changes made to glitchy sims' faces not saving

since growing together i noticed that aging a sim up from an infant to any other age would result in the sim having 'squashed' features. i found a workaround, which was that on each life stage i wouldn't keep the generated features of a child's face and i'd manually select eyes, cheeks, jaw etc, but ive found that it no longer works. i currently have a teenage sim, whose body and face is a little unusually shaped. ive tried changing it in cas with cas.fulleditmode enabled, and it works until i leave cas and everything reverts back to how it was. anyone have any idea how to solve this?

i have no mods or cc at all. the only mods ive ever downloaded is the better build/buy mod which i deleted at the start of october, and the 'red shelf' mod that i deleted last year