is having a girlfriend embarrassing now?

short answer: sources say no, as long as you don't trust her

If you read the title and groaned, I apologize. I feel like that weird 2010s R&B singer (H.I.M. aka Her In Mind) making unsolicited response albums to H.E.R. but I promise, this exercise is in good faith.

On October 25, 2025 Chanté Joseph published an article for British Vogue titled, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” and it made waves across the internet. As of writing, the Vogue Instagram post for the article has 291k likes, 10.4k reposts, 38.7k shares, and over 2000 comments. The British Vogue post has 264k likes, 6.2k reposts, 87.6k shares, and nearly 2000 comments. Joseph’s post on her personal page has amassed 75.3k additional likes and 38.3k more shares. Those numbers are staggering, and when considering the countless Tiktoks, tweets, IG stories, and response essays; it’s easy to say it’s the most viral and socially impactful opinion piece written this year (at least online). I read it the week it came out after seeing the headline on IG, stamping a photo of Samantha from Sex and The City with one of her many lovers. I found it astute and well-written, worthy of the praise and spectacle it had received. I had more thoughts but just watched how the world reacted to Joseph’s findings and knew men need to know when to shut up. But due to the annoying, writerly voice in my head turning me every way but loose, I felt compelled to say something. Chanté Joseph wrote something potentially seminal and unfortunately, it seems as though many missed the point entirely.

A week ago my friend Michaela, posted about the article on her IG story with an assortment of thoughts, recognizing the truth in the article and adding in personal observations. It’d been weeks since I read it but I responded and said (edited for brevity):

I think a lot of people misunderstood or didn’t read the article… people think the main point was that a man will embarrass you by his actions (cheating etc), but her point seemed to mostly be that the online push towards more male-centric behavior has made the very act of having a male partner un-chic and mainstream… a lot of partnered women think their boyfriends are the most interesting thing about them and it makes them a bore to be around type deal

I say this because the article’s headline has popped up as a silent designator of men doing things that cast their woman in a negative light. Maybe the actions of a Love Island male alum could’ve hurt their girlfriend’s reputation or a boyfriend of a high-profile woman made guilty by association or whatever the hell Young Thug has done to Mariah The Scientist’s public perception (she’s shorthand for “dumb bitch” in many internet circles nowadays). But the “embarrassment” referred to in the article isn’t action-based. Joseph writes, “In other words, in an era of widespread heterofatalism, women don’t want to be seen as being all about their man, but they also want the clout that comes with being partnered.” The point isn’t your “boyfriend will embarrass you” rather it’s currently their inherent state because of where we are as a society.

But when I ask “is having a girlfriend embarrassing now?,” it isn’t just connected to this cultural moment. For cisgender heterosexual men, having a girlfriend isn’t more or less embarrassing than chasing a bus on a crowded street but there is a deeply entrenched macho fear that having a girlfriend will embarrass you and it’s not new. Whether or not a man’s girlfriend is embarrassing is reliant on three key factors amongst lesser variables: his devotion to her, her actions, and her proximity to conventional beauty.

On Jay-Z’s 2017 album, 4:44, he offers a response to Beyoncé’s Lemonade (to simplify, it’s an album where she artfully works her way through her husband’s infidelity and her emotions concerning it before deciding to forgive him because of generational trauma caused by slavery and other things). He’s apologetic for his wrongdoings, quite literally. Jay-Z recounts the early days in their relationship on the titular song with the lyric:

I said: “Don’t embarrass me” instead of “Be mine”

That was my proposal for us to go steady

That was your twenty-first birthday

You matured faster than me, I wasn’t ready

Rap is frequently an imperfect, rather unsubtle microcosm of Black masculinity where bravado and emotionally callous behavior are rewarded as authenticity. Jay-Z has more than a fair share of misogynistic rhymes and songs but after he entered a high profile relationship (then marriage) with Beyoncé, his perceived admiration for her became a vulnerable spot in his armor for rivals to attack. For example, during a mild beef with Lil Wayne in 2011, Wayne replied to a jab that his money belonged to Birdman instead of him:

Talkin ‘bout baby money? I got your baby money

Kidnap your bitch, get that “how-much-you-love-your-lady” money

It’s a bizarre thing, to mock a man for loving his woman even more so because Beyoncé is like the modern Helen of Troy. But it’s a well-worn rap beef tactic, something Drake tried with Pusha T and Kendrick Lamar. Where does the embarrassment come from?

