Boyfriend Land.
Chanté Joseph references the phenomenon in her recent viral Vogue article, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”, describing “a world where women’s online identities are centered around the lives of their partners.”
It’s also a world that virtually no female Seton Hall student wants to live in, as Christina McCarthy, a sophomore political science major, said, even as a woman in a relationship herself.
“I don’t think anyone wants to be that girl, or even that person, who always has to bring up their boyfriend or significant other,” Christina McCarthy said.
Kasey Zelaya, a sophomore diplomacy major, is also sensitive to this idea of digital boyfriend-fatigue, even with a boyfriend of her own. According to Zelaya, when it comes to seeing women post their boyfriends every day, “it does get a bit tiring to see.”
While women seem aware of the judgment that can result from appearing to live in “Boyfriend Land,” embarrassment does not seem to be the source of their boyfriend-posting reservations.
To Post or Not to Post?
Paige Hunsicker, a junior visual and sound media major, said that anxiety about people’s reactions, not embarrassment about the relationship itself, fueled her posting reservations in the early days of her relationship.
“When we first got together, I was definitely nervous about the initial posts and how people would react to it,” Hunsicker said.
For Zelaya, it’s a matter of privacy. She reflected on her tendency to “over-post” about relationships in the past, including posts that “made no sense to share with the world.”
“Now I feel like I need to keep more things to myself,” Zelaya said.
Consideration for others is the main factor for Gillian Miller, a sophomore social work major, who sometimes feels uncertain about posting couples photos taken at events.
“There have been times where I have hesitated [to take photos at events] because the event was about something else or someone else, and I don’t want to make it about myself and my relationship,” Miller said.
With the idea of boyfriend-embarrassment widely dismissed, women find other explanations for the rise of discrete boyfriend-posting practices like the “soft launch.”
For Miller, there was no need to formally announce the relationship.
“I was chronically offline for the first two years of our relationship,” Miller said. “Everyone already knew we were dating by the time I posted him.”
Superstitions have a role too, something Joseph acknowledges in her original article.
“I didn’t want to do a hard launch, and then people start talking bad about me,” Zelaya said, as a strong believer in the “evil eye.”
But not all soft launches are based on practicality.
“I feel like some people do it for the attention,” McCarthy said. “They want people to speculate.”
Singles Chime In
Some single women see soft launches as an act of caution.
“It’s really embarrassing to post someone and be like, ‘This is my boyfriend,’ and then break up a week later,” Natalie O’Keefe, a sophomore social work major, said.
Maria Mormile, a junior social and behavioral sciences major, said soft launches give women an opportunity to “hear back criticism from other people.”
Others, like Madalynn Ramos, a sophomore social work major, see the privacy function. Soft launches are a way for couples to keep their relationships “private but not a secret,” Ramos said.
Hazy relationship statuses can also blur the line of what is and isn’t appropriate to post about a partner, according to Ciara Rodriguez, a junior social work major, who described her relationship status as “complicated.”
“I think people just don’t know where the line is—whether they can or can’t post [their partner],” Rodriguez said.
Gender dynamics are also at play.
Rodriguez said that in a “male-dominated” society, it’s important for women to remember that a partner “is more of a want than a necessity.”
O’Keefe agreed that a woman’s identity could be obscured by her connection to a man.
“With guys, I feel like their girlfriends are seen as kind of an extension of them,” O’Keefe said.
But while a desire to be seen as an individual could be motivating the trend of discrete relationship posts, singles aren’t so quick to dismiss the possible role of embarrassment.
Mormile drew similarities between posting a boyfriend online and public displays of affection (PDA), which embarrassed her in a past relationship. She also remembered not being “100% comfortable” in the relationship, which prevented her from being proud enough to post about it.
O’Keefe isn’t a stranger to relationship embarrassment, either. She recalled a time when she got back together with an ex-boyfriend a week after breaking up with him.
“For the rest of the relationship, I only posted him once in a blue moon because I felt very judged,” O’Keefe said. “It was very embarrassing.”
Boyfriends Sound Off
Men don’t seem too concerned with the prospect of not being visible on their girlfriends’ social media accounts.
