The Philippines has long been seen as an outlier on the global front of the gender gap, having elected not just one but two women leaders in the last 20 years. So why are places of power still dominated by men? Read CNN Philippines Life's March 2022 cover story here.

The ascent of the Marcoses back to power has ignited fear that a dark portion of Philippine history will be deleted from memory. Its latest iteration: the controversial plan of the Department of Education (DepEd) to remove “Marcos” from “Diktadurang Marcos” in the Grade 6 Araling Panlipunan (AP) curriculum. How deep is the impact of the deletion of a word — or a family name — from the collective memory of a nation? Read here.

Lisa Macuja Elizalde finds new footing on an unlikely stage: Tiktok. The “ballerina of the people” brings ballet education to the world as an act of resistance to instant gratification. Read the profile here.

After being accused of using ChatGPT for her published work, Pola del Monte claps back with this essay.

In this essay, Pola opens up about being a single, independent woman post-pandemic — how she navigated her way through a painful breakup and strengthened her sense of self after it. Read here.

Ten years ago, I discovered — by a relative’s slip of the tongue — that my own father, who had been absent for most of my life, had six other children. Turns out, it’s not just celebrities who have secret families. Read about it here.

Born in the pandemic, the Home Buddies Facebook group made aspirational home living more accessible as a home idea-sharing resource. Pola writes about how the group chronicles the evolving consumerist tastes and sensibilities of this niche of upwardly mobile middle-class Filipinos. Read here.

With a new “Made in Singapore” campaign spurring travel, Pola explored what makes the vibrant city-state unique. Read her travel recommendations here.

Aga Muhlach and Julia Barretto in a movie. No, not as father-daughter, but as lovers. Pola del Monte talks about why that's not okay. Read here.

Malicious stories, even when denied, have the power to destroy people, and are especially dangerous for those whose careers depend on their image. Read the full article here.

This is Metropolitan Manila, a city perturbed by ghosts at almost any time and certainly this ghost month, which traces its hazy origins to medieval China. In this chaotic, ramshackle world that is Manila today, businessmen, the work force, the economy — all are still haunted by ghosts. Read the full story here.

There is much to learn from Spain in terms of gastronomy. Spain is one of the countries at the center of the world of gastronomy, teeming with Michelin-starred chefs. Meanwhile, the Philippines, whose dishes are infused with traditional Spanish elements inherited from 300 years as Spain’s colony, has yet to discover how to move on from morcon to degustacion. Read this 2015 article about the inaugural Madrid Fusión Manila here.

William Mahi, Chef de Cuisine at City of Dreams' Tasting Room, and formerly Chef de Cuisine at two Michelin-starred Spondi Restaurant in Athens, laid a cigarette-sized stick of duck liver terrine on our plates. The rich, buttery foie gras melted with the dash of cinnamon and port wine sauce, the itsy bitsy slices of apples, strawberries and pears, a drizzle of honey and dollop spicy red wine jelly, everything arranged like an edible galaxy—miniature instead of infinite. Read the full story here.

There is economics involved in being a trans man or a trans woman. While a transgender identity does not depend on medical procedure, many transgender people take hormones and some undergo surgery to align their gender expression with their gender identity, and achieve a long-term personal comfort with their gendered selves. Read here.

“The script is not only the very basis of a film, it’s the film on paper. Everybody, the whole production, revolves around that.” —Roy C. Iglesias

Pola interviews award-winning film writer and director Roy C. Iglesias, whose most notable works include, among others, the 1976 Eddie Romero film, Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?. Read the script of their 2014 conversation here.

Attitudes toward parenthood take root in society’s ideas about gender roles. “The role of motherhood is seen by society as central to a woman’s identity,” write Sabra L. Katz-Wise, Heather A. Priess and Janet S. Hyde. “Men perceive fathering as something they ‘do,’ whereas women experience mothering as something they ‘are.'”

Now more Filipino women are deferring or delaying motherhood, as shown by the Philippine Statistics Authority’s records of sharp birth drops — in 2020, there were only 1,516,042 million registered live births in the country, the lowest since 1986 and around 10% less than the births recorded in 2019. Here, Pola asks six women about their decision to be consciously child-free — for now or for good.

Pola waxes poetic about Philip the schnauzer, pet antrophormism, and the saving grace of pandemic dogs. Read here.