The embarrassment stems from a central fear of a few things:

1. They mourn the death of “new pussy” which inexplicably may be the highest held delicacy in male psychosexual culture

2. Fear of manipulation/castration by a comically evil witch-like woman out to “use” them for what they’re worth

3. The woman may behave in ways that allow other men to assert their dominance over them (cheating, being loose, being conventionally unattractive)

4. Heartbreak is an ugly motherfucker

So why pursue women at all? Falling in love is engaging and fun at first but temporal and perilous to freedom. At its most toxic, male culture is negotiated by dominance of women and other men. Feminine consent needs to be coaxed or manufactured instead of given, men will respect them for their ability to “have their way” with women. Even personally, I’ve noticed how certain men will earn respect for me after peeping I “get hoes.” A woman must withhold because giving a man what they want too easily is often rewarded with a total lack of respect due to a projected sexual degeneracy. The foremost reason for this? Low self-esteem! “IF I CAN GET IT, SO CAN ANYONE ELSE!” In a way, becoming a girlfriend is a test of who can withhold and sate masculine desire the best. Being in a relationship is a form of domestication or submission, therefore feminine.

The cover image for this essay is from Malcolm D. Lee’s 1999 film The Best Man. [SPOILER ALERT] The groom, Lance, is inarguably the alpha of the group. He has the money, the career, the looks, the untouchable woman, and more importantly access to whatever woman he wants. Then he realizes his woman fucked his best friend Harper as a measure of revenge and everyone finds out before Lance does. Their entire dynamic is leveled because now Harper isn’t firmly behind Lance, they’ve fucked the same woman, that means they’re on even ground where it matters. Damn the money, damn the looks, damn the emotional growth. Sure, it’s a friendship and she was angry but why did Harper do it? It all concerns dominance. Lance was perfectly masculine, the meek Harper less so. Where is he vulnerable? His “virgin” woman.

They’re at the mercy of a woman’s emotions and wandering eye, maybe she’ll find a new benevolent patriarch and leave him going out sad, being the wrong nigga, and holding the torch for a woman with eyes elsewhere. Being a devoted partner risks embarrassment because no one ever truly knows the whole of what their partner is doing, especially in a time when women have more social freedoms and are advised to explore sexuality. A woman’s ability to withhold access needs to be robust in order for a man to feel secure. That’s why many feel as though the chase is necessary, it builds trust. The new social media world has pared away restrictions of access, men have ways of reaching women they have no business knowing. And they feel entitled to their attention. There is a lack of trust inherent to the model.

All of these generalizations point to the first embarrassment factor: a lover’s devotion. There aren’t many voyages more emasculating than being devoted to the wrong woman. What happened to the yearners?? The other men are naming them goofies, cornballs, and clowning them for “being green.” You love your woman too loudly, too verbose, too expressive? What if she cheats on you? Treat her too well? Must be your first bad bitch. Damson Idris and Lori Harvey. Klay Thompson and Megan Thee Stallion. Russell Wilson and Ciara. Travis Hunter and his woman. I could go on. The women I named are often maligned because they’ve publicly linked with several different men and the idea is, they shouldn’t be rewarded with a good man. Klay Thompson seems like a nice guy, why is he with a woman who raps about cheating on men and not needing them? Why is he threatening to give her a happy ending?

I mentioned it in an earlier substack essay but we’re undergoing a deeper re-orientation towards men performing for other men. One of the popular movements of this re-orientation is titled, “men going their own way” or “MGTOW.” It’s an anti-feminist movement adverse to gynocentrism or the idea that men are socialized to sacrifice their personal freedoms to bolster unworthy women. It’s not just on neckbeard internet message boards. The ideas have gone mainstream in a less-structured way and it’s routine to see seemingly desirable men be mouthpieces for red-pilled content. Horror stories of countless athletes and rappers sans sexual discipline making millions of dollars every year owing their predatory baby mommas’ exorbitant amounts of money has shaken the 54k-annual-salary-man to his core. The women are out to take his money! You’re green if you don’t see that!

