Having a Boyfriend is... Embarrassing?
embarassing?
Despite what the original author of the article meant, this phrase has been taken and warped on every social media platform to exist.
The original article, written by Chanté Joseph in Vogue, October 2025, was a commentary on the seeming shift in the content that is trending on social media. Just a few years before, everyone and their grandma was posting their boyfriend/fiancé/husband (no really, I can’t have been the only one to see those videos with captions like ‘why my grandparents are marriage goals’ or ‘what my grandpa still does for my grandma’). By the time late 2025 rolled around, it really did seem like women were posting their partners less and less.
The article, of course, does not focus on accounts that are explicitly couple accounts. It speaks on how there is a general decrease in women posting about any partner that might or might not be new, and even when posting, the increase in what can be perceived as privacy concerns. The pictures with the emojis over the partner’s face, the videos where the partner is out of frame and only their voice can be heard, and the angle work used so that only a quarter of their partner’s face is in the shot, if any at all.
As a social media user in 2026, I understand the privacy concerns, of course. Just because you as an adult woman have made a career out of putting yourself out into the vast world that is the internet, does not mean your closest friends and family should as well, and this includes the person you’re madly in love with, and who, hopefully, is madly in love with you too.
With the observed decrease in couples’ content, Joseph investigated and sited several potential reasons for the shift, some of which include:
People were tired of consuming content where women did not seem to have lives outside of the man they were involved with;
Some women are superstitious. The evil eye can do wonders for breaking up a relationship before you even realise what hit you;
Some women genuinely do not trust their men not to do or say something to embarrass them, even if they have been together for years.
The third reason, I think, is the one that people took and ran with, especially those that only saw the headline, and did not, in fact, read the full piece. And for a lot of them, they had some pretty excellent points to make.
We’ve all seen the videos of women coming on the internet to the defence of their men after they had posted a video in which their partner had committed a serios crime against their relationship and the comment section, rightly, called him out on it.
I’m talking putting dog food in your wife’s work lunch; I’m talking making a complete mockery of your wedding vows, I’m talking pranks like smashing a bride’s face into the wedding cake after being specifically asked not to, or dropping her in a pool in her full wedding regalia, and I’m talking describing your partner as ‘some bitch’ when asked how you would describe your fiancée.
It was painful to watch, and, as most people were quick to comment, absolutely embarrassing that you as a woman:
Accepted this treatment and stayed;
Thought it was charming enough to post on the internet; and,
Came to your man’s defence when the internet was outraged (on your behalf, mind you).
All of these things are embarrassing. Imagine having to come on the internet and insist with your audience that your husband putting dog food in with your work lunch ‘was just the way the two of you joke together’ and ‘he didn’t mean it that way.’
It’s absolutely and utterly humiliating.
And in our desperate attempt to make sure that everyone knew we were women who have ‘successfully decentred men’ in our lives (a notion that, in my humble opinion, is an impossible paradox when we live in the patriarchal society that we do), we have swung so far in the other direction it’s almost like nuance is not, nor has it ever been, in the room with us.
Now, not only is it embarrassing to go around posting your male partner, it’s also almost just as embarrassing to admit to liking couples’ content on social media.
We have ‘decentred men’, and in the process made it so that any genuine affection shown falls into the category of cringe or irony.
Women have entire platforms now talking about how to manipulate the affections and love out of a man (if that is what you even want of course), and how to always remain less invested, less vulnerable, and less committed so that you can walk away first with no heartbreak.
In the famous words of Off Campus character Garrett Graham, “Stop acting like a fangirl, and start thinking like a f**k boy.”
Except, that’s bad advice.
And it’s proven to be bad advice when Hannah, to whom the advice was given, chooses an emotionally profound relationship with Garrett himself over the shallow connection she had made with Justin, even though up until that point she had wanted Justin so badly that she was willing to follow Garrett’s convoluted plans to get him.
And the only reason she was able to build that emotional connection was because they were both nothing but committed to each other: committed to helping each other, supporting each other, being there for each other, and, eventually, being a good friend for each other.
There was no ‘one foot out the door to lessen heartache’ with them, because people don’t do that with friends. In fact, it is widely considered as an absolutely unhinged thing to do in friendship.
There is no way to build any sort of real connection when all you are thinking about the entire time is not being embarrassed, because being embarrassed is an essential part of being vulnerable, which is essential to building the type of love we’re all too embarrassed to admit to wanting.
So, yes, in that regard, having a boyfriend is always embarrassing.
But for those who are constantly defending the humiliating actions of their men, well, maybe it’s that having your boyfriend is embarrassing.
