Just A Semi-Friendly Reminder: Celebs Don’t Owe Us Their Babies' Faces (Or Any Other Detail)

Social media can be a place of gloom and doom because headlines come at us every millisecond. I don’t have to work too hard at painting this picture for you because you know that feeling all too well: you open your feed to hopefully see what your friends are up to but instead you find out about an all-time high inflation rate, foreigners abusing underaged Filipinas, and airspace outages. Phew, can we get a little bit of cuteness up in here? 

Switch apps to cute animals doing silly things, or a no-fail dose of sunshine: celeb babies. 

Ahhhhh, just putting together the two words is already making me feel warm and cozy, like a swaddled newborn. Who’s learning to eat solids today? Is anyone taking their first steps? Oh, maybe someone is learning how to speak in a dialect with their cute accent. 

We get it—kids doing cute things and their cuteness is way better content than constant reminders that our daily lives can feel like an unlimited subscription plan to “challenger mode”, heck, we report about it every day! But you know what? It’s not a celeb baby’s responsibility to meet our hunger for cute and need for escape. Their only responsibility is to be kids. 

RELATED: Here’s Why Angelica Panganiban Isn’t Showing Her Daughter’s Face Even If ‘Proud Na Proud Kami'

But their parents are public personalities, you say? True, they are public personas. Not the child. Which means if anyone wanted to share, it would be the public persona’s discretion. Which now means whatever we see about a famous person’s child online are just gifts given to us by their parents. 

Why celebs don’t owe us details about their kids 

We’ve been raised to believe that celebrities or anyone who leads a public life should not be bothered when their private lives are made known because “it’s part of the job”. But in the age of social media, many of us are learning that celebrities and influencers are just as entitled to their privacy as we are. 

Can you really blame celebrities whenever they’re hesitant to share their innocent babies to the wild world of social media comments?

We can return the celebs' gratefulness for fan support by being appreciative of what they openly share about their personal lives and we need to learn to be respectful and understanding of what they don't. Because famous people don’t owe it to the public to share every bit of their life just because we’re interested in it. 

It works well for our celeb-crazed culture that self-publishing exists, because now we can access our favorite famous people (usually) without agencies or image control having to check each piece of content. And it’s a platform many of them seem to enjoy too, I surmise because it’s helped us to understand that who they are onscreen and off cam may not be the same and they can control how they project themselves to the world. 

Take for example new daddy Luis Manzano who proudly shared a photo of him with baby Rosie, born last December 2022. Luis chose to cover his daughter’s face with a rose emoji and some netizens asked: Why don’t you want to show your child’s face? Do you think she will be kidnapped, some asked. 

Others went so far as to call him maarte and comparing him to other celeb families (who, in case some have forgotten, are probably his good friends!) because they were comfortable showing their babies as newborns. 

 

 

A Pep.ph article reports that baby Rosie was insulted in Cebuano using the word “pisot” which means uncircumcised and is a derogatory word. 

How is it okay to insult a newborn baby just because you didn’t get what you want? 

Commenters defend Luis 

Thankfully, there were also commenters who came to Luis’ defense explaining that even if they are not celebs, they did not want to share their child’s photo and she couldn’t explain why. “Respetuhin nalang natin privacy nila kasi karapatan naman po nila yun.”  

 

 

“Kaloka yung ibang nagko-comment why di ipakita yung bata. They are celebs, yes. Pero they have all the right to decide whether to show the face of their child or not. Kung kelan at paano. People tend to forget salitang privacy kahit pa artista sila,” another wrote. 

When personalities share their life online, think of it as an invitation. We are a guest. As guests, we only go as far as we are invited and know when it's time to leave. 

Another wrote: “Bwahaha yung mga taong feeling entitled making yung mismong mukha ng baby. Bakit kaano ano mo yung baby? Magulang? Magulang?” 

 

 

Rachel Green said it best—no uterus, no opinion. 

If mothers don’t want to share pictures of their child right away and they can’t explain why, they don’t need to because it’s called hormones. We just pushed a baby out of our body, I think we deserve not having to explain anything. 

And if you’re going to ask me about Luis’ case, he deserves it too, childbirth or not. As Luis’ follower said, magulang? Magulang?  

Leave the kids out of it 

Celebrities don't care about bashing but when you’re talking about their child, don’t be surprised when the gloves come off. In fact, they’ve spoken out against this repeatedly.  

Famous or not, all hell breaks loose with parents when it’s about our child. It’s the same with us isn’t it, when we see another child push ours? It takes all of our Christian Living education and then some not to go full on Hulk mode. So what more when we ruin what should be a beautiful moment for a family, one that a parent has gracefully let us in to, with our careless and callous words just because we’re nobodies? 

Can you really blame celebrities whenever they’re hesitant to share their innocent babies to the wild world of social media comments? Most of us nobodies would crumble with just a single one of these rude comments.

When personalities share their life online, think of it as an invitation. We are a guest. As guests, we only go as far as we are invited and know when it's time to leave. 

Being a nobody doesn’t excuse us from the basic tenet: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. 

As children, these words were drilled into our minds. I hope that when we preach this to our children, we live it out in our online life as well--even if we can easily delete the proof.