For Palmer, it seems ridiculous to go out of your way to prove your adulthood. “If anything, it makes you look even more like a kid!” she says matter-of-factly. “As an adult, you don’t have to go around saying ‘Hey, I’m an adult!’ That would be like me saying ‘Guess what — I’m black!’ You know it already.
“I just [try to] constantly be a professional by asking for what I need in the right way,” Palmer explains. “I feel like you have to tell people who you are, but you don’t have to be disrespectful about it. But you also don’t have to be a shrinking violet. For a long time, when I was younger, I would always act like a little kid and I would just [bow] down because I would never want to feel like I’m being disrespectful to someone. But at the same time, I was like ‘I’m 18 years old and I’m not a kid anymore.’ I don’t have to wait for people to do things for me. I started saying ‘No, that’s not OK. This is what I want. This is what I need from you. Please and thank you.’ At the end of the day, you’re going to have to speak up for yourself — and I learned that after always being, for lack of a better word, crapped on.
“[But] I don’t think that’s a lesson that comes from the industry, I think that’s a lesson that comes from life,” she adds. “I think no matter what you do as a young kid — you can [even] take it from your family. You may go off to college, you’re [becoming] independent and then you go back home and your parents treat you like a kid again. To a certain extent, everybody has their place in their family, but you have to say, ‘Mom and Dad, I actually have things to do.’ And I think that’s a lesson that happens to everyone and everyone has to learn that place in their life.”
