The Realities of Looking Young

While the struggles of being short and baby-faced have been discussed before, few seem to highlight the realities of looking really young for your age. It’s not just getting ID’d for energy drinks and your partner looking significantly older than you; it’s being patronised, undermined at work and many an awkward shopping experience. I’m 22, but to most people I probably pass for 16-18, depending on how I’m dressed and how much makeup I’m wearing. The older I get, the more I’m noticing the subtle things people say to me and the assumptions they make that reflect the extent to which they’ve underestimated my age.

“there comes a point where relentless underestimation and constant comments about how you look start to affect your confidence.”

The majority of my age misjudging happens to me at work. Recently, I’ve had more and more people ask if I get the bus to work or if my parents give me a lift. It’s almost impossible for me to point out that I drive myself to work in my own car without completely undermining and embarrassing them as they realise I must be older than I look. Prior to my graduation, upon meeting new colleagues, many asked what I was doing at college, to which I could only reply with something along the lines of ‘I’m doing English and History at uni…’. Perhaps most peculiarly, despite being given the responsibility for training him, a new member of staff assumed I was also new and asked if I’d met everyone yet, safe to say after more than 2 years, I had. Then of course there’s the all too common occurrence that is being automatically overlooked by customers in favour of older but less experienced members of staff, who then refer the customer to me anyway.

While these things are annoying, they’re ultimately perfectly innocent misassumptions, however, there comes a point where relentless underestimation and constant comments about how young you look start to affect your confidence. I’m currently working towards a promotion which would qualify me to be a ‘shift leader’ or ‘duty manager’ and while I’m confident in my ability to fulfil the role, I genuinely feel that my greatest challenge will be convincing customers that I’m old enough and experienced enough to be able to deal with their queries.

Aside from colleagues, working in retail also means there’s hundreds of customers every day ready to comment on my size or how young I look. Some of my favourites from the last 3 years include:

• ‘Are you old enough to be working at this time?’ (after 10pm)
• ‘Do you know who the manager is?’ (funnily enough, yes I do, being an employee)
• ‘Can you sell me tobacco?’ (presumably asking if I’m over 18)
• ‘Oh my god your hands are so tiny!’ (like the rest of me)
• ‘You’re only little, aren’t you?’ (after 22 years I have noticed, thanks)
• ‘You look about 10, I thought they were running some kind of youth programme here’ (downright insulting)
• ‘You don’t look old enough to be working, you look about 8!’ (just, wtf)

While most of these comments come from innocent surprise or curiosity, I have had a handful of creepy men ask my age in a way which made me grateful I could leave work and get straight into my car at the end of my shift.

Aside from work, shopping can also create some awkward situations, beginning in the car park. I once drove myself and a friend to a shopping centre and upon parking up and getting out of the car, we caught the man in the next space peering into the car looking confused. After some deliberation we could only assume he was seeing if it was a left hand drive car, as though that was more likely than me being the driver and my taller friend being the passenger.

When shopping, I often struggle to find clothes to fit my particularly small frame but bra shopping proves the most challenging. Lots of women hate bra fittings and who can blame us, getting your top off in front of a stranger with cold hands and a tape measure is no one’s idea of fun, but being small and looking young can make it worse. For me, bra fittings consist of being told they don’t go down to my size, feeling self-conscious buying anything remotely sexy in case the cashier thinks I’m just a slutty twelve-year-old, and worst of all, being told ‘don’t worry, they’re still growing at your age’ and then having to correct the poor lady’s vast underestimation of my age.

“Safe to say I was humilitated and haven’t been back to that shop since.”

By far my most embarrassing instance of being mistaken for a child was in a lingerie shop where my friend was looking at vibrators. We were 20 at the time and I was simply stood around the sex toys while my friend perused ones she might be interested in purchasing. After a couple of minutes, a member of staff started hovering around us before coming over and asking me for ID because their company policy doesn’t allow the sale of sex toys to under 18s. Of course I appreciate why those rules are in place and that she was just doing her job, but what I didn’t appreciate was the fact that she singled me out, ID-ing only me and not my friend, when she was the one showing the main interest in the products. It also seemed unnecessary for her to go out of her way to come over and ID me for merely being in the presence of vibrators rather than just waiting for me to go to the till with anything I wanted to buy and ID-ing me then. Safe to say I was humiliated and haven’t been back to that shop since.

Nights out can also be something of an ordeal. Even though I’m used to carrying ID and of course expect to be asked to show it when entering bars and ordering drinks, the older I get the more far-fetched my ID becomes, I can see people thinking, ‘how the hell can this person in front of me be 22?’ This creates an increasingly uncomfortable and elaborate ID checking process which involves passing my driving license from one member of staff to another, being asked for my name, birthday and address and even people wandering off with my ID to check it under better light to look for the hologram and signs of tampering. I know I shouldn’t let this bother me but I do find it embarrassing and as a result, I’ve found myself choosing not to drink as much to avoid the inevitable awkwardness and hassle of the ID-ing experience.

While looking young can lead to some awkward situations that one day become funny stories, it can also really affect your confidence. Whether it’s being underestimated in the workplace, looking younger than your friends or partner or just having to deal with constant comments about your appearance, over time it makes you self-conscious. It can be really tiresome feeling like you’re automatically at a disadvantage in the work place and always trying to overcome something you can’t change. These are the realities of looking young.

Louisa Merrick-White

Tweet to @louisa_mw

Featured image courtesy of Lisle Boomer.