“I don’t think guys care as much,” Ryan Fox, a junior communications major in a relationship, said. “I know that my girlfriend cares about me, and I don’t think her posting on social media really affects that.”
Ivan Malave Vivas, a junior special education, elementary education and history major, agrees.
“I don’t really care if people do or don’t post,” Malave Vivas said. “I would like to post, but it’s up to the person if they want me to do that.”
For Gianluca Scalici, a freshman biology major, soft and hard relationship posts are equally gratifying.
“She’s technically still posting about you, so it’s not like that big of a deal,” Scalici said.
Double Standards?
Some women notice a gendered double standard when it comes to relationship-posting.
McCarthy said that the distinction between keeping a relationship private and keeping it hidden can get fuzzy for men.
“I feel like men at this age like to have their cake and eat it too,” McCarthy said. When a woman posts her relationship and her boyfriend doesn’t, “it just looks suspicious.”
On posting about relationships, O’Keefe remarked that there was “definitely” a stigma, “especially for girls.”
For O’Keefe, mentioning a boyfriend in conversation “does get kind of embarrassing,” but “that ties into a lot of what women face.”
“You can’t just be a girl with a boyfriend,” O’Keefe said. “You’re just treated as someone’s girlfriend.”
Boyfriend Embarrassment in Context
Dr. Jessica Rauchberg, media scholar and assistant professor in the Department of Communication, Media and the Arts, evaluated the article beyond its sensational headline.
Despite Joseph’s article not concluding that it is embarrassing to have a boyfriend, the “time space condensation” on social platforms like TikTok limits the possibility of nuanced discussion, Rauchberg said.
On social media, attention is a commodity, and immediate responses are paramount. The downside, according to Rauchberg, is that “you don’t really have as much time to sit and think.”
Unnuanced assertions that having a boyfriend is or isn’t embarrassing generated reactions and responses that led to the article’s virality, Rauchberg said.
“Rage bait,” provocative content designed to get views and attention, is another contributing factor, Rauchberg said. Videos intentionally featuring embarrassing or bad boyfriends will accumulate comments pleading for the poster to “leave him,” fueling the discourse.
Rauchberg also pointed out how cancel culture and purity politics can influence the response that couples’ content receives on social media.
“We see what happens—how people get punished when they post a video of them and their boyfriend on the internet,” Rauchberg said.
This criticism often advances the narrative that if “you’re not publicly showing a relationship, you will be more fulfilled,” Rauchberg said.
This narrative might feel new, but it can also be interpreted as a cultural reaction to preexisting media portrayals of heteronormative relationships.
This time last year, “we were having moral panics about tradwives,” Rauchberg said. “Now we are in a different moment.”
Political frustrations amid President Donald Trump’s second term in office and speculations that tradwives—wives who embrace traditional gender roles like homemaking and childcare—might have affected the election outcome and could be influencing the current trend, said Rauchberg.
This cultural shift goes beyond political change.
“I think people are really exhausted with showing the relationship,” Rauchberg said.
Younger generations like millennials or Gen Z, who have grown up online, might feel a need to step away from frequent sharing on social media platforms.
The platforms themselves might also deserve some of the blame.
Rauchberg cited Cory Doctorow’s theory of enshittification, the idea that platform companies worsen user experience for profit. When platforms are no longer fun to use, people might no longer see the point in posting their relationships on there.
So, Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing?
The student consensus points to no—that having a boyfriend is indeed not embarrassing.
While women in relationships admit to feeling occasional hesitation about posting their boyfriends, they deny that being in a relationship itself is embarrassing.
“I don’t think that [it’s embarrassing],” Miller said. “It’s amazing to have a healthy relationship and to feel comfortable enough to show it nowadays.”
These boyfriends agree.
“I can’t think of anything to be embarrassed about with my girlfriend,” Scalici said. “If you’re really happy with them, then there’s no need for you to feel embarrassed.”
People online have come to the “grand conclusion” that having a boyfriend is embarrassing, but “that is not the truth,” Rauchberg said, nor is it really the point of the original article itself.
“We all have needs,” Rauchberg said. “It’s okay to want to have a relationship.”
Lianna Cruz is the assistant photographer of The Setonian’s Photography section. She can be reached at lianna.cruz@student.shu.edu.
