If you haven’t read the recent Vogue article titled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”, you aren’t missing much. The piece argues that the new trend of social media users refraining from posting their boyfriends online is due to women not wanting to claim their relationships out of embarrassment. Documenting date nights and matching outfits are examples of content that have apparently gone out of fashion. Now, everything is about the soft launch. But the question it poses is actually more interesting than the answer it gives: does this boyfriend embarrassment apply to real life?
Online, the answer is always yes. But that’s because social media makes everything an aesthetic first and an experience second. If what we’re seeing is a genuine generational shift toward separating one’s identity from a partner and embracing individualism, then great — we could use healthier boundaries and more autonomy. But I think it has less to do with feminist self-actualization and more to do with the aestheticization of being single. Being single online is cool because it cultivates an image of the “hot, independent, unbothered” girl whose identity is built on being desired but never attached. It’s aspirational minimalism applied to intimacy.
The good news is that social media is fake and having a boyfriend in real life is not actually embarrassing. When my friends are embarrassed by their boyfriends, it’s usually because their partners are men aged 18-22 — and men that age sometimes do deeply embarrassing things, like insisting on being the Man in the Yellow Hat and Curious George for a couples costume. But that’s not a reason to avoid the great pleasure of being in a relationship with someone who treats you well. Devoting time and care to someone you like isn’t radical or cringey — it’s human. Sure, centering your entire personality around a partner can be exhausting to witness, but that’s not a revolutionary feminist critique, and we shouldn’t pretend it is. Relationships that are truly cringey tend to be the toxic ones, not the earnest ones. Many heterosexual relationships seem to lack a healthy balance — women frequently take on the bulk of the emotional labor, while men don’t always return that same level of care. Perhaps the trend of not posting a boyfriend online is a way of rejecting this dynamic. That being said, watching a friend be emotionally drained by a relationship is ten times more uncomfortable than any couple posting about their Curious George Halloween costume.
While reading the Vogue article, I thought, “who cares?” At the end of the day, to post or not to post is a non-consequential action that shouldn’t mean so much. But I find it interesting to think about what this trend reflects about our generation. Do some girls find relationships embarrassing because of the social and historical baggage that comes with being a woman devoted to a man? Have years of social inequality influenced women’s reluctance to publicly claim their relationships? Do women think that practicing indifference towards their boyfriends is going to save them from judgment?
Making relationships taboo prevents us from doing the hard work of holding people accountable for being good partners. The Vogue article mentions that women “become more beige and watered-down” online when they get into relationships — and that’s a real feeling worth acknowledging. Plenty of people, especially women, do flatten themselves to maintain peace, avoid jealousy or fit into someone else’s comfort zone. But deciding that the solution is to avoid relationships entirely — or to mock anyone who’s in one — lets the problem go unchallenged. If we collectively frame relationships as embarrassing by default we remove the incentive for men to be emotionally present or thoughtful, since there’s no higher standard to holding them up against. Instead of abandoning the claim one has on a boyfriend altogether because he is “embarrassing” shouldn’t we think about why men are making us feel that way and take steps to hold them accountable for it?
Dismissing relationships as inherently cringe means we sidestep the real conversations about why some women feel muted within them. Instead of pushing for reciprocity, respect and space for individuality inside partnerships, the discourse jumps straight to “just don’t have a boyfriend,” which is not the feminist win people think it is. It’s a way of adapting to male mediocrity instead of confronting it.
