When Political Debate Turns Into Body Shaming
Do you know how corrupt the government in my country is corruption, collusion and nepotism are rampant everywhere. Even the elected president is a human rights violator who was never properly brought to justice and the current president’s father, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, was once interviewed by Tempo back in 1999 about his son’s arrogant and temperamental nature.
Get Indiyaratri’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
But you know, when I brought up this topic on my WhatsApp status, a friend in my contact suddenly made a passive-aggressive jab at me, saying, “The praying mantis is active again.” She mocked me because of my tall and thin body, and by “active again,” she meant that I was back to voicing things that rightfully deserve to be voiced.
That got me thinking: why didn’t she criticize the substance of what I said? Why did she criticize my physical body instead?
At campus, I see her as someone who is capable of holding her ground in a debate. But when it comes to her proud president, it feels like her logic suddenly shuts down. But after that, I realized she wasn’t actually all that impressive.
First, mantises are amazing creatures. When she called me a mantis, I didn’t take it as something bad at all. In fact, I was glad to be compared to a mantis! Though personally, I think the stick bug resembles me much more closely, so I guess she didn’t do enough research.
Second, since I couldn’t understand her way of thinking, I decided to reframe her insult using my own logic. I turned her taunt into educational content about insects, like this:
