursery and they told me I wasn't having any bananas in snacktime if I didn't get back to my classroom immediately

It's probably a bit likey house which at first glance looks great but the don't notice the leaky roof, knackered windows and dodgy wiring. In my case my fairly nice skin, lack of wrinkles, coloured longish hair and youngish attitude to clothing and life hide the other signs like creaky limbs and grey hairs.

Spot on. Looking baby-faced and childlike isn’t what most people are striving for when they dream of looking ‘young’. I have a friend who looks very young but (in her own words!) she’s more likely to be mistaken for a teenage boy than a glamorous beautiful young woman. It says a lot about our attitudes to youth and beauty that if you say you look young, people automatically think you’re bragging about how gorgeous you are.

I do think, though, that most people DO more or less look their age and part of the issue is that people have weird ideas about what someone of a certain age should look like. Particularly if you style/colour your hair or dress in a slightly unconventional way that isn’t what people necessarily expect from someone of your age, or if your job/life milestones don’t line up with people’s expectations.

I’ve retrained in my career so found myself back at uni with mostly 20-somethings when I was in my 30s, and I got a lot of ‘omg no way, you can’t be 30’ comments. While I did look a little young for my age at that point, I think it was far more to do with them not really knowing any 30-somethings and assuming that they all look ancient and talk about grown up things like babies and mortgages.

Young people (up to 30?) are not great judges of age, I find. I know that people think I'm younger than I am, but I'm not going to tell them my exact age. This isn't because I'm vain and insecure about it but because there is huge prejudice about age and I'd rather get to know people well before telling them my age. I know that I as a youngster would have thought there was a barrier in being friends with someone even 10 years older (or younger, to be fair) than me - really immature, but I remember that feeling! It's like, when you're at school, the people in the year above and below you are too different to contemplate relating to.

Then when you're 40 +, age stops mattering so much as the years...and decades fly by!! I have friends in all age groups now and think of them as individuals.

Incidentally, I hate insults based on age-stereotyping such as gammon and boomer. So easy to label people and then dismiss their individuality - lazy and dangerous - and ha ha! it'll come back and bite you on the bum one day if you do this.

Yes@FrozenGhost you’ve seen all the people in all the world and everyone on this thread is lying.

Funnily enough we all have eyes and jobs and have come across people who look a lot different to their actual age older and younger. Except you obviously.

Everyone on this thread isn't disagreeing with @FrozenGhost ...

The arrogance on these sorts of threads is always infuriating and I end up having to step away. I can’t think of any other thing that people talk about on here (except Meghan Markle) which invites such a blinkered and nasty attitude from some posters. To the extent of wanting people to post photos on an anonymous forum for them to pick apart, just like school bullies. An assumption that they are right and everyone else is lying, because ultimately they’ve made up their minds on a version of events which fits with their ego and world view and no amount of people saying actually that’s not true will change that.

I was referring to ‘everyone’ posting their experiences of being regularly taken for a lot younger. (And the posters who acknowledge some people look much younger or older than they are).

Not the bitter naysayers obviously.

It’s very odd.

I commented that Jared Leto looks a lot younger than he is. But it doesn’t make him attractive he just looks weird. It’s not a plus.

No they're not, and I can tell you that there's at least one person on this thread (I won't say which one but I know who they are in real life) that actually does look their age. People might be polite if you ask but you do look in your 40s!

Of course people are polite if you ask how old you look. The very fact that you're asking indicates you imagine they'll be shocked when they hear your real age.
Everybody is "kind" when encountering someone else doing this; whilst thinking "ffs! Just why?"