The consequences of objectification: It never mattered what I wore

Ariana Glaser gazes out at the Long Island Sound. (Photo Credit: Joseph Newman)

“You need to change,” the head counselor said quietly, disgust withering on her face as she looked me up and down. “You can’t show any cleavage.”

I traipsed back to my cabin, my arms wrapped around my chest as I attempted to hide what I’d been taught needed to be concealed. As I walked, I watched shirtless boys playing in the sunlit quad on that brutal summer morning, and I couldn’t understand why boys could wear as little as they wanted, while I was taught that wearing something the slightest bit provocative might suggest that I was, in some astounding way, asking to be preyed upon.

Though this ideology impressed upon me a lifelong discomfort in my body, I would also come to find that, when something inevitably happened to me, I was wearing, quite possibly, the least inviting attire: sweatpants and a medical gown.

In October of my junior year, I attended a chiropractic appointment for the first time since the pandemic. I’d undergone the majority of puberty during the years hidden away from the world. In the eyes of my assailant, I had transformed from a child into a young woman since he’d last seen me. And with the drastic change in my appearance came a drastic change in his treatment toward me—especially once my father was no longer in the room. As he examined me, he asked uncomfortable, invasive questions that had nothing to do with the back pain I’d come in for. Additionally, he expressed multiple times how beautiful I was, reminiscing on how short my hair had been back then, telling me not to cut it again.

Then, after he laid me down on the examining table, he ran his hands over my chest, and I lay still, blanketed by fear, feeling like my body was not my own.

We filed a police report, starting the harrowing trail awaiting any young woman brave enough to bring a sexual assault to light. Two days later, the chiropractor was arrested, questioned, and released with a lineup of court dates. Naturally, the surrounding media jumped at the novelty of a chiropractor who, having been in business for four decades, was accused of groping a minor. I found myself decaying into a black hole: hours spent reading comments by people I didn’t know who didn’t know me, who didn’t know the whole story, but still were quick to paint me as a liar. The chiropractor, too, made his own public comment, deeming me “irate” and, of course, denying the events of that gray day in October.

The days following the assault found me in a particularly fragile state, struggling to erase the feeling of this man’s hands on me, wrestling with myself to stop feeding an inexplicably cruel conception complete strangers had made of me, and falling into a deeply depressive mind space that begged the question: Should I have just kept quiet?

I had never felt more alone in my life.

Until I wasn’t alone. For the first time, other victims began to come forward. Women of every age, every walk of life, claimed he’d touched them, too. Some even filed police reports. Finally, on September 12th, 2023, my assailant pleaded guilty to a Class A misdemeanor, impressing upon him a criminal conviction and, most importantly, permanently revoking his license to practice. On September 12th, 2023, it was written in stone that though I wasn’t his first victim, I would be his last.

After I won, I couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholy imagining all that still had to be done: all the victims that hadn’t been believed, and all the girls who were taught to stand down and remodel themselves into a figure suitable for men. I, for one, am not going to let myself be silenced ever again.