Pola talks to former Ifugao congressman Teddy Baguilat Jr. about navigating national campaigns from the margins. Read here.

That the Marcos family has been repackaged into celebrity royalty akin to the Kardashians is as baffling as the fact that a Chinese social network became this generation’s platform to “learn” about Philippine history.

But to blame it all on social media, TikTok to be exact, is to take a myopic view of the situation. Could it be that today’s youth’s naiveté — fawning over the ex-first lady’s youthful beauty while glossing over human rights violations — is rooted in something much deeper? Pola investigates.

When the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos took control of privately-owned media companies, particularly those critical of his administration, he created a void. It was from this void that the “mosquito press” emerged: small, alternative media outlets with a stinging bite, but nothing that couldn’t be easily swatted — or at least he thought.

50 years after the 1972 declaration of martial law, with the namesake of the deceased dictator in power, will the mosquito press come buzzing back to life? Read here.

“I Like Wearing Rainbows,” winner of the 28th Romeo Forbes Children’s Story Writing Competition, tackles significant themes through its vibrant artwork and sympathetic storytelling. The premise of writer Agay Llanera’s story is simple — a boy indulges in playing with his grandmother’s clothes. He pulls open his closet and picks from piles of clothing: a yellow skirt, a shimmery pink top, a ruffled purple dress. He wears them one by one, running and twirling in jovial innocence, while his grandmother sings and applauds.

Tension ensues when he blithely steps out of the closet and into the kitchen. His father turns red and yells: “Boys don’t wear dresses.” Read the rest here.

For a holiday so deeply intertwined with consumerism, the seemingly unstoppable rise of prices of goods and services is causing financial strain on Filipinos. Read what's on Filipinos' Christmas lists in 2022 here.

The stage can either be a place of joy or misery. Depending on which side you’re on, performing for the company Christmas or year-end party can either be a delightful event to bond with peers or a venue for potential humiliation for all the office to see. Hear from both sides here.

Romar Chuca, known as The Catholic Comedian, is serving his own brand of religious content in an era where Jesus drag welcomes online persecution. Read the profile here.

A sharp drizzle falls on the bustling modern metropolis that is Hong Kong, soaking the folded cardboard boxes on which overseas Filipino workers idly crouch on their day-off. With backs bent from scrubbing bowls in cramped toilets, they chatter their woes away in their small window of rest, feeding on lunches packed in reused ice cream tubs.

Elsewhere though, Filipinos are swans. On a late lazy afternoon, craning long necks and tapping webbed feet on fresh water, they can stretch their large powerful wings and soar from their harsh domestic realities. There is no grime on their pristine white feathers. The black around their eyes is natural and beautiful, as they face an endless horizon.

In dingy theaters and man-made canals not too far away from where the domestic workers spend their Sundays off, other Filipinos assume these fantastic roles in performances. Read here.

Madonna, still a pop chameleon at 56 (during time of publication) who has branched out to such a diversity of creative work, is also her own corporation. Read about the economics of Madonna concerts here.

Claude Tayag is one of the Filipino chefs who introduced local fare to the world stage, one of the forerunners, if you may, of realizing the prediction that Filipino cuisine is “the next big thing.” “Our time has finally come,” he declared. “We may be late bloomers in the international culinary scene, but we’ve definitely taken off for the long haul.”

The Washington Post affirmed in an article last April that Filipino food has arrived. The article quoted Andrew Zimmern, an globe-trotting American TV personality, who predicted three years ago that Filipino cuisine would become “a darling of diners.” The New York Times had also praised Filipino food, with columnist Ligaya Mishan describing sisig as “the greatest pork hash — arguably greatest pork dish — on earth.”

Read the full story here.

Against a monotone skyline of prosaic concrete boxes, Daniel Libeskind’s towers form crystalline, rectilinear distortions that are as tense as an Alkan fugue. The towers extrude upward and then divide into branches. Traditional 90-degree corners are replaced by dramatically acute angles. Planes intersect and create peculiar dimensions. If Libeskind’s structures were rendered in classical music, they would translate to the pieces of Alkan, whose notes skitter teasingly in the air at preternatural speed, slipping in sudden, unpredictable tonal shifts and launching surprise jolts of dynamics. Read more about the intersection of classical music and architecture here.