This article is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in Mamamia Out Loud's Substack. Sign up here .

Last year, when I was 29-years-old, I was asked if I would be open to hosting a fun trivia night for a workplace.

Me, being extremely interested (read: nosey) in other people's places of work, immediately said yes. All the questions had been prepared for me, so I was basically there to, as the kids say, "bring the vibes."

There were five teams, and just from the questions alone I could tell the majority of the crowd were younger than me (they didn't know any ABBA songs).

Watch Em Vernem talk about this moment. Post continues below.

0 0

Em’s GUESS HER AGE nightmare | Mamamia Out Loud

Besides that awful crime against good taste in music, the rest of the evening was going smoothly. They were laughing at my jokes, we were all having a good time, I was even on a nickname basis with a few of them.

It's also important to note that around 40 per cent of the crowd was young men and, as someone who's never worked with more than five men in my 10 years of work, this was fascinating to me.

I noticed that most of the women there were having fun. Like, proper fun. Enjoying the unhinged nature of some of the questions, drinking wine, smashing the cheese boards.

While the guys… were there to win. And honestly, they were.

It got to the end of the event and two teams were on the same number of points. The host didn't foresee this as a possibility and in a last-minute scramble it was decided that the tie-breaker question would be:

Guess Em Vernem's age.

(Em Vernem being… me). I don't know whose idea this was, I don't know who approved of the idea and at that moment I didn't know who Em Vernem was. I was having an out-of-body experience — watching this little Indian woman being physically analysed by 25 strangers.

It was the first time in my life I began mentally comparing my face to my age.

I shouldn't have worn my glasses, I should've styled my hair, why did I wear red lipstick ?

I was sweating. My face was getting hot. I thought, "Oh God, they're all going to think I'm perimenopausal."

I looked over at some of the girls looking at me. Some were smiling, some were giving me "I'm sorry" eyes after reading what their male co-workers had written down.

The men were looking at me completely differently. I had never been looked at this way in my life. They were staring at me and simultaneously not seeing me. I watched them watching me. Eyes darting all over, from my forehead to my neck, my hands and my clothes.

I overheard a team of five men in their early 20s. One of them was whispering in a way that sounded like he wanted me to hear him (and I definitely heard him).

"She's definitely in her mid-30s at least."

Every single team guessed wrong. Every single team guessed above 30 bar one group of all women who guessed 28 (my angels).

They had a laugh, I went home and cried.

In bed that night, I was still sweating and cringing as I replayed that moment in my head over and over again. I wasn't angry at the guys who guessed that I was 34— I knew they were playing to win, so it was a genuine guess (which lowkey felt worse).

I was mad at one person. And that person was James.

Listen to Em talk about this moment on the Mamamia Out Loud podcast. Post continues below.

Who's James you ask? Well, James is the name of a security guard who works at a popular bar in Sydney, and James asked to see my ID before letting me onto the premises. It's people like JAMES who made me feel safe in the 'forever-21-delusion'. That not only am I 29, but there's a huge possibility that I'm actually a cool 17-year-old dancing queen (it all comes back to ABBA).

The annoying part is that if this had happened three years ago, where I sat there and allowed strangers to guess my age, I would've loved it.

If they guessed younger than 26, I would've felt ✨youthful✨, if they guessed older, I would've felt mature.

Somewhere in those three years, the feeling of maturity was replaced with dread.

The next day I was at my parents' house for dinner, admittedly still having a massive complex about my looks-to-age ratio. I was wearing the same thing as the day before — glasses, minimal makeup, hair in a messy bun.

My dad sat down at the table opposite me, looked at my face, smiled and said, "You look like the spitting image of your mum."

He's right, I do.

My mother and I. Dad clearly thought the paper straw was the main character of this photo.

If you want more from Emily Vernem, you can follow her on Instagram @emilyvernem.

Feature image: Supplied.