“12 years ago, 15 year old American teens looked like 15 year olds. Now 12 year old American girls look like they are 17.
Our baseline of “teenager” has shifted. See Melinda’s post right above that you simply ignored to answer or address...”
What a completely ignorant comment. One woman’s granddaughter does not prove a “shift in baseline.” There are debates over whether a larger number of girls are entering puberty earlier in the past, but that’s vastly far away from a “shift in baseline.” If we’d had one, her daughter wouldn’t be MISTAKEN for a high-school senior, she’d be MISTAKEN for someone roughly her own age.
Yet here, another woman's insistance that the Chinese gymnasts look underage is without question...
Look, if there's other data then by all means use it! Using looks alone simply doesn't cut it. Look at the other posts in her about coworkers, wives, travelers. Asians just look younger than what we expect.
Let me add a personal perspective from Asia -
American teenage girls do look much older - and act older, in a social sense - than their equivalents in Asia. I don’t know how this can be documented, but thats what I saw.