Women are shaming other women, and it is just embarrassing.  

The recently popular vogue article titled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” is opening the floor for a controversial and awkward debate –– which I call blatant hate –– and it is stirring up a pot of biased opinions.   

To see women bashed for being in healthy relationships is no short of baffling. Having a boyfriend is not embarrassing now, and it never was.  

The article starts with a strong hook that indicates the writer, Chanté Joseph, will mute any girl that so much as mentions her boyfriend on social media. She claims she finds it the opposite of fun when someone suddenly “boyfriendifies” her content.   

I agree with Joseph, but only to an extent.   

I am the biggest advocate for women’s individualism. Every woman should have her own independence, and I believe Joseph clarifies it in her hook that no woman should make her content only about her boyfriend.   

However, the sources that she uses, and the statements that she makes in her article doesn’t reflect her “feminist” opinion on the matter. Instead, it is used as an indirect pathway to hate on women that have made choices for themselves.  

The article didn’t decenter men but instead divided women up.  

On TikTok and Instagram, women who are not single and have posted their views on the article are being called a “pick me,” and they are being told they don’t know how to read.   

My friend, Bernadette –– who I like to call the epitome of knowledge –– said the article distinguished women in happy relationships versus women who are single.   

Me and my girlfriends were discussing the article that was overt in disrespecting women who are not single, and we all agreed that it defied the concept of feminism.  

Feminism is about inclusivity, not diminishing women who make the choice themselves to have a romantic interest.  

The article just discusses straight relationships and only focuses on straight women. 

What about men that have boyfriends? What about women that have girlfriends? Wouldn’t it be as equally embarrassing for them to have partners?  

In the Vogue article, Joseph said it felt like to her that this complicated correlation between embarrassment and having a boyfriend is a result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across as quite culturally loser-ish.  

Why are we labeling women who are satisfied with their choice, who are proud of their partners, who want to show off their boyfriends, “loser-ish”?  

This article feels like women who have had bad romantic experiences hating on women that have evolved past them.  

When these women have finally found stability, there is an article on Vogue calling them embarrassing.   

One of the sources that Joseph used in her article said, “Why does having a boyfriend feel Republican?”   

That comment made me gasp because being with a partner should not at all be compared to being affiliated with a conservative political party.   

Another source reads, “Being single gives you this ultimate freedom to say and do what you want. It is absolutely not every woman, but I do notice that we can become more beige and watered-down online when in a relationship — myself included.”  

From these comments the writer used, it seems as though these women have been wronged or have lost themselves completely in a man before.  

They are now cautious of making boyfriends.   

There are women who have learned self-respect, who have strengthened their dignity and are in relationships with those who choose to grow with them. I think this article and the reaction to it is unfair to them.    

Let’s not shame women for their choices. Instead, let’s give them the space to make mistakes, grow and decide for themselves what they want.  

Women in the past didn’t have the same freedoms we do today, and they paved the way for us. So why limit ourselves now?