The poison of body shaming

By Herman M. Lagon

The clip lasted only a few seconds. A young woman onstage at Luneta raised her fist, led a chant against corruption, and looked out at a sea of umbrellas, tarpaulins, and homemade signs. It was Martial Law Day, and thousands had gathered for the Trillion Peso March in cities across the country. The sound felt familiar: a low rumble of voices swelling into one call for accountability.

Then the video hit TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, and the focus slid. Comments mocked the darker shade of her underarm. Screens zoomed in, strangers piled on, and the thread turned from public funds to someone’s skin. Body discoloration is normal. The shamers were not clever, only beneath basic decency, a disgrace to the moment, and an affront to civic discourse. It showed, plainly, how retrograde, dull, archaic, and dimwitted those remarks were.

As a father of two strong and independent daughters, a son who takes care of his tenacious octogenarian mother, and a teacher with many women colleagues, I felt that sting. Reducing womanhood to the color of an armpit insults the dignity of every woman you and I love. The comment was ridiculous, but also a line people like me will not let pass. It is easy to laugh from a screen; it is harder to stand on stage and be laughed at for telling the truth.

Color talk is old in our culture. Many of us grew up with casual remarks about knees, elbows, or kilikili during family gatherings. Ads pushed whitening, pageants crowned a certain look, and a quiet equation settled in: fairer is finer. That is colorism, and it carries harm. Local and international studies link body shaming to anxiety, low self-worth, and social withdrawal; the American Psychological Association and World Health Organization note these effects in their guidance on adolescent well-being, while school counselors here see the same patterns. Students avoid recitations because they fear a screenshot. Young leaders back out of forums because they worry more about how they look than what they will say. Jokes like “hoy, sino ba ’to” do not float harmlessly; they land on real shoulders and push people off the stage before they even step on it.

There is also the way our feeds work. The internet does not reward patience; it rewards reaction. A chant that took nerve to deliver competes with content easy to tease. Researchers call it “context collapse”: a moment meant for a rally crowd gets ripped from its meaning and served to viewers who did not share the heat, the risk, or the purpose. The clip becomes entertainment, the person becomes a prop, and the public issue loses oxygen. Attention is a civic asset. We either spend it wisely—on documents, hearings, and cases—or burn it on gossip that does not fix a single floodway. Every minute we waste on a stranger’s armpit is a minute stolen from tracing where the money went.

The health part is straightforward. Dermatologists will tell you darker underarms are common among us. Friction from movement or clothing, hormones, and genetics all play roles; melanin reacts to protect the skin. It is not a moral failing. It is not a public scandal. It does not make a person less credible. What causes harm is constant ridicule. Mental-health workers in schools report how teasing about bodies adds to stress, especially for girls. The Philippine Council for Health Research and Development has flagged body-image pressure as a concern among adolescents. We do not need a prescription to be kind. We only need to stop turning natural features into ammunition.

What the woman onstage asked us to look at was not a body but a budget. The march called for traceable outcomes: protect whistleblowers, publish project details for public monitoring, stop “ghost” works, craft anti-corruption laws, prosecute graft, and blacklist repeat-failure contractors. These are not partisan slogans. They are things that can be tracked. If funds meant for flood control went somewhere else, it shows up in muddy barangay roads and submerged classrooms. If pork insertions survive in the dark, it shows up when a flyover stands half-finished, sub-standard, or sinking, while drainage remains a rumor. People marched because they want receipts, not a feel-good or look-good Sunday.

The sneers at the clip carried a gendered edge. Women in public spaces face a long checklist that men often skip—appearance, voice, clothes, even posture. Speak up, but look pretty. Argue, but do not sweat. That ridiculous standard keeps many off the microphone. Republic Act 11313, the Safe Spaces Act, names gender-based online harassment because it drives people, especially women and LGBTQ individuals, out of the conversation. When we judge a speaker’s kilikili before her message, we help that silencing along. Democracy depends on voices we rarely hear: the nurse who knows a COA memo by heart, the teacher who can read a procurement plan, the student who can compute how many classrooms a budget should build, the farmer who can map where the canal should have been. We hurt the country when we make the stage a place of ridicule.

There are simple ways to answer this without adding more fire. Bystander rules help. If a thread derails into body shaming, leave one firm reply that centers the issue—“Pera, hindi kilikili. Focus on corruption.”—then mute. Upvote comments that defend dignity and push the discussion back to policy. Social media group admins can set clear rules: no looks-based attacks, stay on topic, repeat violators out. Editors can avoid close-up crops designed to embarrass. These are boring tasks; they are also how communities become safer for the next volunteer who tries to speak.

Keep the fire, but make it steady. After calling out body shaming, do the boring work that moves things: file a simple FOI, log a faulty drain, track a case, ask for the project papers. In offices, add a quick “receipts check” in Monday huddles, post liquidations on the board, and keep an anonymous ethics inbox. In schools, run a short homeroom on digital dignity, set a “no body-shame, stay on topic” rule on class pages, and form a student budget-watch team with a teacher coach. In parishes, open a monthly help desk for FOI forms and reports on ghost projects, and remind volunteers that everybody is welcome. Small, weekly, doable—habits that make integrity louder than mockery.

There will be pushback. Some will say, “Free country; let people joke.” Yes, speech is free. We still choose how to use it. We can be decent without gagging anyone. Others will argue, “Hygiene matters.” Of course. So does focus. The woman onstage showed up, risked being mocked, and gave the crowd a line to hold. That deserves respect. And if we must borrow courage, take a few lines from civil rights activist Maya Angelou that have steadied many of us:

“You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

So here is the invitation. Watch the clip again, but this time notice what matters: the breath she takes before the shout, the steady voice, the crowd that answers back, the raincoats and wet cardboard signs, the students raising their clenched fists, the parents lifting their kids to see. Then do one follow-through this week that helps the message, not the mockery. As we demand accountability, transparency, and justice through our small acts, let us keep saying the part that should be obvious: focus on the theft, not the skin. Outrage can start a march. Discipline and focus win reforms.

***

Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.