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If you are very online, you know that last fall, a Vogue essay went very viral.
The headline was, is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?
To summarize the essay, writer Shante Joseph, who's 29 and based in London, said she'd noticed something.
Namely, that women she followed on Instagram had started to sideline their boyfriends in photos.
They went from being like, Here's a photo of me and my boyfriend to weirdly hiding their boyfriends.
This is part of Shante's essay.
I'll read it verbatim.
There's been a pronounced shift in the way people showcase their relationships online.
Far from fully hard-launching romantic partners, straight women are opting for subtler signs.
A hand on a steering wheel, clinking glass as a dinner, or the back of someone's head.
On the more confusing end, you have faces blurred out of wedding pictures or entirely professionally edited videos, with a fiancé conveniently cropped out of all shots.
Women are obscuring their partner's face when they post, as if they want to erase the fact that they exist without actually not posting them.
The vibe seemed to be that there used to be this clout you'd get because you had a boyfriend.
Like, hey everybody, here's Tyler, he's amazing, and here we are in Maine eating a lobster roll.
But now that clout was gone.
Perhaps there was more clout in showing yourself as a thriving, amazing woman.
Shante dove into theories about this in her essay.
Part of it, she guessed, was that boyfriends can actually be embarrassing.
Meaning, maybe some women put up with some shit they shouldn't.
These women don't want to post about their boyfriends because their boyfriends are literally embarrassing to them.
But there was also something deeper she talked about, something that was harder to pin down.
Shante was basically saying that even if a woman is dating a wonderful man, it might somehow feel silly or unfeminist to take part publicly in a normie kind of coupling.
Like, ugh, how basic.
Having friends be part of your identity, or even kids, felt like something to celebrate, to be proud of.
But a boyfriend?
Shante's essay basically said, it's out of fashion.
I can understand this idea that Shante wrote about.
Because, even though it is perfectly acceptable to fall in love with a person, be with them and want to tell people about it, women are fighting decades and centuries of misogyny and ridiculous divisions of labor.
For so long, a woman's relationship seemed to eclipse the other parts of her.
So it's like you get a boyfriend and it makes sense to ask am I falling into a horrible heterosexual trap for women?
Am I doing something additive to my life or something compulsory?
And if you're a straight single woman looking at a woman who's online and is like here's my boyfriend, it makes sense that some of you might feel like, is this worth it for her?
This feels like a risky proposition when there are so many alternatives in the year 2026.
When this essay came out last fall, people went wild with hot takes about whether boyfriends are embarrassing.
It was debated all over TikTok.
Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now or are you embarrassed that you want a boyfriend?
He's just bringing you down and it's embarrassing.
It's embarrassing to be a man right now.
Having a boyfriend is embarrassing only if he is embarrassing.
We live in a social media age right now.
If women post a picture of a guy they lose market share on Instagram.
Simple as fucking that.
Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?
For the record, I don't think the mayor of New York City fully got Shante's point.
Sure, if you're embarrassed by your boyfriend because he is embarrassing, get a new boyfriend.
But it's not really about that.
As people moved on to the next viral thing, I was still thinking about this.
No surprise there.
Because to me it was a big question about the state of relationships and women trying to live their best lives on their terms without feeling like they're doing it wrong.
It was also about the complicated strategy of branding oneself on social media, which feels meaningless.
Like who we are online is not who we are at lunch.
But for a lot of people who they are online is very important because it's their online persona that comes up first.
It's all very complicated, which is why I reached out to Shante Joseph, the essay writer herself, to ask can we talk about this?
She wrote that essay not knowing it would go viral, and I wanted to ask about it now.
Worth mentioning, Shante was holed up writing a book about singledom when I reached out.
She'd found a way economically to travel to Bali, partly so the time difference would make it impossible for her to procrastinate and text her friends all night while writing this book.
But she was so interested in this topic and had been thinking about it so much while writing that she agreed to hop on a call with me at 7 am my time, 8 pm her time to chat.
Basically, everybody was in their pajamas.
I'm excited to tell you that this is a Love Letters two-parter exploration into the concepts of boyfriends and whether they're embarrassing.
Today, you will get an interview with Shantae about her essay and the aftermath.
Next week, Just seven days from now, you'll get a story from a woman who will tell you when she was embarrassed of her boyfriend, but maybe not for the reasons you think.
But first, we'll start with the essay that sparked the discourse.
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Can you describe for me what you were seeing when you thought, oh wait, I have an idea for an essay?
So at first it was kind of done, I think, in a humorous way, right?
