Having a Boyfriend Isn’t Embarrassing if You Aren’t.

To be fair, optimization under patriarchy is exhausting.

Last October, Vogue put out its ever-relevant “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” article, which made the rounds on practically every media site that exists. CNN interviewed the author, The Guardian did a follow-up article, and every short-form and long-form content creator gave their two cents and then an extra penny. Most reactions correctly assessed the magnitude of how women’s dating history and romantic decisions impact their social status, and to a greater extent than for men.

Women being cognizant of this fact, especially with social media making the struggles of dating amidst blatant misogyny and patriarchal double standards painfully aware, have developed heightened vigilance regarding their choice of partners that they choose to associate themselves with publicly. Any failing in a woman’s partner that a hypothetical audience online notices before she does is beyond mortifying. With the help of TikTok’s Stitches and YouTube’s clips and Twitter’s quote tweets, the woman associated with some relational humiliation is forever branded as yet another case study in why dating men today is a humiliating experience. 

Or embarrassing, as one would say.

The result of this shift is people consuming content that teaches viewers how to minimize such dating “losses” in the quest for love. What this looks like for content particularly geared towards women is a positive feedback loop established between emotional hypervigilance about potential disillusionment and… interesting dating tips.

Yet, these dating pointers are far from harmless, especially for young and impressionable audiences looking to older figures on social media for advice. The loudest guidance about attracting, attaining, and maintaining a high-value man often recreates traditional purity culture, which is and has always historically been enshrined in patriarchy and misogyny. The founding principles of purity culture assert that women’s value in relationships comes from maintaining their purity through virginity, much of which is echoed in social media posts discouraging casual dating and physical intimacy. However, purity culture takes on a revitalized, “feminist” disguise, claiming to want the best for women, and doing nothing to dismantle the idea that a woman’s status is elevated by acquiring a partner. This modified version, which is prominent in many women’s dating advice accounts, promotes refraining from engaging in casual dating and/or physical intimacy in order to “not give” anything to a man, i.e., sex, without “getting” something in return, which typically may be money, gifts, or commitment. Not only does this lead women to suppress their natural desires for sex, but it also teaches women that expressing and executing said desires are mainly for men’s gratification, and especially at their detriment, given how physical intimacy is also framed as an act that is “done to” or “takes” from a woman.

Love can’t be earned with “purity” as if the love of your life would judge you for wanting to have sex with them.

We aren’t misguided for recognizing that men’s priority in the history of men being women’s partners was rarely about being good life companions. Joking about men being selfish or emotionally unavailable, immature or narcissistic or unreliable or inconsistent or defensive or controlling, or inconsiderate is consoling, especially when our dating lives seem to have more downs than ups.

All that kind of consoling does is reinforce the perception that disappointment while dating men is to be expected. 

But expecting disappointment doesn’t save us from disappointment; it just saves us from feeling disappointed. You can’t be disappointed if you have no expectations, right? 

Where does that leave us with love and romance?

Falling in love is too beautiful a thing not to experience because of hopeless pessimism. The fact that love is present in every art form since the dawn of time means that it exists, and the fact that people across time have enjoyed every art form’s expression of love means that the kind of love we all want is attainable. The kind of love that makes us feel seen and heard without judgment. The kind of love where we feel understood in ways we can’t verbalize. The kind of love that is persistent and perseveres through all the hardships that life has to offer during our short time here.

If you have a male partner who can’t, or won’t, give you the love that you want, and you keep him around nonetheless, you’re the embarrassing one. Life can only give you as far as you wish to dream. If you barely dare to dream as good as a partner who isn’t thoughtful, but he only gives you the ick biweekly, why would you deserve a partner from the stuff of romcoms? Clearly, you’re fine with less.

You’re only as embarrassing as what you accept. 

And desperate mediocrity has never been romantic or sexy.

