It's 2026. How are we still having this conversation about how women should dress and present themselves?
Every week, PhilSTAR L!fe explores issues and topics from the perspectives of different age groups, encouraging healthy but meaningful conversations on why they matter. This is Generations.
Content creator Louise Anne Nagal, better known as “Lans,” has built a following for her “fun facts” educational content about science, history, and the world around us. At a time where there’s a clear educational crisis and our feeds are increasingly dominated by algorithmically optimized slop and AI-generated content, creators like Lans feel refreshing.
But recently, Lans has gone viral for reasons that have little to do with the content she actually creates.
Across social media, posts praising her often come with comparisons to other women, framing her as someone worthy of admiration because she is “wholesome.” One post reads: “Sa panahon ng social media kung saan mas laganap ang mga babaeng kumukuha ng atensyon sa pamamagitan ng thirst trap… mas pipiliin mong hangaan ang mga babaeng ipinapakita ang kanilang katalinuhan at kakayahan.”
On the surface, it sounds like a compliment. But beneath it is a familiar message we’ve all encountered before: "Some women are worthy of respect, while others are not."
And it’s strange because watching Lans explain why lizards detach their tails or why the sky is blue, my immediate thought wasn't, “She's admirable because she's more wholesome than other women.” It was simply, “She's admirable.” Her intelligence, curiosity, and ability to communicate these complex ideas are reason enough. Why does that admiration need to come at the expense of someone else?
And more importantly, why have we found ourselves back in a place where women are sorted into moral hierarchies based on how they dress, present themselves, or exist online?
The return of conservatism
The other day, I had a conversation with friends about how it feels like in this political and social climate, we’ve become “so left we’ve turned right.”
For years, it felt like conversations about feminism, gender equality, and women's autonomy were moving forward. I mean, look at all the access we have to information more than ever, and how entire generations growing up online are exposed to conversations that previous generations never had. Yet somehow, we’ve found ourselves falling back to these conservative ideals I thought we'd moved past a long time ago.
Then again, maybe it shouldn't be surprising.
In an article from UN News, they discuss the rise of the “manosphere,” which is a growing network of online communities that has emerged as a serious threat to gender equality. They note how there’s an “increasing trend of young men and boys looking to influencers for guidance on issues like dating, fitness, and fatherhood,” and in that search for guidance, they find themselves exposed to communities that promote harmful attitudes that distort masculinity and fuel misogyny.
What was once confined to niche, obscure spaces of the internet has now seeped into broader culture, mass media, and politics. And, the result is a culture increasingly normalizing misogyny, trivializing gender-based violence, and reinforcing discriminatory stereotypes.
Women are not objects, props, symbols, or morality lessons. They're people. And reducing a woman to her physical appearance or treating her as a means to an end strips away her humanity and fuels a culture of inequality and harm.
While I'm not saying the manosphere is directly responsible for all of this, I do think it is a tell-tale sign of something bigger: a broader conservative comeback that has quietly been gaining traction around the world.
You can see it in the United States, where a growing number of young men have shifted toward right-leaning politics, helping fuel figures like Donald Trump to secure another presidential victory in 2024 despite his controversial takes. You can see it in South Korea, where anti-feminist movements have gained significant traction online, with some influencers and online communities portraying feminists as radical “man-haters” rather than advocates for gender equality. And you can see it here in the Philippines, where it wasn't too long ago that Quezon City 4th District Rep. Jesus Manuel “Bong” Suntay drew criticism for making sexually objectifying remarks about Anne Curtis while defending Vice President Sara Duterte during impeachment deliberations.
And compared to before, these ideas no longer seem to come with the shame, stigma, and disguise they once carried. Some people are saying them loudly and proudly.
They show up in Facebook comment sections and timelines where users are confusing modesty with morality and sexuality with a lack of intelligence. They come up in normal conversations where someone casually slips in a sexist joke I could have sworn was deemed problematic and cancelled once.
But what's most jarring about all this isn’t the fact that these beliefs exist—misogyny has always existed—it's how comfortable some people have become expressing them when, at some point, I genuinely thought we were long past having this conversation.
Women are not morality lessons
In Lans’ recent statement about the online discourse, she took on a progressive stance, talking about how women do not have to fit into a single image to deserve respect. More importantly, women do not need to change to be treated with respect—it's other people's mindset that needs changing.
When you're a woman, the goalposts never stop moving. From childhood to adulthood, there’s always a new expectation contradicting the last. You’re beaten, criticized, and picked apart for so much of your life. And you’re seen so often as an object for consumption rather than individuals with agency.
That is exactly why we shouldn't let those same forces dictate who we are.
A woman posting educational content isn't proof that women should be more “wholesome” and that everyone else is somehow doing it all wrong. In the same way, a woman posting a “thirst trap” isn't proof that society is in decline, nor does it reveal anything about her moral character.
The real takeaway from Lans and her growing popularity shouldn't be how she presents herself. It should be her curiosity, her passion for learning, and her willingness to share that knowledge with others. If anything, her success proves that there is still value in creating content that informs, educates, and encourages people to be curious about the world around them.
Women are not objects, props, symbols, or morality lessons. They're people. And reducing a woman to her physical appearance or treating her as a means to an end strips away her humanity and fuels a culture of inequality and harm.
The moment we start treating women as symbols, whether of virtue, intelligence, modesty, or moral decline, we stop seeing them as people and start turning them into props for our own beliefs.
Women are not here to qualify for your respect. And frankly, we've spent far too long acting as if they do.
