I’m 40 but younger men mistake me for my teen daughter’s sister

A 40-year-old mom looks so young that she often gets mistaken for her teenage daughter’s sister.

Carly Johnson claims strangers are always shocked to learn she’s neither the sister nor friend of her 17-year-old daughter Kia Douglas when they’re out together — and her friends refer to her as the female Benjamin Button since she appears to “age backwards.”

“We get mistaken for sisters all the time. It happens everywhere. I take it as a compliment,” she told Kennedy News.

Johnson, a travel agent from Stockport, Greater Manchester, has even experienced staff at a restaurant coming over and asking for an explanation of how she is Douglas’s mom.

“On holiday someone told Kia to tell her sister the food was ready. She told her I was her mum and she brought the staff out to show them. They were so shocked,” she shared.

“We went out for Kia’s 17th birthday and I asked a waiter if he could take a picture when my daughter came back from the toilet and he was so confused. He thought we were two friends out for dinner.”

The picture of the mother-daughter duo posted to Twitter last Thursday, June 29, garnered 2.1 million as of Wednesday morning.

“Is the mum in this pic? I’m being so serious,” one person commented.

“Which ones the daughter?” a few others asked.

“Wait a min you’re a mum? I was thinking you was 22,” another wrote.

While the mix-up might bother some daughters, Douglas doesn’t mind it and doesn’t get embarrassed. The two of them are “really close” — and even share clothes.

“I hope we’ll go out together when she’s 18. I don’t know if it’s cool to go out with your mum,” Johnson admitted.

The mom is flattered by the confusion, but things get awkward when men ask her about her “hot friend,” referring to her daughter.

“Sometimes I’ll post on my story and guys will ask who my friend is because she’s so hot and I’ll tell them it’s literally my daughter. That’s a bit awkward,” she said.

Johnson has been single for two years and maintains that she’s “not a cradle catcher” — but she attracts much younger men, which she enjoys since she’s “young at heart.”

“I tend to date younger men. I’m not a cradle snatcher but because I look young that’s what I seem to attract. Lads seem to have a thing for an older woman,” she shared. “Even though I am 40, I’m quite young at heart so I think older men have a different mindset to me. I’m still 25 in my head.”

But she doesn’t do much to make herself look so young. Johnson believes her secret to success is simply genetics.

“I think my secret is good genes. My mum’s 68 and she looks good and my nana was in her 90s and fit as a fiddle. Hospital staff would read her age out and think they’d got it wrong,” she shared.