Female-Led Media Needs More Whimsy

Camaraderie has been an enduring element in female friendships throughout history. Whether in medieval convents or as newly working women in the past century, sisterhood and female solidarity have helped women fight against all kinds of bigotry, or at the very least, make persisting through it just a little more tolerable.

Women have typically been underdeveloped, if at all developed, characters. For the longest time, entertainment media in particular have represented the interactions between women and the relationships women have in their lives as unexplored territory at best and wholly inaccurate at worst. Female characters have primarily existed to support the often-male leading characters’ motivations and journeys, or as foils to enhance their “aura”. Disney’s early films portrayed women, even their princess protagonists, as passive maidens. Video games don’t operate much differently, like the ubiquitous Mario franchise, which has kept Princess Peach’s physical autonomy in a questionable state for most of the franchise’s existence, with her primary role having been as Bowser’s hostage that Mario must rescue over and over. Misrepresentation of women worsens with nonwhite female characters. Even if white heroines do get a chance at being at or near the foreground, albeit rudimentarily at times, the portrayals of nonwhite female characters are bastardized with shoddy stereotypes, such as black and brown women being depicted as unduly desexualized and undesirable or Asian women shown as overly submissive. 

With mainly male writing rooms and casting directors and editors and directors, where are women, and especially impressionable girls, supposed to find their stories on the big screen?

The 2000s and early 2010s saw a host of female-centered, primarily animated media in response to young girls consuming more digital media just like everyone else, with popular selections like the Barbie film franchise, the Monster High media franchise, the Winx Club series, and the Bratz series coloring my childhood. Such productions often included a mix of original and revamped content, with the latter in large part done by the Barbie film franchise, whose early works featured remakes of existing works like the Brothers Grimm’s Rapunzel or Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers or Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake ballet. Even these remakes were a first for women-centered media. Now, women were at the forefront of stories and fantasies involving them. 

No, these stories didn’t just involve them; these stories were theirs. Women were the main characters in every possible way. They were active players in their stories with the most interesting backstories and the best supporting cast. Men were frequently relegated to the background, with their most significant role being as supportive love interests. Notably, the men in these productions were never dehumanized, and the most underdevelopment their characters may have seen was in terms of… computer-generated motion graphics. Characters’ relationships, whether platonic or romantic, were not going to be ignored. The respectful yet flattering attention of male characters could be appreciated—and sometimes even reciprocated—by female protagonists, who also didn’t slow down to save their kingdom from evil sorcerers.

Depictions of female friendships were realistic: women could disagree, argue, and fight, even as part of the plot or conflict in an episode. But sisterhood was never abandoned. Women were rarely pitted against each other unfairly, especially over a man, as most male-dominated media may characterize female connections and bonds.

The target audience—Gen Z and younger millennials—has now grown up, but pop culture has maintained the relevance of popular women-oriented media. Nicki Minaj, despite having since fallen from grace, paid homage to Barbie’s brand with lyrical references and prominently pink stylistic choices, so much so that her fanbase calls themselves “the Barbz”. Zara Larsson’s rebrand mirrors the design of the Winx Club protagonists, with neon pop colors and glitter galore. Bratz’s impact on women of color cannot be sidelined with the main cast being overwhelmingly nonwhite, challenging the European beauty standards that even Barbie upheld to some extent. Gen Z and younger millennials have now been able to use the styles of the beloved characters from the films and TV shows from their childhood to inform their own aesthetic choices in how they dress and present themselves, especially when they want to make a statement. It is media like these that gave women, whether as young girls or evolving teenagers, a space to healthily engage with topics like beauty and fashion and life, without thematically being too “adult”.

Stories about women and with women in leading roles don’t always need to be about institutional sexism and omnipresent misogyny with dramatic monologues on the seemingly inescapable nature of firmly established patriarchy. Those stories are undoubtedly important, and we need them too. Awareness is a necessary first step to having the intellectual tools for women’s liberation from any and all oppressive structures. 

