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'8-year-old girl' isn't 8, she's 22. And now she's opening up on the 'negative attention' her mother receives.
Image source: YouTube screenshot

'8-year-old girl' isn't 8, she's 22. And now she's opening up on the 'negative attention' her mother receives.

Shauna Rae is a 22-year-old woman "stuck" in the body of an 8-year-old child, and she says she struggles with the "negative attention" her mother receives for her daughter simply living her life.

What are the details?

Shauna, who will be featured on TLC's "I Am Shauna Rae," told People that her mother receives undue negative attention for her daughter's condition.

The 22-year-old was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer when she was just a baby, and while treatment cured the cancer, it decimated her pituitary gland, which is of utmost importance in young, developing bodies.

Shauna, according to the report, is just 3'10" — the average size of an 8-year-old girl.

"I usually don't do full-face makeup," she told the outlet of going out for dinner with her family. "If I do makeup, it's usually just eye shadow and mascara. I don't like wearing a lot of makeup anymore. ... I think whether I'm dressed up or not, I get attention. I think when I'm dressed up and I have makeup on, my mom gets negative attention. I don't think it's any different for me, I think it's different for my family."

Shauna's mother, Patty, said she feels the scathing looks and judgment people pass on her when her daughter is just being herself and is often forced to explain her daughter's medical condition to complete strangers.

"Shauna likes to dress up like any other 22-year-old, but we go out together and she gets looks like, 'Oh wow, what is she doing? What is that kid doing?' And then I get the looks of 'How could you? How could you let your child dress like this?'"

Patty added that she thinks about the harsh words "all the time."

"It's just, I feel so ... I guess almost guilty that she will have to go through this for the rest of her life," Patty said. "It doesn't seem like there's going to be a time that is going to be okay, or is going to be normal for her."

Shauna said that she feels "horrible" for her mother for what she is forced to endure.

"I feel horrible for my mom because I don't deal with all the backlash because they don't think it's appropriate to come up to a child and say these things," Shauna said. "They think it's appropriate for them to come up to the mother, which isn't appropriate at all in my opinion. ... And I know it affects her, I think she covers it up very well but I think it's one of those thoughts at the late of night that comes up into her head, if someone had commented on me that day she would overthink it until she fell asleep."

Shauna recently told E! News that since the trailer debuted for the forthcoming TLC show, she has been inundated with support from across the globe.

"There's not a lot of people like me but there are people out there who, like me, just feel different in any way," Shauna said. "When the trailer came out, it was kind of like I was worldwide almost overnight. People have reached out to me; I have found other people with pituitary dwarfism, and it's really not only helped me, but helped them because now we know that we're not alone."

"I Am Shauna Rae" premieres on Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.

The Woman "Stuck" Inside the Body of an 8-Year-Old | I Am Shauna Raewww.youtube.com

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