What it’s actually like having a baby face as an adult

Creepy men tell on themselves

Men 10+ years my senior hit on me like telling a grown woman she looks like a child is a compliment.

“You don’t look a day over 16.”

“You could pass for a 14-year-old!”

When I was 18, I’d be hit on by men who seemed nervous to hit on me until they found out I was 18. My no longer being a child in legal regard excited them, for I fit their “barely legal” dreams.

Historically speaking, patriarchal structures based a woman’s beauty on male desire, marriageability and perceived fertility.

But I can’t help wondering if what influenced the patriarchy’s definition of female beauty is rooted in something deeper.

My grandmother was 17 when my grandfather laid eyes on her. When she turned 18, they began dating. They married as soon as she graduated high school. He was 27.

Men being attracted to women much younger than them is nothing new. Look at royal history. All the child brides.

How the biggest opponents of laws in the USA against marrying children are from religious groups belonging to Christianity.

I’ve found out men I attend church with are not men who belong around minors.

Because if a man looks at me and thinks, “She’s my type,” because I look young — and are ecstatic to find out I’m not younger than 18 — that is a huge red flag.

It’s not a compliment.

Society infantilizes baby-faced people

Living in a society that favors youth as beauty in women is ironic.

Because if you look young the way people who don’t look young try to look (and even lie about), you’re infantilized.

“What?! You don’t LOOK 22!” becomes “There is no way you’re 22. Show me your ID” while you’re trying to buy cough syrup and cough drops while working a register with the flu because your job thinks you somehow faked a fever to go home earlier on Christmas Eve.

Even my family treats me like I’m naive because I’m autistic and “look like a child”. Being autistic, I already know I seem childish to non-autistic people.

However, this notion that people who look young lack any wisdom or immature solely because of what chapter of life they’re in is not the same as someone 10 years older than them.

In my experience, adults have as much to learn from children as children do from them.

Last I checked, an adult with a baby-face was an adult with a baby-face.

I’m treated like I’m younger

At home, I’m treated like a child.

In public, I’m also treated like a child.

I went to a skincare event I was invited to as a DFW blogger. I wore an athletic-style shirt and short shorts, which I understand didn’t help myself.

And I also know I’ve got small chest problems that do not work in my favor and did a Pilates thing where my undershirt gave everything away because there are no bras for chests this small in 2014. I looked.

When I entered to win a raffle drawing, the woman asked me if I was at least 18. She had the same concerned look on her face a teacher gives a third grader who wet their pants.

(It was me. I wet my pants in third grade.)

The kind of face that doesn’t believe you if you don’t give the answer they want.

I said, “Yes.”

My cousin put her raffle into the box. Mine was interrupted by the woman.

I had a sinking feeling she threw my raffle ticket away.

I’m not sure if I will be able to attend anymore events as a local blogger in the DFW Metroplex.

It’s 2014. The world isn’t ready for people like me.

I’ve lost out on professional opportunities

I feel like I’ve not had a fair chance at professional opportunities in general, whether blogging or traditional job-based opportunities.

Many Dallas blogger events have to do with alcohol, which I’m allergic to. I also don’t understand the appeal of, like, events promoting alcoholism.

While I grew up in environments where drinking alcohol was normalized and do live where alcoholic beverages are taboo, I also never felt the pull to consume something that makes my brain feel weird.

(There was an incident in middle school, where my brother drank a strawberry kiwi wine cooler, and I tried some, and we thought it was soda.)

I grew up with friends who went to parties, got wasted, and laughed about what they did while out of their wits and don’t understand.

I’d rather stay home and play computer games or something.

But I also wonder about, like, why is there nothing less focused on meeting up with fellow DFW bloggers to burn our taste buds with beer or drink sour things?

Things I can’t do with a baby-face

There are things I will probably never be able to do.

In 9th grade, I had to check-in my elementary school sister late. The receptionist asked me what my name was, asked where my tardy note was.

When I said I was in high school, she acted like I was lying. I said my mom was waiting for me outside and walked out.

In my 30s, I will probably still not be able to chaperone church or school sleep-ins for my siblings, due to risk of being mistaken for a student within the sleep-in.

External expectations to perform maturity due to my baby-face

External suggestions to counteract the negative effects of having a baby-face include

• wearing makeup
• dressing differently, more “professionally”
• trying to “act more adult”

But those suggestions are part of the problem. The notion that an adult needs to look, act or behave in a certain way so someone else will perceive them as an adult to treat them respectfully is built on archaic standards due to patriarchal structures.

The goalposts will always move, depending on the situation and another person’s expectations.

Rather than trying to find ways to mold myself into something more palatable, why not have more discussions about how unchecked bias is projected onto others to be accommodated?