A 22-year-old woman has shared how she gets people to treat her like an adult when she lives in ‘the body of an eight-year-old’.
Shauna Rae is just 3ft 10in tall and weighs about 50 pounds due to a type of medical dwarfism.
The woman from Long Island had an aggressive cancerous tumor at only six months old. Surgeons removed the tumor and Rae received chemotherapy.
Thankfully, she was declared cancer free but the treatment had a lasting effect on her body, causing her small size.
Shauna’s life is very different to other women her age. In her TLC documentary, I Am Shauna Rae, she said:
“I didn’t have this realisation that I wasn’t going to be normal until I was 16. In that moment, the world shattered.
“I want to live my life like my friends and sisters do, but I need my mother, father and the rest of the world to realise that I’m an adult.”
She explains on the show that she has even started vaping to make her ‘look older’:
“I’ve always been attracted to that edgy lifestyle with the tattoos, the piercings, vaping or doing anything adult-esque.
“It wasn’t to show anyone else that I’m an adult, but to prove to myself that I’m an adult.”
