The Curse of Having a Baby Face

I am currently stuck in a place where I look like a child and often get treated as such but I’m actually (unfortunately) an adult.

I’m 27 – teetering on the edge of mid to late 20s (some say late, I like to think mid) and heading towards the slippery slope that will hurtle me towards 30 and actual, real, can’t escape it any longer – adulthood. HOW and when did this happen?

Sometimes I feel like I blinked and became this age, without ever actually learning how to be this age. I really don’t know how to adult! But, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be treated like one.

Just the other day I was at the dentist and telling her I had moved in with my boyfriend, to which she chuckled and replied “bit young for that aren’t you…” By this time she had her hands in my mouth so I never actually found out if she really thought 27 was too young, or if after I left she whispered to her assistant ‘at this rate she will be a teenage mum by the time she is 18’.

When we are young all we want to do is grow up, desperately trying to look years above our age. We are told that it will come round quick enough and to enjoy the time while we have it. Do we listen? No. There have been many stages in my life when I have wished it away, wanting to get
older and therefore be able to do more. It is only when you get to that age, that you wish you could slow it down and, although I would still like to look (slightly) older than I do, you start to wish you could get back some of those years you once wished away.

It is funny how differently you are perceived when on first impressions you are seen as young, naive and immature to when it is discovered you actually have a lot more years of worldly knowledge than you were given credit for. The constant worry that you will never be taken seriously as people look down on you and your youth continuously patronising you because “you are too young to know anything about that.”

A boy (who looked half my age, although I could be doing the same thing others do to me) came to the door of MY flat to try and sign me up to donate to charity and asked if my parents were in. When I told him it was my flat and how I old I was, he literally laughed in my face and looked as if he definitely did not believe me.

This happens regularly, despite showing my ID I always seem to get a look of pity, like I’m obviously not old enough but I have done such a good job getting hold of fake ID that they will let me in the bar/buy the alcohol anyway.

On one night out my best friend, who is in fact 2 days younger than me, got asked if she was my mum. Not sure who was more insulted/found it funnier, me or her.

I, like many tweenagers, wore make up, clothes and shoes to make myself look older than I was. Now I end up looking like some kind of frumpy teenager still appearing to be dressing up to look older. Alongside this people think you are an innocent goody two-shoes because of your child-like face, “Oh, you don’t look like the sort to *drink your weight in vodka*?

You can’t win. Get dressed up – get ID’d. Don’t get dressed up – get ID’d Leaving the house without said ID, not an option. Unless you want to be that person looking desperate as you try to persuade the bouncer you really have been legally able to drink for 10 years! And you will definitely still experience the fear of trying to buy something with an age restriction even when you do have ID in hand.

However, looking young definitely doesn’t mean you feel young. Whilst always getting ID’d to go into the club, I get the hangovers of someone 10 years older, if not more. Wine is not my friend – but there are some things we just never learn how ever old we get. You start to realise that you have taken your youthful appearance for granted and suddenly it becomes apparent you are in fact aging, although perhaps not facially, without having realised it.

You get told the same old thing, “you’ll be grateful when your older”, however I have always joked I will get to 30  and suddenly age dramatically, getting mistaken for being in my 40s or 50s. Only then will I wish people mistook me for being years younger than my age.

Sometimes I think I should just accept it, this could work to my advantage – child’s ticket on the train? But would it work on those occasions, probably not!

I think where we are at in our lives can determine how old we feel, not a number. For me I only began to feel like an adult when I moved out of home. But, that being said, that little number does, of course, mean quite a lot.

10 more years and I might finally look my age, 27.