It’s always nice to hear people say you don’t look your age.

(Assuming they don’t mean you actually look a decade older thanks to sins of your past).

But I always assumed before people were just being nice – until more recently.

What’s the change? Is it the lifestyle mods? Or could it be the less makeup/more cardio combo I’m rocking? This past year, I tried (for the first time ever since I was 15) leaving home without any makeup on at all – other than my eyebrows being on point and a baseball cap to cover the coif-crash happening atop my dome piece. It was hard – at first.

But, like clockwork, that whole list of “seven things you’ll realize in seven days of not wearing makeup (the ultimate “no makeup challenge”) came true for me like a jiminy cricket promise. But you know what else came true? Something I wasn’t expecting at all. People weren’t saying “Oh, well you don’t LOOK 30” or asking if I was X years young. They were assuming it. There was the kid who left me a napkin under my wiper blade – complete with his twitter handle and phone number scrawled on it (for anyone who remembers me sharing this story, I looked him up. Aaand he’s 17). I was ready to write that once off as cougar sniping. But then I got asked what college I go to by a dude out with his wife (eh, no biggie – really old people get confused and think we’re all the same) Then, finally, there was the cashier chick last week who asked me which high school I go to.

I wanted to glee vomit. And then kiss her with my vomit mouth.

Instead, I asked – with tears in my eyes – if she accepted tips.

She declined (Wegmans has some sort’ve rule against that, apparently).

This sounds like I’m self back patting with my own baby soft skin, doesn’t it? Don’t eyeroll too much at me, darlings. ’cause I’m about to crash my own self-adulation party and say it’s probably more a combo of both the fashion and face wear. Because all’a these involuntary compliments sem to happen when I’ve just finished or am beginning my workout – donning jogging clothes.

Like Jenna Marbles (who aptly hits the style nail on the head for me lately) says:

Bish ain’t wrong.

I look young, alright.

12 year old boy young.

I dress boyish to knock out my cardio, hobo to knock out my work, and ho-ey to get knocked up (or to pick out someone for a dry practice run at least). And arguably, hookers always look older (unless you’re Jodie Foster in “Taxi Driver” – wait she was a hooker in that movie, right?). So, however sexy you may look, the face gunk’s gonna make you look older. And seep into your pores. And your brain. And turn you into a circus clown overnight like Carl in that one Aqua Teen episode.

So, I suppose, what’s been saving my telomeres asses (#bioGeekJokes) may be in part the copious cardio, meditation, yoga, and organic eating. But I think a lot of it also has to do with me just spending a buncha time hanging out in my “12 year old boy” duds and being willing to nix my warpaint some days. The only question I have to ask myself is whether “looking young” is still favorable if it means I also look like a pre-pubescent Brady boy. Deep questions like these are why it’s great I do yoga and meditate – because these spiritual practices teach me inner truths about balance. They help me outline my life priorities.

Like my latest lookbook fashion itinerary:

1. 7 A.M. – 12:00 Skid Row Ensemble (for work from home).

2. 12:00 – 3 P.M. Peanut Butter Paste (for dancing in my Buffalo Bill Skin Suit).

3. 3 P.M. – 6 P.M. SchoolBoy Gym Gear (while I jog and the bodies melt in an acid bath).

4. 6 P.M. – 7 A.M. Hooker Uniform (to lure men wearing my next flesh coat back to my lair).

(And like that Megan Fox horror flick, that’s my real secret to youth).

Jesus, mom.

Is it any wonder I ended up this way?

When you were letting me watch shiz like this with my little child eyeballs?

#explainseverything