'Your friend didn't look like a kid.'

We all have a predisposition, though, to not accept that she's 16 because of that knowledge that she isn't. You'd probably be amazed to find out just how much of our perception is dictated by our assumptions. And it isn't just our visual perceptions, though those are affected also, but all our senses.

I know this may seem like a bit of a tangent, but there's this psychological affect called Pareidolia, where human beings impose meaning on meaningless patterns. You can listen to a song, and swear that the singer is singing one thing, when he's singing something completely different. The problem is that once you hear it one way, it gets stuck in your mind in that pattern, and is almost impossible to undo by yourself. We see faces in rocks and stains. We are even influenced to taste things that are not there. For example, they've done experiments where tap water was put into different kinds of fancy bottles, and given to people and even though the water all came from the same source, people swear that they are different, and can even describe in great detail how the different waters taste. True story -- wine from an expensive-looking bottle tastes different than the same exact wine from a cheap-looking bottle. And my point of all this is that knowing that she's older can influence your acceptance of her in the role. What if she really was 16? Would there be so much discussion about her age here? I doubt it.

And because I, myself, have always been mistaken for being much younger than I am, it's something that I've become very used to. Yes, I agree that she looks older than she is. But I also know that that she very well COULD be 16, simply because I myself don't look my age, and I know people who also don't look their age (both looking older and younger than they are).