The loss of unashamed male yearners has been gradual. Even R&B singers, customarily lauded for wearing their heart on their sleeves and making women feel like a true object of feminine desire have largely forsaken their conventional fanbase because they want to retain their cool factor. They’re players now, suave ladies men, not trusting these hoes, and giving their caution to everything but the wind. For this example, I’ll return to Drake. Yes, Drake is a rapper/singer and can’t sing so much as harmonize a little bit but I’m old enough to remember when he was a black sheep in the rap game for being a sensitive lover boy sap, always in his feelings. And his music reflected this vibe with great enthusiasm. Men didn’t listen to Drake with their chests out. As Daniel from HBO’s Insecure joked, he made music for “Black girls who went to college.” And it paid dividends. But it’s a far cry from how he’s carried himself the past few years. He’s gone from millennial LL Cool J to a mouthpiece for #thebros. He’s procured an army of grown-ass men that are strangely tribalistic and paternalistic about him, not unlike the Barbz or Beyhive, “Aubrey’s Angels.” There is a connection. He is who they want to be: single and pushing 40, not “trusting hoes” and with full access to a bevy of beautiful young women they not-so-secretly despise. I don’t mean to echo the vaguely homophobic, “men wanna be the bad bitches,” “zesty,” “sassy,” “DL” complaints but a lot of guys are caught up with embracing the glory usually associated with feminine youth.

To illustrate this point, I’ll return to my DM conversation with Michaela about boyfriends being embarrassing. I added:

I also think part of it is younger millennials and Gen Z are kind of the first people to grow up in an era where pop culture pushed youth as something to explore. Even SATC, is about the arrested development being single into deep adulthood engenders, being a (happily) single-woman in that sense is aspirational because the clamoring to “make it out” of dating and being chosen calls back to outmoded thinking. In fact, it ages you.

As far as men, in hegemonic masculinity maturity is more commendable than youth. Men were often ridiculed for attempting to retain youth. Not in a “men eat steak, women eat salad” type of way but cisgender people trade on drastically different values depending on their gender. Obligations to a woman or a family force order upon life. Having power and the responsibility that comes with it is the crux of manhood.

Women on the other hand are taught that their beauty is their chief asset and it diminishes with time and/or motherhood. In Beyoncé terms, “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” is youth and bliss, “Sandcastles” is hell. British Vogue’s IG post got it right, the new girls want to be Samantha Jones not Carrie Bradshaw because the truth is Samantha seemed to be having so much more fun and retained a youthful charm despite being the oldest of the quartet by a considerable margin. Carrie got the guy, but her life was worse off for it. This is also made evident by Tracee Ellis Ross being a Hello Kitty-type mascot for the “rich auntie” aesthetic, the working woman who steers clear of traditional romantic and nuclear relationships for an adventurous, free, independent, self-indulgent lifestyle. This is where the cool factor is. When you’re a man, it’s just sad. Like the guy on Smiling Friends said, “Go home to your family dude.”

Michaela also mentioned that Black women have been socialized to embrace youth and romantic solitude far longer than White women have and I agreed, joking, “Being single for the cool white girl is like punk rock. You do it until you’re 26 (or chosen) then you drop the act and vote republican until you die.” But it does speak to a worrisome trend of decreasingly dateable Black men, which isn’t new but far more pronounced by the digital age. Men don’t approach women because they’re afraid they’ll come off predatory or as a nuisance and… get embarrassed. Hiding behind social media profiles is easier, especially since what constitutes boyfriend material has never been more unclear for Black couples.

A study published in 2012 by Kristie A. Ford titled “Thugs, Nice Guys, and Players: Black College Women’s Partner Preferences and Relationship Expectations” explored the three archetypes of Black men that single Black women found on their campus: the thug, the nice guy, and the player. Ford asked the students to plainly detail the type of Black men they want. The study explained that most of the queried women were looking for an “endangered Black man” or an EBM to date. An EBM needs to fit all three archetypes: tall, muscular, dark, romantic, sorta hood and aggressive but have a heart of gold, sexy but don’t know it, smart but not condescending, can get bitches but doesn’t want them. She writes:

“In addition to the noted structural challenges, relationship work for black college men often entails navigating between outwardly incompatible images—the thug and the nice guy. Black women’s idealized images of men were incongruent, and, as recent research suggests, black men struggle to balance these conflicting messages.”

So what do you do Black man? It’s sad to be old and alone but embarrassing to choose the wrong woman and embarrassing to publicly love the right woman too much? How do we navigate this, assuage fears, and pick the correct woman so she doesn’t embarrass you? From my unstudied observations, the truth is that most women have these standards, mainly as a manner of filtering away undesirable men but are okay with abandoning (or are even eager to abandon) them for someone nice, accessible, and practical. Get over yourself, take that leap of faith. Love begins as curiosity, a lack of information and potential embarrassment stands in the way of that. You get your heart broken and your money stolen? Whoopty-doo! Think less about what people think of you and more critically about why you do what you do. But what do I know? I’m single.

“Don’t embarrass me” or “be mine?” Which way Black man?