Featured Image Credit: TLC
Topics: Celebrity, Health, TV And Film, Vaping
Anish Vij
TV star Shauna Rae admits that she initially started vaping to look older.
The 23-year-old - who is 'trapped inside a kid's body' - stands at three feet, 10 inches tall.
Watch below:
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When Shauna was just six months old she underwent treatment for brain cancer which caused damage to her pituitary gland.
This then developed into pituitary dwarfism.
The condition means that she weighs just 50 pounds and stands at the average height of an eight-year-old.
Now star of TLC reality series I Am Shauna Rae, she has discovered celebrity status as viewers are interested in how she goes about her day-to-day life.
"I’ve had multiple issues with people not believing me when I told them my age," she said.
"One thing that happened recently was I went to a [lab] to get my blood taken.
"I was trying to leave, but some employee wouldn’t allow me to, because they thought I was a child leaving without a parent.
"They all denied the fact that I was an adult, and they would not let me leave the property without an adult to take me home.
"It got to the point where I had to leave when they weren’t looking. It was so extreme."
In a recent episode of the TLC show, Shauna revealed she is an avid vaper - and initially did it to show people that she looked like an adult.
"Maybe in the beginning I started vaping to look older," she said.
"I don't know I've always been attracted to that edgy kind of lifestyle with the tattoos, the piercings, 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."
She previously said that if people 'take the time to look at the details in my face' you'll realise that she isn't an eight-year-old.
“If you look at me, you see an eight-year-old,” Shauna said.
“But I think if you take the time to look at the details in my face, in my hands, the maturity in my body — and I think if you take the time to actually talk to me — you really understand that I’m a 23-year-old.”
However, the TLC star admits that it's 'painful when society doesn’t accept you for who you are'.
She said: "I want people to not question me when I say who I am. I’m OK with showing proof, if necessary.
"But if you’re a typical regular Joe off the street, then you need to take me at my word."