People would be editing the heads of their partners and it would just be like a body with nothing you know.
Even people who didn't have a lot of followers would post their partner in really obscure ways where you know you have 500 followers.
Like, why are you posting like this?
This is so strange.
Embarrassing boyfriends, or rather heterosexual relationships, and shame was already on Shante's mind.
In her late 20s she was already thinking straight.
Person relationship structures can be very cringey.
Prior to writing this piece, I read The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Jane Ward.
And in the book there's a chapter and it's like what queer people say about straight people behind their backs.
And it does give you an entirely new perspective on straightness as a culture, as a way of being, and how inherently problematic and quite flawed it is.
But we never really question straightness because it's seen as the norm.
You're straight and anyone who isn't straight is like a bit different.
And that's the thing that we should interrogate and look at.
We don't actually look at straightness enough.
And for me it was like there are so many weird things that we're now doing as women, like around hiding our partners or kind of concealing information or not being honest about our experiences because we fear the shame and embarrassment that comes with being attached to men.
And so for me it was like OK, let's bring this to the light.
While she was working on this piece, and after the piece, shante heard a lot from women about why coupling with men and giving men their time felt shameful.
Shante learned that in some cases, nothing bad had happened yet.
It was anticipatory embarrassment.
Because so much of what people said made them hide their partners.
Was this idea of borrowing embarrassment from a future that didn't exist yet?
If he cheats on me, I'm going to be embarrassed because people are going to ask me about him and I'm going to have to delete all these posts.
And just anticipating embarrassment, being embarrassed in the relationship itself.
It was just so much that I was like oh, we don't ever interrogate this because we've been Believe that this is what straight culture is.
This is not normal.
By the way, some of this is anticipatory grief.
I will admit to being a person who's afraid of sharing things I'm excited about, because what if it goes away?
What if it fails?
Then I have to undo it.
And I'm superstitious about it.
In good relationships and even good moments in my career.
I've sometimes been afraid to say I am loving this, because what if I jinx it?
But Shanti's main point, of course, is about what we want people to think of us, what our lives look like to others.
I had dinner with two friends last night, one of whom is a mother of three in a great marriage.
And I told her I was interviewing you.
And she said well, at the end of the day, despite doing all these great things and her marriage and her children are great pieces of her life she's like but how basic yeah, she's like i mean here she is right.
She's like i'm a mom of three.
Her life is going great, the marriage is great, the kids are great, but it replicates what previous generations did.
It's like hard to feel basic So to her on some level.
She's like well, it's not like I'm breaking the mold here.
And I get what you're saying about how heterosexuality and the model it creates can feel like such a trap that even when I see people who aren't straight in that mold
I'm like, but weren't we all trying to get out of this?
Particularly in pop culture.
So it's like, oh, you know, you can't leave the dad with the baby because guess what?
The baby's going to eat the screwdriver.
Like there's just so much about the incompetence of like men in straight partnerships.
That is supposed to be a funny like wink wink nudge, nudge joke.
No, like your husband should be at home with the kids and you shouldn't be scared that the baby's going to be in the microwave.
Here's where I need to talk about some questions I had about Shante's essay.
By the way, let me be clear.
I loved this essay.
Even if I didn't agree with every point, it made me think.
But I did have a concern or two about what it's saying about women who happen to fall in love with some nice man and maybe they want to tell the world.
I have chosen a partner with my own free will and I like my life.
Let me read you the first paragraph of Shante's essay.
Imagine this in Shantae's beautiful voice now that you've heard it.
If someone so much as says my boyfriend on social media, they're muted.
There's nothing I hate more than following someone for fun, only for their content to become my boyfriendified suddenly.
This is probably because for so long, it felt like we were living in what one of my favorite sub stackers calls boyfriend land, a world where women's online identities centered around the lives of their partners a situation rarely seen reversed.
When I first read that, I thought, Shante, I get it.
No one wants to be around or following women who have forgotten themselves because they're so concerned and proud of their boyfriends.
But are we helping the problem by saying women, here's what you're allowed to post about or be excited about?
And here's what makes you the worst.
I'm not sure the answer to any of this is to tell women they're doing it wrong.
I want to be in a world where women can be single and not judged, coupled and not judged, mothers and not judged, and post what they want.
Shante heard a lot of concerns like mine about who the essay empowers and how.
Obviously, the article really pops off because of, I think, the idea of being basic, right?
I think single women felt really empowered because for the first time they felt like OK, the spotlight, the scrutiny, the life that doesn't feel as interesting is no longer on us.
And so we can really enjoy this moment.
And I guess people who were in relationships kind of obviously felt very attacked by it.
People are fuming.
People hate this piece.
I mean, I still get messages today on Instagram just being like, you are a stain on humanity.
A lot of people said you're shaming women, you're pitting women against each other.
You're doing the age-old thing that we always see women attacking women.
I think from women, it was partly women in relationships feeling like this was attacking them.
And then you had men who were just really angry.
They would see this article and they would come and find out who I am.
They then realized I was Black.
And that added another layer to the critique, because it kind of felt like oh, you are using your words to convince basically, other white people to abandon their relationships.
You're ruining the white nuclear family structure.
And so a lot of abuse would be like about me, about my race.
I don't know if you remember, but I want to say around 2015 2014, there was that OkCupid data where they were talking about.
You know who gets swiped the most on dating apps.
And they said, you know, black women are swiped the least.
And that is like a piece of data that has followed me my entire life.
And so you often get people in my comments being like well, you're a black woman, you're the least desirable.
Of course you think boyfriends are desirable, no one picks you anyway.
So you had that aspect of it, too.
And it was just coming in from all angles.
And it wasn't all negative, don't get me wrong.
But you could tell that this idea of the heterosexual romantic relationship was so central to people's identity.
And it was never questioned that the time I wrote this small piece of article, being like hey, is this thing kind of embarrassing.
It completely rocked them because they built so much of who they are on yearning for and achieving a romantic relationship or being in one.
So you could feel that anger from people who just didn't really know what to do with themselves.
When we're in a time where we are so much more progressive and we're so much more open and it feels like every aspect of our lives is moving on.
Technology is developing like we're moving on socially.
We're more connected, we're more globalized.
Everything is changing.
But for some reason our relationships still have these really archaic basic setups that we are all kind of just mindlessly subscribing to.
Yeah, it does feel like a relic of the past in some ways, the way we do straight relationships.
And with the men particularly, this idea of being with them, being embarrassing, I think, rocked a lot of men because I felt like they feel quite powerless.
But that's obviously not my problem.
But I could understand why they were being so aggressive towards me.
But it wasn't just anger.
Shante's essay also made a lot of people feel seen.
Before I was even able to make content about my piece that went viral.
All of these women had made these videos this, having fun, enjoying their lives, making my article into art that they've stuck up in their homes.
They loved it.
They just felt, seen and heard and understood and writing a lot about singleness at the moment and what it means to be a single person now and how you're viewed in society, in policy, all of the things that you're taught that make singleness feel like a deficient state.
And I'm really understanding why people felt so moved by this because they felt like, for the first time, they were not lacking in anything.
Because the one thing that society told them to desire, according to Vogue, isn't cool anymore.
So they had that levity, that freedom, and they loved that.
And that made me happy.
But then also I got messages from a lot of young people.
These are like 21 year old, 22 year old.
I got a long email today from someone saying I felt really ashamed that I've never had a romantic partner before.
And it used to be a very sore spot for me.
And I felt like there was something wrong with me.
And your article and the conversation around it has helped me feel a lot more confident and better about myself.
And now I don't feel so much shame.
As much as I love that for them, I just couldn't believe at like 21, you're experiencing this sort of feeling of being less than because you're not in a relationship.
So that was quite shocking just how young the women were reaching out to me who felt seen by my words.
Because I just, I wish you didn't have to deal with that socialization in the first place.
When we come back, we get into something I think might be at the heart of the questions.
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It was a very beautiful set of pajamas.
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We're back.
When I read Shante's essay about boyfriends being embarrassing, I thought of one of our own podcast episodes.
You might guess which one.
It's the one featuring my friend Trenny called A Boyfriend Person.
In that episode Trenny, a sports anchor, admits that for many years she resented friends with a boyfriend because they had become boyfriend people.
Then, years later, when Trenny met a guy who is now her husband, she was like oh no, I'm.
I was so unfair to these friends.
I assumed the worst of these women, maybe tore them down a little, and didn't realize that part of my judgment was about my own baggage, about what makes me a person of value.
There would be this inner rage of like, Why doesn't anyone see that my life is just as valid?
And I do think that's really hard for women, from like, I would say, mid-20s through like mid to late 30s, when all of your friends, if you're the one person who isn't getting married, who isn't having children, and there's all these things celebrating baby showers, wedding showers
Oh, I got to go see this person because they just had a baby.
Even your small milestones don't feel celebrated.
So I think you, whether you realize it or not, you feel a little left behind.
Trenny realizes in that episode, after coupling with someone, that A she is really excited to be with him and wants to show him off, and B she's still herself, even though she's partnered with a man.
I happen to think that part of Trenny's lessons came with meeting someone she loved, but it also came with age.
In her 40s, she was more like, who cares about any of this?
She wanted the women in her life to thrive, and she didn't care how they made that happen.
She also was just old enough to know that online presence didn't match her friends' lives in person.
So that brings me to the issue of age.
If you're 29 to 35, let's say, you're probably seeing a lot of posts about life choices.
Boyfriends, friendship photos, work accomplishments.
And it's hard to see that without internalizing it and maybe asking, Who are my peers trying to be?
How much do you think is age related?
I was looking through my feed and thinking oh, there was a point like I don't even get social media until my late 20s, early 30s which what a blessing.
Honestly, for real, because the rest of us have brain damage for sure.
So is this also a.
25 to 35-year-old predicament.
Oh, 100%.
100%.
That article blew up, I think, because it was like a Gen Z obsession.
I'm so sure of it.
I got emails like, hi, queen.
I made this playlist for you.
Yes, diva.
Like all this kind of stuff.
When I was flying to Bali...
There was a little girl sat next to me.
I feel like she must have been 14 years old.
And then next to her was her brother.
She was playing games on her phone.
He was on his iPad.
Seven days into my trip into Bali, I get a message from someone being like hi, like I was sat next to you on the plane to Doha.
I'm such a big fan.
I do know that even without social media and self-branding and marketing, I was overwhelmed by relationship talk in my early 30s.
I was happy for women friends who found men to be their partners and But I did want to yell.
Please know this is not what makes you valuable.
I also wanted my life to be seen as valuable.
So many people, especially older people, did see me as missing a man.
And I was like, I'm doing whatever I want.
And you were suggesting that I am unfinished in some way.
It makes perfect sense to me that Shantae got to a point where she was like I am muting boyfriend content.
And that people like Shantae were like.
Let's prioritize the look of a happy life as a woman, independent from all other things.
I do need to say that I'm always a little shocked when younger millennial and Gen Z people bring up feelings like Shantae has.
Because younger people have flipped the world on its axis.
They have destroyed some of the old models in the best ways.
But they're still talking about how straight women shouldn't be defined by the men in their lives.
I guess I thought we had transcended this.
But I am forgetting we now have performative heterosexuality, like the trad wife movement.
I am now immersed in a rewatch of Mad Men, by the way.
I'm loving it, but also hating that some of it reminds me of now.
I understand that in 2026, for reasons I don't even want to get into, women would want to distance themselves from any semblance of a relationship model that might look old school.
There's a sort of like veneer that we have over straight relationships.
It seems to have crumbled because they're seeing people you know loving each other, being you know all adoring.
And then, five minutes later, here's a 10 part story time about how this man was the most evil person I ever met in my life.
I even think about the influencer who was messaged by the man in Ireland and then she flew to Ireland and then they had this whirlwind romance and they were written about in all of these publications.
And then she made a TikTok two days ago being like, oopsie, he was cheating on me.
Younger people.
They are exposed to so much more and they're not beating into the same, particularly heterosexual romantic fantasies anymore.
Like they're just not believing in it.
I think through no fault of their own, the idea of having a boyfriend.
You know, like I quoted in that piece, someone says why does having a boyfriend feel Republican now?
Let me explain this a bit.
In the essay, Shante mentions a podcast called the Delusional Diaries podcast.
In an episode, the host discussed whether having a boyfriend is not a good look.
Shante noticed that one of the top comments on the post about this episode is someone saying why does having a boyfriend feel Republican?
I'll admit that concept made me laugh.
But what this person and Shantae are referencing is that there's so much misogyny online.
So when you see that, and then some woman standing next to a man in her vacation photo, it might be hard to smile.
It's kind of beyond you as an individual.
It's just the perception of men in general, where men are at, how they're developing, and particularly how they're developing online.
You know, when you think of the incel ideology or pickup artists or you know just male conservative spaces.
Unfortunately you are kind of carrying the burden of something that is happening culturally that is now projected onto you as opposed to you doing anything wrong yourself.
And so I think when you can acknowledge that, you can kind of post freely and understand.
I know this is not what I believe, but unfortunately, the way the world is at the moment, relationships are seemingly indicative of a politics that may not actually be our own.
So much of this, like we talked about, is about curation.
And I think if you read this essay and thought, I don't know how to market myself.
I don't know what story to tell about myself that is both authentic and also not off-putting for others.
Because you say in the essay right like we should be able to do whatever we want and also relationships should be okay to end and we should be single for a while and feel proud about that.
We should feel excited and proud by all the things, even when they're a little bit miserable.
But I just kept thinking that the pressure of curation seems huge.
What advice do you give to people who are trying to figure out what story to tell about themselves and what they have to post?
Because some of this doesn't have to be everybody's business.
Yeah, exactly.
I just think it's not by force to post your partner.
And obviously not every single person who's online is invested in cultivating a personal brand because they want to sell products or they're an influencer, or whatever.
You kind of just want to post for posting's sake.
And I just think you can share the aspects of your life that you want.
If you wanted to share your boyfriend every single day, then do it.
I think it's important to not be so preoccupied with how you're perceived.
But I also think it is important, important to interrogate like what is it that I am trying to show to the world when I do all of this?
Like what is it that I'm actually trying to say?
Like who does this really serve?
And we should think about that when we post anything online, really.
But I think when it comes to relationships, there is a lot about it that I think we just kind of do blindly and we don't ever really question why we behave the way that we do.
But I don't want people to get really panicked and be like I don't know if I should post my partner.
Like, of course, do it.
Shante ends her essay with a paragraph that says
Obviously, there is no shame in falling in love, but there's also no shame in trying and failing to find it or not trying at all.
As long as we're openly rethinking and criticizing heteronormativity, having a boyfriend will remain a somewhat fragile or even contentious concept within public life.
This is also happening alongside a wave of women reclaiming and romanticizing their single life.
Nicely put, Shantae, that is certainly true.
I see a lot of women posting pictures of chosen families, friends and even their blissful time alone.
I find that very romantic in its own way.
I want to ask what you're writing.
Yeah, so I am writing a book at the moment.
It's called Picky and it's all about how Basically, society blames women for their own singleness and doesn't actually acknowledge the ways in which it is very difficult to partner now, particularly as a straight woman.
So I'm looking at it through the lens of media and politics and even religion and culture.
And I look at all of the stories from my own life, all of the dating experiences that I've had And in all of the ways I've had to reckon with this idea of being single and constantly being told it's a bad thing, but not really believing that inherently the whole idea of the relationship recession.
And I'm kind of looking at Essentially, how you get over that, what do you do?
Where do you go next?
How do you feel better about yourself?
How do you exist in your singleness?
How do you understand why you feel bad for being single?
You know, being super online, one thing you constantly see is women in their late 20s, early 30s just crying on camera because they are single.
They've been single their whole life.
And I always look at what people say back to them because it's like, oh you know, don't worry, you'll find a person someday.
Or it comes when you're not looking for it.
Or you need to work on yourself.
Or it's okay to be sad because this is a biological drive that's inside you.
And I really wanted to debunk a lot of those myths and also give women an explanation.
Actually, this is what's happening in the world right now and this is how you've been socialized to believe that a romantic relationship is the thing that will save you and that you should aspire to and that makes your life as a woman complete.
There's a long history and long process to this happening to you.
It didn't just start yesterday and it doesn't matter how much you read and how much you love yourself and how much you pretend to not look for it.
You can't really overcome all of this social conditioning without understanding why it's happening in the first place.
Can't wait.
It's such a good title.
You can find out more about Shantae Joseph, her writing and her book Picky Stories of Dating in a Relationship Recession by looking up Shantae Joseph on Instagram.
By the way, if you love that Our Boyfriend's Embarrassing Now song from our montage, it's the band The Anahit.
You can find them on many platforms and in our show notes.
And check out our show notes for all of the creators from that montage.
Before we go, here's a little teaser of part two of our exploration of this question.
You'll hear the gripping story of a woman who got a boyfriend, was embarrassed and then basically hid him.
I would tell Kyle to get lost.
Like, I would make him vacate the vicinity.
Like, his own home.
More in our next episode.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
This episode was produced by Jasmine Aguilera.
Story edit by Veronica Chow.
Sound design by Jasmine Aguilera.
Special thanks to Linda Henry and Brian McGorry.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
Send any question about dating divorce marriage singlehood friendships, whatever to loveletters at bostoncom.
When you send a question, you help people wondering the same thing feel less alone.
And if you like the show, please leave us a review.
Of course, a relationship will change you and teach you new things about yourself.
And you're going to want to share that with people.
But it doesn't always have to be through the lens of like my boyfriend, my boyfriend, my boyfriend, my boyfriend, my man, my man, my man, my man, my man.
Give us a break.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
