The reality television star Shauna Rae is 25 years old, weighs around 50 pounds and stands just 3ft 10 inches tall.
She shot to fame at the start of 2022 when she appeared in her own show I Am Shauna Rae. But it’s the story of her childhood illness, and how its unexpected side effect was that she stopped growing.
She was on the TLC show’s second season with her experiences of looking for love and independence.
Rae has admitted that a lot of ‘creeps’ want to date her because of fame.
Rae’s plight has gained lots of attention online, with one fan writing: “She deserves to be loved and have relationships, it’s so sad,” he said.
Another adds: “I’m sure she just wants people to look at her as a person like anyone else.”
Born with brain cancer, the 25 year old went through chemotherapy during childhood.The impact of this caused her pituitary gland, which controls other hormones, to shrink, and thus her pituitary dwarfism.
Rae is compared more to an eight year old than a woman due to what she’s gone through.
In one episode of her show, she says: “I’m an adult people don’t get it.”
In an interview with the New York Post, Rae said: An eight year old is what you see if you look at me.
“I think if you take the time to look at the details in my face, my hands, the maturity in my body, if you take the time to actually talk to me, I think you really understand that I’m [an adult].”
he problem is, when it comes to brief encounters, people don’t do this, and Rae will be treated like a child.
She said in a TikTok video she will be given kids’ menus, cups, and crayons at restaurants.
She said (per People magazine): ‘I think it’s actually just the environment I’m in, the way I walk, the way I talk to people, but it also happens because if you’re around a family and you see someone small, they just automatically think ‘child’ and it happens all the time,’ she said.
Areas of Rae’s life have also been affected by her past cancer treatment.
While the 25 year old doesn’t want children right now, she has started a fertility journey.
The TV personality revealed in a video on her YouTube channel that she has a ‘very low egg count’ and had hoped to freeze her eggs during season two of I Am Shauna Rae but couldn’t afford it.
Rae said: ‘I wanted to go ahead and get my eggs frozen in case I want to have children down the line.’ I want the same opportunities as anybody else.
“I found out that at that time… my insurance wouldn’t cover anything, and the medicine alone would be $9,000, and it was a total that was going to come to somewhere around $15–20,000, and I didn’t have the funds at that point to be able to do the procedure on my own.”
She continued: ‘I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether I want a family, whether I want a baby that looks like me or whether I want to do adoption or anything like that.’
“At the end of the day, I don’t really care… a child, someone, I can raise, someone I can grow with, that’s all the same for me,” she says.
Rae has also started a GoFundMe to help on her medical journey. In addition to funding her eggs to be frozen, the TLC star is raising cash for dental implants.
The fundraiser page reads: ‘I am asking those who are willing to, for help, in order to have a chance at the same opportunity as others.’
I have maybe, six months, so I can become infertile, and for my teeth, I can hold onto them till I can’t. ‘It could be anything at all to help with a healthy future for myself.’”
And during her fertility journey, fans were told she was in a relationship and it’s been ‘a secret’ for a while..
In an Instagram post, which hides her partner’s face, she said: The only thing you really need to know is they make me happy and I’m not sure where I would be in my goals without them.”
“All I ask y’all is to support me and not be hateful towards them or my relationship.”
Rae talked about the difficulties of starting a relationship before meeting her mysterious new partner.
The 25 year old told the New York Post she’s met men with ‘maybe not the best intentions.’
She explained: I’ve just been able to see someone who is maybe not going to have the best intentions because they always give themselves away.
Their questions are very targeted towards my physicality… Like they’re studying me for a lab.”
If you’d like to donate to Shauna Rae’s GoFundMe, you can do so here.
