Kali Navea-Huff is a law student, Gender-Based Violence awareness advocate, football player, events host, public speaking coach, and Miss Universe Philippines Pasig City 2023. She shared her story with Cosmopolitan Philippines in a bid to stop online bullies.
“She needs to sign up for a gym membership," “fix teeth at least...tone arms...alarplasty,” “It’s a No for me,” ”please consider MESO LIPO pls pls pls,” “Auntieeeee.”
These are just some of the comments posted on the pictures and videos that were shared during my Miss Universe Philippines journey—comments attacking my looks, intelligence, identity, capabilities, and body.
We all know the Filipino fandom in beauty pageants is unmatched—it’s something we take pride in the fact that we send passionate and intelligent women to represent our country and its people, and we will defend those beautiful women within an inch of our lives. The problem is, beauty is an ever-changing standard. So, when women don’t live up to that impossible standard, social media rears its ugly head.
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Even though I’ve always believed in giving more weight to the positive messages, comments like these would validate the fears that would creep up when I feel vulnerable. Everyone has parts about themselves that take a little more work to love and, even amid thousands of positive comments, you can’t help but be horrified when even one person puts your insecure thoughts into words for thousands more to dissect.
Women are taught to ignore the negativity, to keep moving forward, and that it will only make us stronger. We do it all the time...but why is no one asking, “should we have to?” Why do we keep placing the burden on women to show their grace and their strength in the midst of blatant disregard for their dignity?
After all, whether you are a public figure or not, the line between constructive criticism and pure vitriol isn’t that thin.
No matter how secure I am in what I have to offer the world, it doesn’t give bashers a license to try to test that. To do their best to push me over the edge. To try to paint me, the women who see themselves in me, or the communities and advocacies I fight for, and with, as unimportant or undeserving of basic decency.
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But, this isn’t about me. I can, have, and will continue to live with the fact that people will dislike me. Though I will have emotions after being sent horrible messages, I know that my value goes beyond what a few (or even hundreds of) hate messages try to place on me. I can handle it. But what about the next girl? What about the girls that are a few dress sizes bigger than I am? The girls who relate to my advocacy? The girls who see me as beautiful? What goes through their minds when they read what is being said about me?
How will the next generation look at themselves if those who are visible are being told they’re not enough? Will we continue to enable a worldview where women exist with the sole purpose of fitting into a shifting standard of beauty? And what happens when they inevitably fail at meeting that standard?
Time and time again, they feel they do not have a place in this world.
Our culture is one where people believe they have every right to comment on a woman’s body, or any aspect of her life, under the guise of constructive criticism. But the hateful comments I’ve received go beyond “toxic” or “negative”. It isn’t even just ignorant and sexist...it’s violent.
Psychological abuse, harassment, body-shaming, and the silencing and tearing down of women on the internet all enable a culture where women are mere objects—to be shaped to your pleasure, to shrink themselves to fit into the ideals or boxes you shape, to live their lives according to some impossible and ever-changing standard, and to dull their shine to make you more comfortable.
How can women write our stories when we are stifled? Because women who respond to hate are oversensitive and insecure, or not equipped to be leaders.
But if we don’t, then we’re too weak to stand up for ourselves. To make sure we have accomplishments, but they’re merely supplementary to our beauty.
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Will this trend of putting impossible standards on women continue? Will we never be allowed to just freely exist? Or could we create a world where a woman puts herself, her story, and her community in the spotlight and be allowed to shine to her full potential?
Maybe we can start by reframing the conversation from comments being “negative” to what it is: the objectification of women. These comments are attempts to control and direct what women should be, a message that they are not enough, and they only have value when they look and act just how you want them to.
If we recognize the violent undertones of such comments, then we could also stop asking women to accept the harassment they face as the norm.
After all, if we’re constantly asking women to change their mindset when hearing or seeing comments that tear them down, can we not also ask ourselves, “if women are allowed to live authentically, and without any barriers, what more could they achieve?”
Then, perhaps, we can allow the platforms we’ve created to uplift women to fulfill that purpose. Maybe the queens of today, and tomorrow, can show their full capabilities. A world where online abuse, for all women, isn’t normalized.
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After joining a pageant, one of the few safe spaces created for women to thrive, I finished my journey empowered - not because of the situations I found myself in, but despite them. Somehow, we’ve accepted misogyny so easily as a necessary evil in such spaces.
What’s even stranger is it seems we’ve accepted it from the very people who have felt that prejudice themselves, internalized it, and are now imposing it on others.
We preach a lot about kindness towards others on social media, but perhaps we can elevate the conversation and start talking about kindness towards oneself. Because I’m not asking for your approval, and I’m especially not a destination for your own insecurities. And people will say “well don’t join a pageant if you can’t handle negative comments.”
I never joined to be objectified or harassed. And we have to stop treating that as a given. Instead of telling women to grow thicker skin, why not do our part to ensure that pageants, and all places that aim to empower women, allow women to show what they could do—not what they should do.
