Twenty-five years ago, a balding, middle-aged man approached a 13-year-old girl at a school play and invited her to model in his hotel room. Knowing her father would object, the girl asked her mother to take her.

They met in the lobby of the Hotel Vancouver, where the man told the mother to wait in the bar while he and the girl went upstairs, but the girl asked her mother to accompany her. He wasn’t thrilled, but he shot several rolls with her mom in the room.

A few weeks later the girl received a copy of the photos, along with a note indicating that she was “not model material” because she was “unable to take direction.” His meaning was clear—she had worn her mother’s modest bathing suit rather than a bikini or scanty underwear, and she had refused to peek-out from behind the shower curtain or lie on the bed with her legs in the air.

That girl was me. I had allowed myself to be photographed by a complete stranger based on the promise that he could fulfill my fantasy to be gazed upon and admired by the entire world. But I had not been able to do the overtly sexual things he had asked me to do. I had never been naked in front of anyone. I hadn’t even kissed a boy. If this same story took place today, would my 13-year-old self think twice about posing topless or spreading her legs for the camera? Perhaps not, thanks to the currently toxic level of sexual exposure among young girls.