Laura Bell
Coming into work one winter. As I took my coat off, my male co-worker looked at my chest and said “Cold outside?” He was my boss. I was embarrassed. I felt he’d stripped away my professionalism and diminished me. I laughed it off, of course. That’s what you were supposed to do; if you didn’t you were branded as humourless. I had a breast reduction just a few years later. I told everyone it was because was getting backache. That was a lie. I was getting backache but that didn’t bother me nearly as much as the constant references to my breasts chipping away day after day at my sense of self & my self confidence. I was seen as just a pair of giant tits. I wanted to be seen as a person. Side note: 20 years later and there are members of staff who don’t like to work with them but who refuse to put in a complaint about him because they don’t want to upset him or cause him trouble.