Just Call Me Baby(face)

I've always had the unfortunate luck to look much, much younger than I really am. Growing up, people assumed my sister Audra (who is three years younger than me) was the older sister. And I know what you're all thinking--of COURSE it had nothing whatsoever to do with our maturity.
The baby-face problem was only compounded when I turned 21 and married my husband, who unfortunately also looks much younger than his actual age. On the plane trip to our exotic honeymoon destination, people kept scrutinizing our faces, trying to match them to a poster of runaway teens.

Case in point below.



Turns out though, that I not only look half my age, I also sound half my age. That's been pointed out to me time and time again during my work as a freelance reporter.

Me: Hi there. I'm a reporter with the Uintah Basin Standard and am working on an article about such-and-such. I'd really like an opportunity to visit with you sometime about yahdeedahdeedah.
Potential Interviewee: Oh, ok. Is this for some sort of high school journalism class or something?
Me: Ummm, No. You see, I actually have a college degree in journalism and nearly a decade of experience writing for newspapers.
Potential Interviewee: Are you one of those kids who went to college when they were 14 or something like that?

But my conversation yesterday with a customer service representative from Best Buy really takes the cake. I was trying to help my younger cousin Taylor figure out his MP3 player. The Best Buy idiots were being the furthest thing from helpful possible, transferring me from one person to another. After an hour of this, I told the representative that I had to go pick up my husband.

"Girl, you're old enough to have yourself a husband?" she said. "I thought you were twelve."

Don't worry though, I told her off. Stupid Best Buy and their piece-of-junk MP3 players.

Me:Lady, I'm pretty sure Customer Appreciation 101 doesn't teach you to tell your customers they sound immature and then add further insult to injury by guessing their age to be half of what it actually is. Let me talk to your supervisor.

Or, at least that's how it sounded in my head.

She probably heard something a little more like this: "Yeah, I get that a lot."

To end my baby-faced woes, I wikipediad the topic of "How to Look Older" and came up with these little golden nuggets of wisdom.

1. Take care of yourself by washing regularly, using deodorant. Check.
2. Fix your eyebrows. Some surveys say that when your eyebrows are done and put together, you can look more mature and therefore, look older.
Not much I can do here. My eyebrows have never been the same since the great tweezing disater of '03.
3. Consult with a hair stylist. Give a brief summary of your situation or just simply ask for a "mature cut".
What exactly, pray tell, is a mature cut? And how would a stylist react if you asked for this so-called mature cut? I imagine the end result would be something like this.

Wikipedia, I knew you wouldn't let me down!