The End of the Boyfriend Era

A Vogue article sparked a viral debate—but the real story is how women’s autonomy is reshaping romance, and politics.

Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash

As young women become more independent—financially, socially, and politically—the cultural implications of cis-het relationships has changed. What once symbolized safety, stability, and status now feels optional, even fraught, especially as conservative backlash and online misogyny rise among young men. Whether women soft-launch their boyfriends, proudly post them, or avoid dating altogether, the point is the same: autonomy—not attachment—is shaping how this generation understands love and identity.

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On October 29th, Vogue published an article titled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”–and online discourse erupted. Written by Chanté Joseph, the piece opens with her admission that she blocks women who “boyfriend-ify” their social media. Her reasoning? It’s simply not the flex it once was.

Chanté Joseph wrote the article after noticing that women were posting their boyfriends more discreetly–a hand at dinner, a turned head at the beach. While this is often called “soft-launching,” Joseph sensed something deeper in women’s reluctance to be linked to men.

“Being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore,” Joseph wrote in the viral Vogue piece, “it is no longer considered an achievement, and, if anything, it’s become more of a flex to pronounce yourself single.” 

The internet was quick to respond, with both single and partnered voices chiming in. Some women filmed TikToks of themselves strutting down city streets with the caption “Having a Boyfriend is Embarrassing — Vogue” set to a remixed version of Addison Rae’s “Fame is a Gun.” Others used the trend to showcase their partners, posting clips of completed chores and gifts. A few even offered revisions: “Having a boyfriend is embarrassing…if he’s not obsessed with you” or “if he’s a loser.”

The article’s reach extended far beyond TikTok, circulating through Reddit forums, Substack newsletters, YouTube commentary, and even student-run newspapers. Unsurprisingly, the debate often centered around men. “They want a housewife that is utterly dependent on them that will take care of them 24/7,” one Reddit commenter said, “Not only no, but hell no.”

One Substack essay took a more critical stance toward Joseph, arguing that Gen Z’s fixation on image and “building a brand” reflects an unhealthy form of self-sufficiency–one that oversimplifies the complexities of modern dating. 

But the cultural fixation on modern dating isn’t just about vibes or aura, it reflects a deeper shift in women’s autonomy and the de-centering of men. Heteronormative dating has always been political.

Think about your grandma. Or your grandma’s grandma. Getting married was not as much of a choice as it was an expectation for women. With the limited economic opportunities and social status, heteronormative relationships offered financial security and the evasion of stigma surrounding singleness. And now, those days have changed. 

Women now comprise nearly half of the workforce and outpace men in earning advanced degrees. Since the Sexual Revolution, they’ve also gained far greater control over family planning. And while the average age of marriage was around 20 in the 1950s, it has now risen to 28. What does this mean?

For women today, relationships with men are defined by choice rather than necessity.

Many right-wing and “conservative values” politicians will point to the “dissolve of family” and “female autonomy” as the culprit of political tensions. A recent example is Tucker Carlson’s interview with far-right Christian nationalist Nick Fuentes, where Fuentes argued that women’s political and economic independence is a threat to social order and suggested that returning women to strictly domestic roles is the only way to “restore the nation to decency”. 

While relationships with men have long been framed as a source of safety for women, that security is often more illusion than fact. Domestic violence remains widespread, and marital rape wasn’t criminalized in the U.S. until 1993. In an era when women can support themselves both financially and socially, many are less inclined to tether their lives to a boyfriend or husband.

The dating landscape no longer looks the way it did when our grandparents–or even our parents–navigated it. While this shift may feel freeing for many women, the rise of online radicalization through red-pill podcasting and “manosphere”  influencers reveals how threatened some men feel. Look at Andrew Tate or Myron Gaines, men who have built their massive online following around the dehumanization of women. Their rhetoric stands in stark contrast to pop artists like Sabrina Carpenter, whose largely female fanbase embraces lyrics like, ‘I beg you, don’t embarrass me, motherfucker…”

The gender divide in U.S. politics is wider than ever, with young women growing increasingly liberal while young men lean more conservative—and support for Donald Trump is rising among Gen Z men. While women’s bodily autonomy is targeted every election cycle, the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 marked a new era of widespread fear for many women. Dating a ‘Republican boyfriend’ feels more politically fraught than ever.

Of course, Joseph isn’t anti-love; she encourages women to think critically about the scope of heteronormative relationships and their expectations. What’s actually dissolving is the relational power historically held by men–and that’s for the better.

So is having a boyfriend embarrassing? The beauty is that women get to decide. They can soft-launch, parade, keep it private, or skip relationships altogether. One thing’s for sure: autonomy is cool. Boyfriends? Optional. They’re add-ons, not essentials.