Background collage by Leslie Cruz Mango. Background image: “The Reluctant Bride” — Auguste Toulmouche. Image quotes taken from news headlines and Instagram comments.
In her Oct. 29 Vogue article “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?,” Chanté Joseph posed a question that quickly became a cultural flashpoint.
Within days, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) were flooded with reactions, some thoughtful and many reductive. Posts declared, “Vogue is right, having a boyfriend is embarrassing!!!” while others mocked the premise entirely, calling the piece “even sillier than the title.”
The nuance of Joseph’s argument — that women are tired of being defined by their relationships — was flattened into a binary: either you hate boyfriends or you’re not feminist enough.
This misreading is frustrating, especially for those of us who love our partners deeply but do not show it everywhere. Joseph’s critique was not about love itself, as she states in her article, but its branding.
It described how women are expected to either hide their relationships to maintain a “cool slay girl” image or overshare to prove their desirability. She writes, “Being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore; it is no longer considered an achievement.”
That is not a dismissal of love. It is a call to decenter it.
But the internet thrives on extremes. The conversation quickly became polarized, with “singlehood” framed as empowering and “partnership” as embarrassing. In reality, both are valid and it all depends on how they are lived.
This tension is part of a broader cultural phenomenon known as “heterofatalism”: the idea that dating men is inherently disappointing, even humiliating. It is a term that captures the collective disillusionment many women feel toward heterosexual relationships.
While heterofatalism is rooted in real experiences, it can also become a performance in itself, a way to signal detachment, superiority or even survival.
Celebrities have been navigating this terrain for years. Emma Watson, for instance, once said, “I’d rather be single than settle for someone who doesn’t see me as an equal.” Her words reflect a growing desire among women to be seen as full people, not just partners. Taylor Swift, often scrutinized for her public relationships, and more recently her engagement, has consistently pushed back against the idea that her romantic life defines her. “I do not need some guy around in order to make a great record, in order to live my life, in order to feel OK about myself,” she told StyleCaster.
Rejecting love entirely is not the answer either. Meghan Markle, in discussing her relationship with Prince Harry, emphasized that “you can be in love and still be a feminist. You can be married and still be independent.”
This is the middle ground: love that complements, not love that consumes.
Social media complicates this effort, though. The “boyfriend reveal” became a genre unto itself — from soft launches to “hard launching” anniversary posts, the backlash is swift.
We are suspicious of sincerity. We are wary of oversharing. We are afraid that joy will be misread as regression, when the truth is that muting love does not make us more feminist. It makes us afraid.
Afraid that intimacy will be mistaken for weakness. And above all, afraid that a relationship simultaneously means forfeiting power while being comfortable choosing that.
Instead, we need to reclaim love as a human opportunity. It is a choice, with the option to sincerely share and not fear it being labeled “performative.” It is not a brand or a broadcast.
Sometimes, love is quiet. It is a moment, like the arcade doll my boyfriend got for me using the points he won. Some may call that the “bare minimum” because it’s not a $50 bouquet with super-expensive chocolates (hinting at a possible article, wink wink) but intimacy is not measured in price tags.
It is measured in gestures that feel personal and intentional. And I did not post it to prove anything or flex. I posted it because it makes me happy.
I have written poems about how lucky I feel to be loved by someone who sees me clearly, even when I struggle to see myself in a better light. That does not make me compromise my independence or suggest I need a man to feel whole.
Feeling supported, even uplifted, by someone you love doesn’t make you any less of a feminist, either. It makes you human.
We do not need to erase our joy to be taken seriously. We do not need to mute our relationships to prove we are independent.
What we need is space to share love without losing ourselves, to be partnered without feeling overshadowed by it.
In the end, the question is not whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing. It is whether we will build a society where women are allowed to be full people in public. Creative, complex and yes, in love.
