Everything is embarrassing — including your boyfriend

On doing boyfriend PR

So, the Vogue article sucked and the internet is divided into women who have boyfriends and don’t care about feminism anymore, and women who apparently hate their boyfriends.

The article posits the idea that women lose social credibility or standards when they get a boyfriend, because it is cultural common sense that men are shit and they suck and will always embarrass you. Most of this is evidenced in the fact that women are choosing to ‘soft launch’ instead of explicitly posting their partners online and that audiences are less receptive to boyfriend/relationship content on social media—which is such a non-issue. If Instagram did not exist we would basically not be having this conversation.

On one hand, I do get it. There are virtually no social benefits to having a boyfriend. There is a reason that the bar for men is so low; that they are essentially guilty until proven innocent. Being single today is a much more simpler dynamic for women when we are entangled in so many complicated residues of the patriarchy, like the financial ties and oppressive origins of marriage; pressures to have children and become housewives (common in ethnic households and more conservative countries); navigating what sexual freedom means for us; and bearing the political weight of reproductive rights. With the way men are acting these days it is no wonder I only ever hear Hinge Horror Stories and rarely any good ones.

But the article doesn’t really touch on any of these as real reasons that having a boyfriend could be embarrassing. It claims that having a boyfriend has a direct correlation with losing Instagram followers which I think is an incredibly chronically online take, and is such a missed opportunity to interrogate anything substantial about the modern dating scene. Love is not content and everyone should stop becoming influencers. Becoming “more beige and watered-down online when in a relationship” is not a take that is rooted in reality, and we certainly don’t only exist in an online space.

I struggled to come to a satisfying conclusion with this because there is such a fine line between love as an abstract feeling, and love and relationships as a systemic issue. To a certain degree, society has made love a structural problem; a woman’s problem; and a political problem that women are responsible to dismantle. I think a lot of misogyny could be solved if we learnt to love each other as humans and not as objects to claim. It seems as though, in this article, she talks about love and relationships as if it only exists on Instagram—treating men as objects is only a reflection on how we women think we deserve to be treated. The bigger question here, outside of the incessant and unnecessary need to gatekeep your man, is asking: why are women being put in a position where falling in love is seen as culturally cringe?

I’m aware that this sounds like a too-woke take, but not wanting to post your man on Instagram because it’s ‘embarrassing’ to have a boyfriend might just be a neoliberal byproduct of choice feminism and women having to bear the larger responsibility in dismantling the patriarchy. We shouldn’t blame women for their (hopefully ex-)boyfriend’s embarrassing behaviour, and should instead ask, why is it normal for men to embarrass themselves? Men are not included in this conversation and that is the biggest issue, because that is the part that requires change. The article serves as a great start to a larger discourse on asking the right questions—no one is asking men why they necessitate a soft launch and not a brag. Pitting men and women against each other in feminist front is just so fucking lame and so 2020.

What I disagree with most resides in the final paragraphs of her essay.

“Being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore.”

I despise this type of gender essentialism and the subsequent implication that being single affirms your womanhood, or the initial idea that being with a man affirmed your womanhood in the first place. Womanhood doesn’t really mean anything. There is not particularly a singular thread that all women have in common.

“As straight women, we’re confronting something that every other sexuality has had to contend with: a politicisation of our identity. Heterosexuality has long been purposefully indefinable, so it is harder for those within it and outside of it to critique. However, as our traditional roles begin to crumble, maybe we’re being forced to re-evaluate our blind allegiance to heterosexuality.”

I don’t think this is necessarily about being straight (because bisexual people exist). The way this is positioned implies that straight women are having to confront the politicisation of their identity for the first time, or at least recently. A woman’s identity has been politicised since the conception of gender. This back-and-forth of the consequences of our collective gendered socialisation is not something new. Heterosexuality is not being politicised here—it’s the politicisation of just being a woman and how we are constantly defined by men. I also don’t know why the author is trying to posit heterosexuality as this vague and ‘indefinable’ thing when it is very much still the norm and very definable. “Being forced to re-evaluate our blind allegiance to heterosexuality” makes it sound like she’s considering becoming a lesbian (go for it girl).

“And as long as we’re openly re-thinking and criticising heteronormativity, “having a boyfriend” will remain a somewhat fragile or even contentious concept within public life. This is also happening alongside a wave of women reclaiming and romanticising their single life. Where being single was once a cautionary tale (you’ll end up a “spinster” with loads of cats), it is now becoming a desirable and coveted status, another nail in the coffin of a centuries-old heterosexual fairytale that never really benefitted women to begin with.”

I don’t think having a boyfriend is this big political thing of conforming to heteronormativity. Many spaces and philosophies have always been re-thinking and criticising heteronormativity without singling out having a boyfriend. Also, no one actually cares about the concept of a boyfriend “within the public life” because 99% of people are not influencers.

I am all for women reclaiming their single life and never conforming to the idea of ending up with a man or being in a romantic relationship at all. The ending sentiment and conclusion of this article feels very correct and profound to me, but I wish the author had elaborated more on that instead of evidencing posting on Instagram. I wish the author had talked more about how being tied to a man systemically does more harm than good for women, because this isn’t really about having a boyfriend: it’s about being a woman and bearing the unfair systemic responsibility that comes with loving a man.

Having a boyfriend is embarrassing because men just kind of suck right now. But it doesn’t really have to be that way if they could give us better representation, and that’s not our responsibility. So I’ll post whatever and do whatever until that happens.