A Vogue article published in October, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” fluttered across tiktok, emphasizing the rise of modern romance. The piece essentially unpacks the shifts in social media trends, particularly regarding the way women choose or refuse to post about their boyfriends online. Once, “hard-launching” boyfriends with dedicated Instagram highlights was the norm. Recently, however, many women have shifted to softer, more subtle ways to launch their relationships. Chanté Joseph wrote in the Vogue article that “being with a man was an almost guilty thing to do,” and that “it is now fundamentally uncool to be a boyfriend-girl.” The true origin of this article was not to blatantly ask if having a boyfriend is embarrassing or to mock relationships, but rather to ask: why do less women feel inclined to be in one than in previous years?
With a platform as enormous and influential as Vogue’s, the question did not just circulate the internet: it spiraled. Echoing a new trend across TikTok, it felt compulsory to formulate a response myself.
The media recently framed boyfriend-less women as chic, quirky and fun. To many, it is a mere game of aesthetics and social media cues: a mystery to be dissected with the same enthusiasm as a high-stakes whodunit. Some have flirted with the idea of it being sparked out of embarrassment. No way could a woman ever not just simply be without a man — there has to be a hidden message between the fine print and solo Instagram shots. The possibility that she simply prefers her own company becomes almost too mundane for them to accept.
But could the truth really be that simple? Could it be that women are finally ready to choose that sacred satisfaction of solitude over often-exhausting relationships?
Historically, relationships between a man and a woman were structured as a transaction. A man offered protection, financial stability and a social legitimacy upon the woman, as long as it meant she provided children, domestic labor and pleasure whenever he pleaded. In a study completed by Liza El Helou and Mona Ayoub, “The Social Role Theory” is the term preferred for when women have been historically relegated to communal roles such as “caregiver” or “homemaker,” while men have been assigned agentic roles such as “breadwinner.” This ideology still sticks with society and became a norm so strong that when broken, the media is up in arms; they cannot accept when women deviate from the script. If this age-old romanticism is no longer, then surely something must be wrong, at least according to the narratives that write in women as dependent upon men for their fulfillment.
More recently, women find their peace by gaining autonomy and staying unbothered by a man. This is infinitely more rewarding than their relationships that reign distress. And the media, apparently, finds this erratic. Radical. Something must be wrong with society if women are not purely reliant on the male gaze for fulfillment.
In the eyes of a man who has grown up around perpetuating values of that certain type of transactional relationship with a woman, a woman wanting nothing but herself may seem otherworldly. What these men fail to see is a woman who feels comfortable in her own skin and confident in herself rather than relying on a man — a woman who may even be the first in her bloodline to find her career more satisfactory than a dinner date or an Instagram highlight labeled “us.”
For the first time in a very long time, women do not need men. But men, perhaps more than ever, and realizing that they still need women. A case presented from a family law company, Collins Family & Elder Law Group, explains this phenomenon: “During marriage, women tend to foster more relationships with family and friends based on deep emotional connections than men” As a result, when a divorce occurs, women often already have a support system to help them process their emotions and heal. Many men, however, are suddenly confronted with the fact that their spouse had been the one putting most of the effort into maintaining social ties during the marriage, meaning that after the separation, those relationships naturally stay with her, leaving him without them.
This may stem from that lineage sense of wanting to protect or more likely, enjoying the emotional ornamentation that a woman brings to a man’s life, something that he struggles to find on his own.
Women have not stopped posting about their boyfriends because they find it embarrassing. They have just stopped being embarrassed about the fact that they do not feel the need to have one.
