A WOMAN who has the body of an eight-year-old girl despite being 25 has opened up about how she tries to look older.
Shauna Rae, who stands at 3ft10, has been incredibly open about her condition in the past, and even revealed her parents were sadly forced to teach her how to avoid predators.
The star of TLC’s reality series, I Am Shauna Rae, has a rare condition which makes her look years younger.
She was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer when she was a baby and had to undergo treatment to overcome her diagnosis.
Even though she went into remission, the treatment left her pituitary gland practically dormant.
Shauna previously admitted she’s been turned away from buying alcohol, tattoos, and even gym memberships because of her youthful appearance.
To battle this she even took up vaping in a bid to look older.
“In the beginning I started vaping to look older,” she admitted in season one of the show.
“I’ve always been attracted to that edgy lifestyle with the tattoos, the piercings,” she said.
“But getting tattoos, vaping, doing anything adult-esque wasn’t to show anyone else that I’m an adult, it was to prove to myself that I’m an adult. It makes me feel like I am who I want to be.”
SHAUNA’S DATING LIFE
In the past Shauna has discussed how her condition has affected her dating life, and how hard it’s made it to find the right person.
In expressing her frustration about her dating life, she said: “I attract creeps, a**holes, and idiots. It is scary to put myself out there, but you have to put some risk in to get happiness.”
However, in season 2 of the show, Shauna went on to have a decent dating experience after being set up on a blind date by a matchmaker.
After meeting Thomas, a volunteer firefighter who also has pituitary dwarfism, she told PEOPLE: “Meeting the young man with pituitary dwarfism was an amazing experience.
“We had a lot in common because of our medical histories. And then our actual social lives are much different.”
Despite their differences, however, Shauna added: “I think that is very inspiring for each of us and anyone else when they watch it because we came kind of from a similar background, but not at the same time.
“And we live two different lives due to two different ways of people reacting to our disability.”
Speaking on The Unplanned Podcast, Shauna shared: “It’s very easy to be prey in this world as a tiny little girl, and my parents taught me that from a very young age.
“They told me, ‘Look, any guy that’s interested in you, any person that’s interested in you, you have to read into them because there’s a chance that it’s about your size.
“I grew up knowing that, and it was scary. I was scared to date. I was scared to flirt with anyone. I was even scared to be asked out.”
Shauna shared how she was previously asked out in a cafeteria and her immediate thought was “are you a predator?”
