Have a boyfriend? That’s so 2024. It seems like the entire female internet has been waiting for this for years: having a relationship (with a man) is now officially embarrassing. According to the British Vogue than. Since journalist Chanté Joseph there her piece ‘Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?’ published, it’s raining happy dances on TikTok. Women throw their hair loose, walk through the streets and write lyrics like: ‘This is how it feels to be single after Vogue declared that having a boyfriend is embarrassing‘, ‘What a time to be alive‘or a simply ‘Thank you Vogue!‘. Because if the style bible says so, then it’s true.
Has Vogue really banned boyfriends? It’s a bit more nuanced than that. Chanté Joseph, herself currently friendless, starts her opinion piece with an innocent observation: where have all those friends suddenly gone on social media? ‘Hard launches’ (sharing your friend’s name, surname and photo out of nowhere) have already turned into ‘soft launches’ (showing your loved one gradually or partially). But now even partners’ faces are blurred into photos or completely edited out of videos. .
What’s going on? Joseph started talking to women. Some stopped sharing their boyfriends for fear of ruining their (early) relationship, others for fear that they would break up and be left with uncomfortable online content.
Joseph sees that women in relationships that simply last now also have their doubts. In the podcast Delusional Diaries two New York influencers in a relationship discuss whether they should be ashamed of having a boyfriend. And influencer Sophie Milner even lost followers when she went public with her boyfriend. The online show of your lover gives women the ick (disgust), writes Joseph (including herself).
Date suffering
A new era has begun: having a boyfriend is no longer a so-called flex. Where you used to gain online status and followers if you shared a lot of relationship content, you are now less respected. Why should we still celebrate heterosexual relationships, Joseph asks, if historically they have done little good for women. Why should we still derive our identity from it? “As our traditional roles begin to waver, we may be forced to reconsider our blind allegiance to heterosexuality,” she writes.
At a time when more and more men are falling for the toxic masculinity of the manosphere and at the same time increasingly falling off their pedestal thanks to #MeToo, this is a welcome and refreshing sound for many.
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Yet not all reactions to Joseph’s newly identified trend are positive. By labeling boyfriends as embarrassing, Joseph puts the blame and responsibility back on the woman, writes a political science student in the online magazine Her Campus. Other women are speaking up social media especially for their boyfriend or relationship. Isn’t it just embarrassing to have a boyfriend if he’s a dick, and not if he’s a sweetheart who brings you flowers every day?
After years in which single women – especially older single women – were framed as pathetic, as cat ladies, perhaps it doesn’t hurt that Joseph has and continues to reinforce her message. Also Vogue made another contribution with an article about embarrassing boyfriends. The character Ross Friends According to the magazine, it already had one foot in the manosphere in the 1990s.
And how do the men themselves actually react? They call Joseph bitter and satanic, they let us know on TikTok. You’d almost think it wasn’t ‘the boyfriend’ out of trend is, but simply ‘the man’.
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