The Fabric of Blame

It always starts with fabric. Not the fabric of culture or kindness—no, the literal kind. The kind stitched into skirts, cropped into tops, wrapped or not wrapped around skin.

Because apparently, what you wear is the consent you forgot to give.
And how convenient—how comfortingly lazy—that makes things for those too bored to question their own entitlement.

I've overheard it in barber shops, read it in comment sections, seen it slide past like an afterthought in Sunday dinner conversations:
“Eh, kasi naman, tingnan mo suot.”

As if cloth is code. As if cotton speaks clearer than the person wearing it.

We have managed to build an entire theology around knees, a doctrine around waistlines, an ethical system that begins and ends at the neckline.
And the sermons are always the same: If you don’t want to be looked at, don’t be visible.

But here's a thought: maybe the problem isn’t that we’re showing too much skin—it’s that some people were never taught to look at skin and see a person instead of permission.

And so, they make themselves cartographers of cleavage and custodians of morality.
They zoom in, crop out, isolate. They reduce.

And when called out, they pull out the tired script:
“Natural lang naman sa lalaki 'yan. Tao lang kami.”

Funny. We’ve taught dogs better obedience. We’ve trained machines to recognize human faces, but we still can’t train a grown man to recognize a boundary unless it’s printed on barbed wire.

There’s an irony here, sharp as shame:
The same society that ogles girls for baring skin will also call her malandi for enjoying her own body.
The same boys who will defend pamboboso with a shrug will cry foul when someone questions their masculinity.
The same people who ask “what was she wearing?” would never ask “why did he look?”

We’ve confused control with culture.
We’ve turned policing bodies into sport.
And we keep mistaking predatory curiosity for masculine instinct—as if gender is a get-out-of-accountability-free card.

Here’s the thing: There is no such thing as clothing that provokes.
Only eyes that are never taught to look inward.
Only minds that are too weak to carry their own desires without making them someone else’s burden.

You want to talk about dignity? Then stop telling people to cover up and start asking why your gaze refuses to.

Because dignity isn’t in the dress. It’s in the decision to see someone and choose not to devour them with your eyes.

Until then, we’ll keep spinning these empty threads of blame.
And somehow, it’s never the gaze that’s naked. Just the person in front of it.