I Don't Look My Age and It's Starting to Get Awkward

It was my 28th birthday this week, but you would never know it by looking at me. I’m nowhere near old or wizened in age, but people often think that I am considerably younger than I am. It happens so often, in fact, that I recently started an experiment: I ask people who don’t know me well—friends of friends, wine-store clerks—to guess my age. Their answers tend to vary from 19 to 22, pegging me for somewhere between recent high-school graduate and unemployed college intern.

I know: Cry me a river, you’re thinking. Who doesn’t want to look younger than they are? The truth is that this never really bothered me until I turned 21, and doormen would still assume my foreign ID was fake.

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Just the other day, while walking my dog, I ran into a neighbor who lives in my building and who I had seen a couple of times in the elevator but had never really conversed with. We talked about our shared South American backgrounds and life in New York. He was so chatty, I actually thought he might be hitting on me. That is, until he asked: “So do you live here with your parents?”

“No,” I replied, glancing at my cutoffs and Converse. “I live here with my husband.”

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“You’re married!?”

I used to feel more confident that dropping “my husband” into a conversation would signal that I’m in my late twenties. But sometimes this can just make these conversations about my age even more awkward. A few years ago, I met one of my father’s friends, and at some point mentioned my wedding was only a week away. He seemed taken aback, then apologized but had to ask how old I was. When I answered that I was 25, he was visibly relieved, confessing that he had briefly worried that I was a teenager in a child-bride scenario.

One time I was even stopped by Homeland Security before an airport security check. I handed my passport and ticket to the officer, who looked at me, then at my passport, then back at me, and then back at the passport. “Whoa,” she said finally, calling another officer over and pointing at my travel documents. “Look at that. Isn’t that crazy? You look really young.”

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