Last week, Vogue asked, “Is it embarrassing to have a boyfriend now?” At first, I rolled my eyes at the sentiment, but I quickly clicked, because let’s be honest, even if we pretend not to care, we all have opinions about “boyfriend culture.” Especially for those who’ve never actually had one.
I’m a young adult permanently stuck in situationships that never graduate into relationships, and currently not looking for anything. So maybe that’s why in this case, the question hits differently. To me, the idea that having a boyfriend might be “embarrassing” says less about romance and more about the weird relationship our generation has with agency, optics and what it means to be seen loving someone in public.
First of all, this question is not really about men. It’s how women, especially young women, are constantly asked to prove we’re “doing independence” the right way.
If you scroll through social media, you’ve probably noticed the rise of the “soft launch” or cryptically sharing photos of your boyfriend. It’s the two drinks, cropped shoulder, out-of-focus faces that hint at relationships without confirming them. What once might have been a “hard launch” of a boyfriend went from cute to cringe.
Apparently, now, it’s cooler to be mysterious, like to imply someone exists but never confirm it. The less you share, the more power you seem to have. But if you listen to me, that’s its own type of performance. We’ve grown up in a world where everything is some type of content. Every relationship post is basically a brand risk. And after watching entire breakups play out online, or how difficult it is to scrub someone from your social media pages, I get why people hide their partners. But I don’t think we’re embarrassed by love. I think we’re exhausted by how love gets perceived.
The Vogue piece wasn’t wrong that women have been historically judged by their relationship status. “Having a boyfriend” used to mean you made it. You were desirable, mature and chosen. If you didn’t have one? Cue the pity.
Feminism later pushed back against that, thankfully. It made space for single women to be whole on their own. However, somewhere along the way, that got twisted. Now it feels like you have to prove you’re independent by being detached, like wanting a connection makes you less evolved. However, that’s not empowerment, but rather pressure dressed up in a new outfit. Real feminism should be about having the freedom to define your relationships. You should be able to want what you want, whether that’s a boyfriend, a situationship or a solo life built around your own peace.
There’s also an unspoken rule that you can’t share too much. Post him? Try hard. Hide him? It Girl. Both are just performances. And trust me, as someone who had been in that gray zone of “we’re not official but we talk every night,” I know how exhausting that performance gets. Pretending you’re detached is just another way of managing other people’s perceptions. It’s not actually freedom if you’re still performing .
Perhaps the goal isn’t to look unbothered. Maybe it’s actually to be unbothered by what anyone thinks of how you love or don’t.
To be honest, the healthiest relationships that I see around me, whether it’s friends who have been in committed relationships or people who are happily single, are intentional.
My favorite thing about them is that they don’t really pay attention to what looks cool online, and their relationships are built around mutual effort, communication boundaries and respect. Honestly, I’ve learned from them that having a boyfriend isn’t anti-feminist. However, being ashamed of wanting love kind of is.
I think the real reason the “boyfriend discourse” blew up is because we still want neat categories, whether it’s single or taken, empowered or submissive, feminist or pick-me. But real life doesn’t work that way.
Some of us want to love someone deeply. Some of us want to be alone and genuinely thrive there. And some of us (hi) are still trying to figure out what we even want.
So overall, no, having a boyfriend is not embarrassing, but neither is not having one. What is embarrassing is pretending that a woman’s worth still depends on where they fall in that binary.
The point is, whether or not you choose to post your boyfriend, the decision is ultimately yours to make.