The recently published British 
Vogue piece titled “Is Having a 
Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” 
by Chanté Joseph has triggered 
an avalanche of debate across 
mainstream media. The article 
taps into an emerging Gen Z 
tension: the sense that a woman 
admitting she’s in a commit­
ted, heterosexual relationship 
has somehow become uncool. 
While this newfound self-con­
sciousness is often framed as 
a liberating shift for straight 
single women who refuse to be 
defined by their relationship 
status or feel imposed upon 
by anyone else’s, it originated, 
however, in discussions among 
influencers and content creators 
on social media, warranting 
further examination of how “lib­
erating” or countercultural this 
phenomenon really is.
To start with, this “debate” is 
obviously and intentionally het­
erocentric, privileged, offensive, 
and reductive. Like most social 
media conversations that gar­
ner the attention of mainstream 
news, it features predominantly 
young, white women putting 
forward a “hot take” just ex­
treme enough to prompt a 
“backlash,” which is really just 
the reassertion of common 
knowledge. And while each of 
us individually may be able to 
quickly grasp why labeling an 
entire romantic practice “em­
barrassing” is silly at best (and 
problematic at worst), plugging 
this backlash back into the 
algorithm and waiting for it to 
disperse into popular senti­
ment takes another two to three 
business years, trapping us in 
circular, shallow conversations 
which undermine our power of 
collective dialogue. You may 
be wondering, then why write 
about it at all? Because, though 
most of us may be conscious of 
how one-dimensional this idea 
is, rhetoric has impact.
For some, relationship-sham­
ing has made its way off social 
media, into our lives, and worse, 
into our minds. Without social 
media, though, “embarrass­
Is Having a 
Boyfriend 
Embarrassing?
A Response to Vogue
8

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