If Having a Boyfriend is Embarrassing, Why Do We Still Want One?

By now I’m sure you’ve seen the viral Vogue article, Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? 

Et while the article’s author, Chanté Joseph, makes solid points, I can’t help but remember the days of early IG when the tag feature allowed us to tag whatever words we wanted et the girls used to tag their face-hidden beaux with “don’t. follow. him.” or “he’s mine” or my personal fav at the time “mind your business.”

See, having a boyfriend isn’t embarrassing now. It lowkey always has been. I think this is just the first time it’s been said this loudly…et publicly. Every woman has heard the age-old proverb “don’t get too excited, that’s when he’ll embarrass you.” The best of us advised to keep his face off the net because, well, “no face, no case.”

Chanté does a good job of explaining that there was once a time when having (et keeping) a man meant something for a straight woman. First et foremost, she’s a keeper. A looker, a gem. For women today, being associated with a man feels like a brand risk. God forbid another woman comes to you in your DMs. God extra forbid he’s caught up in a viral debate about the current celebrity relationship scandal et you find out he’s the kind of guy who projects nasty things onto single mothers. 

One night, while playing plus one to my double booked bestie on a girls night, one of the women at the lush round table booth (with really cute pebble leather seating!) announced that she had been seeing someone new. It had been a while, but she wanted to be sure before she announced (sound familiar?) but regardless, she was sure et really smiley about it while sharing. Three out of the five of us immediately (et excitedly) asked for details, one seemed pretty neutral about it et one seemed very not-with-it at all. She thinks boyfriends are “kinda uninteresting.”

From our peers to elders, we’re told not to be enthused.

For Millennials, we were taught that love was something to believe in. For Gen Z, it’s something to thoroughly analyse, deconstruct et ponder the necessity of. (Note the financial times they grew up in, et the digital ones too). Different languages, same fear: to want love too openly is adjacent to a humiliation ritual.

But here’s the contradiction I keep circling back to: if having a boyfriend is embarrassing, why do some of us still want one?

I think the Vogue piece did a really good job T’ing up a long-lived feeling amongst women, but I also believe that we’re in a bit of a romance renaissance anyway.

Was it not just a “lover girl autumn” last fall? Was there no merriment in the dancery when both Coco Jones et Normani got engaged this spring/summer? Not to mention the immediate pinning to dream-wedding moodboards when Skylar Marshai posted her engagement ring to the Gram? Albeit a PR relationship, Pamela et Liam Neeson really got the people going, et do I even need to mention Megan & Klay?

Embarrassment has become the defence to humiliation, but behind the irony, there are still hearts all over the world with desire alive et twitching.

The shame might have been easier to navigate when we were dealing with it within the comforts of our own homes et social circles. It was something you could quietly acknowledge to your homegirl over the phone while the soaps were on. It was lived, but understood. 

In the social media age, when we’re all on the Summer Jam screen, it lingers because the internet has a looong memory. When everyone can see, everyone can comment et not everyone knows you like miss girl overhearing the soaps on the phone. 

So…what now?

How do you navigate dating when the shame has only grown ten fold since we first heard about it? How are women who want to be coupled dating when we’re so disgusted by men, we have to hide those desires?

Well, I suppose we could start by asking the hard question:

Is having a boyfriend embarrassing or are women being propagandized by the patriarchy once again to take on shame that isn’t ours to carry?

We’re far too hard on ourselves when it comes to romantic interactions with men. There’s almost this unspoken pressure to know better et prepare for irrefutable damage, even when he’s given you no reason to.

When a woman is truly blinded it’s still her fault because, well, you trusted a man. Rookie mistake, albeit a naturally human experience.

Is that what the embarrassment really is? Emotional conditioning disguised as shame? Public betrayals, group chats exposés, Twitter thinkpieces. We know how easily a man’s mistake becomes a woman’s scarlet letter. So we hide first.

It’s celebrity-level PR damage control without the celebratory dinner at Giorgio Baldi.

Some of us desire love, et that’s okay. Whether we are loud or quiet about it, I don’t think that’s shameful. It’s pretty human, et standard for people who grew up in a time where every movie targeted at us ended with a kiss that literally saved the princess’s life. 

Love as we know, is so, so beautiful, et it is indeed beautiful to be loved back. It’s human to want that, to yearn for that. It doesn’t have to become your entire brand or personality though. 

I believe there is space for discernment in dating—acknowledging the decentering of men et sisterly support when seeking romance. 

There is a large difference between a “pick-me” upholding the patriarchy in an insecure pursuit of having just any man’s validation, et being fully aware of what years of misogyny enriched everything has done to our community, but being hopeful for a man who wouldn’t dare embarrass you, because like you, he’s hoping for a better world between the sexes too. 

A pipe dream, maybe.

But every day that a woman is embarrassed by a man, there’s another where a woman is loved deeply, genuinely, fully et non humiliatingly by another. (This often happens on the same day.)

I’m no fool to the cruelty of emotionally immature men. I literally have two brothers—et my deepest shame—a dad. But like they say joy is resilience; having hope that reason can’t kill is rebellion.