The algorithm hates your boyfriend
Having a boyfriend is embarrassing now and that’s fine.
Are you embarrassed of your boyfriend? It’s okay, apparently, so is everyone else.
You’ve probably encountered the viral Vogue essay by Chante Joseph, Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?, with many people sharing their thoughts online, either fervently agreeing and staunchly objecting to this statement.
At the crux of Joseph’s argument is the observation that the phrase “my boyfriend” has simply become cringe.
For a long time, “women were rewarded for their ability to find and keep a man, with elevated social status and praise,” writes Joseph.
Now, however, women are less explicit about this “achievement” and only post traces of their partners on social media.
“A hand on the steering wheel, clinking glasses at dinner or the back of someone’s head,” is how partners are now shared to the world, writes Joseph.
Some women blur faces, others crop them out entirely like they’re trying to erase their existence without explicitly doing so.
Joseph’s hypothesis is that women today are trying to “straddle two worlds,” one where partnership still carries social benefits, and another where it feels “culturally loser-ish” to seem boyfriend-obsessed.
But I think the reasons behind the embarrassment run deeper than Joseph suggests.
This new discomfort isn’t just because women don’t want to be seen to have boyfriends as it’s optically lame in an era of fourth wave feminism, but because overt coupledom now signals a kind of middlebrow mediocracy and thus can damage reputation.
It affects engagement and respect online, let me explain.
Being in a heterosexual relationship not only evokes normcore images of Sunday roasts, dog walks and weekend breaks in the Cotswolds, but within our digital economy, a social profile isn’t built for two, and more often than not, having a boyfriend can threaten a woman’s social brand and carefully curated self-image.
Whether you’re an influencer or not, being partnered no longer enhances women’s social standing, but erodes it.
For decades, marriage and monogamy were status symbols, proof of desirability and emotional success. Now, however, being single has more cultural capital.
TikTok’s “soft life” movement, which promotes the rise of a low-cortisol, high-dopamine lifestyle, has inadvertently made having a boyfriend seem incompatible with the kind of solitude and independence now glorified online.
Single women are, whether intentionally or not, being framed as the aspirational elite. The partnered woman, by contrast, risks being perceived as diluted, stressed and even “beige”.
As influencer Sophie Milner admitted to Vogue, “Being single gives you this ultimate freedom [...] I do notice that we can become more watered-down online when in a relationship.”
Having a boyfriend, at least online, can be damaging to engagement and therefore even finances if you’re making a living on socials.
Social media rewards individuality and personal branding, with every post being an insight into that person’s selfhood, in return for maximum engagement.
Content creator Ella Glows says her engagement dropped when she started sharing her boyfriend online.
“My identity was around being the single girl in her 20s going on dates so when it finally worked out I think a lot of people stopped engaging with my content because it wasn’t as relatable anymore.”
Boyfriend content confuses the system. It blurs the boundaries of self-branding because it introduces someone who can’t be wholly curated, or fit the image your followers may have formed of you from your online presence.
This sort of content, therefore, will not be pushed as much as content being posted by single women.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason women are pulling back from posting their boyfriends online, so as not to be penalised by the algorithm and to maintain this singular, personal brand.
It seems being embarrassed of your boyfriend isn’t immature, it’s actually a societal, evolutionary reflex.
It’s women’s collective cringe at a structure that has kept them in place. When we disguise, crop or blur our partners, we’re not disavowing our love for them but reclaiming authorship on our own platforms.
The soft launch - that aligns with soft living - says I refuse to perform my relationship in a language that diminishes me.
I mean, have I ever been embarrassed of a boyfriend? Of course, yes, for transient moments - like when one ordered a decaf mocha (just get a hot chocolate I don’t care!!) - but never enough to want to keep them a secret. Because my rule is I only date people who are cooler than me.
But anyway, this isn’t an agony aunt column. Ultimately I have to agree with Joseph, having a boyfriend is embarrassing now, but only because women have finally stopped being embarrassed about not having one. So if being single is in, that means being in a couple is out. Sorry!
Get the single, “soft life” look, here:
