If someone even says “my boyfriend…” on social media, they remain silent. There’s nothing I hate more than following someone for fun, only to have their content suddenly become “my boyfriend.” This is probably because, for so long, it seemed like we were living in what one of my favorite Substackers calls Boyfriend Land: a world where women’s online identities centered around the lives of their partners, a situation rarely seen the other way around. Women were rewarded for their ability to find and keep a man, with high social status and praise. It became even more stifling when this could be leveraged on social media to drive engagement and, if serious enough, financial gain.
More recently, however, there’s been a pronounced shift in the way people display their relationships online: Far from slamming their romantic partners, straight women are opting for more subtle cues: a hand on the wheel, clinking glasses at dinner, or the back of someone’s head. On the more confusing side, you have blurry faces in wedding photos or entire professionally edited videos with the fiancé conveniently cropped out of every shot. Women obscure their partners’ faces when they post, as if to erase the fact that they exist without actually not posting them.
So what happens? Are people ashamed of their boyfriends now? Or is something more complicated going on? To me, it feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one in which they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not seem so obsessed with the boyfriend that they come across as cultural losers. “They want the award and the celebration of the association, but they understand that this is normal,” says Zoé Samudzi, writer and activist. In other words, in an era of widespread heterofatalism, women don’t want to be seen as exclusively focused on their man, but they also want the influence that comes with being in a relationship.
But it’s not all about image. When I put out an appeal on Instagram to my 65,000 followers, many women told me that they were actually superstitious. Some feared the “evil eye,” the belief that their happy relationships would provoke such strong jealousy in other people that they might end the relationship. Others were worried about their relationship ending and then getting caught up in the posts. “I was in a relationship for 12 years and I never once posted or talked about him online. We recently broke up and I don’t think I’ll ever post a guy,” says Nikki, 38. “Even though I’m a romantic, I still feel like men will embarrass you even after 12 years, so claiming them feels very silly.”
but there is was an overwhelming feeling in both single women and couples that, regardless of the relationship, being with a man was almost guilty. In The Delirious Diaries PodcastLed by two New York-based influencers, Halley and Jaz, they discuss whether having a boyfriend is “dumb” now. “Why does having a boyfriend make you feel Republican?” read a featured comment, with 12,000 likes. “Boyfriends are out of fashion. They won’t come back until they start behaving,” said another, with 10,000 likes. In essence, “having a boyfriend usually affects a woman’s aura,” as one commenter stated. Interestingly, both hosts have partners, which is something I see often online. Even women in relationships will lament men and heterosexuality, partly out of solidarity with other women, but also because it is now fundamentally unpleasant to be a girlfriend.
