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Meet Shauna Rae, A 22 year-old Lady who looks 8
Shauna Rae is a 22-year-old woman who is stuck in the body of an 8-year-old due to a rare health condition.
Shauna Rae is a 22-year-old woman who is stuck in the body of an 8-year-old due to a rare health condition.
She attracted the attention of the public after she was introduced as the star of the TLC series “I Am Shauna Rae” a reality series meant to reveal her challenges of living with a rare condition that makes her look younger than her age.
Shauna Rae survived a rare form of brain cancer when she was just six months old – but the side effects of the chemotherapy made her pituitary gland almost dormant, leaving Shauna with a childlike appearance.
On the show on TLC, Shauna opens up about her stress and struggles of living in a 3ft 10 inches body, such as getting turned away by bartenders and having problems getting tattoos or a gym membership.
Her childlike appearance has brought negative attention to her and her mum because strangers think she is a child trying to do adult things.
Shauna’s mother Patty said: “Shauna likes to dress up like any other 22-year-old girl, but we go out together and she gets look like ‘oh wow, what is she doing?’, ‘what is that kid doing?’
“And then I get the looks of ‘how could you let your child dress like this?'”
Sympathizing with her mother, Shauna said: “My mum has to explain that I’m old enough to make my own decisions and they don’t believe her.
“I feel horrible for my mum because I don’t have to deal with the backlash because they don’t think it’s appropriate to come up to the child to say these things.
“They think it’s appropriate for them to come up to the mother, which isn’t appropriate at all in my opinion.”
Shauna, also revealed that she has tried to do different things to prove to herself that she is an adult.
She said: “I started vaping to look older. I’ve always been attracted to edgy kind of lifestyle – tattoos, piercing, vaping.
“But doing anything adult-Esque wasn’t to show anybody that I’m an adult, it’s to prove to myself that I am an adult. It makes me feel I am who I want to be.”
She also revealed that she is currently single as it is scary to put herself out there. In her words: “It is scary to put myself out there, But you have to put some risk in to get happiness.”
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