But sometimes, women, and especially impressionable girls, need to be able to see themselves as fairies and princesses and adolescent magazine editors, and everything in between. 

Fantasy is a means by which we can conceptualize our dreams and desires through imagination. In order to do, we need to be able to think. And without imagination, thinking doesn’t extend much too far. It may be an idealist perspective, but if there were no idealists, I certainly wouldn’t be a literate college student writing and drinking Moscato I bought with money I earned, with no one’s permission but myself.

I Wanna Be A Star: How Famous Can A Woman Be?

TW: Murder, and SA mentioned.

What goes up must come down, and for women in Hollywood, the turnaround is worse than the ruthless law of physics.

When Chappell Roan pointed into the sea of photographers, telling one to “shut the fuck up!” at the 2024 VMAs, we could have predicted it as the end of her being on the good side of the general public. In the moment, many applauded her public display of boundary-setting in the face of invasive paparazzi. Her behavior throughout the rest of 2024 until now has seemed to ruffle every feather across the Internet.

This came shortly after she took to her TikTok and created two videos discussing how she views her encounters with fans and/or people who just want a picture. Discourse around Roan floated around the Internet for months, calling her a performative activist or an ungrateful pop star, claiming that she “hates” her career (making music and performing it). It all follows the typical timeline of an all-too repetitive cycle in the entertainment industry, where a woman skyrockets to fame and must experience every negative part of the comedown. 

Musicians have a particularly niche struggle with this, as they are the product. They are attempting to sell who they are for your listening pleasure. In July of 2023, it was announced that 1) Ariana Grande and her now ex-husband had been separated for months, and 2) that Grande was now dating her Wicked costar Ethan Slater, who also had been through a sudden divorce.

The Internet was quick to find any piece of evidence that further pushed the notion that Grande was a serial homewrecker. She and Slater faced immense hate right up until about the time that the actual film came out. By then, the masses were obsessed with the screen adaptation, and her “Eternal Sunshine” world tour sold out in minutes. As of now, she is back! But this only comes after she faced her many, many ups and downs of fame.

Actresses tend to fall into a similar fate, depending on their rise to fame. Jennifer Lawrence, one of the youngest to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actress, star of acclaimed franchise films such as X-Men: First Class and The Hunger Games series, and much more, was hated by the general public for being too quirky.

Yes, abusers and known bigots walk around Hollywood, still grabbing prestigious awards and leading box office hits, but liking pizza a little too loudly was just enough for audiences everywhere to get to know Lawrence. Her image of relatability worked until people decided it didn’t; she was accused of performing her ordinary traits to just appeal to mass audiences, because how could a woman actually remain humble after being the highest paid actress in Hollywood? 

The term “media training” unfortunately became every user’s favorite buzzword to describe the behavior of any public-facing person, usually in the place of entertainment. The phrase had its big run when Broadway, movie, and pop star Renee Rapp was on her Mean Girls (2024) press tour. Her unfiltered humor quickly went viral for the fact that she “wasn’t media trained.” She cussed in the junkets and called out bus drivers, and many were obsessed with this presentation of authenticity from a famous actress. While many who work in public relations and communications know that literally everyone has this so-called “media training,” this display of what seemed to be a lack of it had the usual “charming-until-it wasn’t” effect for Rapp, and some turned to call her behavior obnoxious and too abrasive for Hollywood.

The same standard never seems to be in place, however, for men. New HBO star of Heated Rivalry, Hudson Williams, has many fawning over his sarcastic personality and "lack of media training”. From throwing up middle fingers on red carpets to his somewhat crass answers in interviews, he has won over the hearts of millions of fans in the span of just a few months. The difference in treatment is glaringly different to anyone paying any type of attention. 

Rachel Zegler had a spotlight on her from the age of seventeen after making her feature film debut in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021). Her impressive vocals and humble high school theater background were enough to be on the good side of the public. Of course, this didn’t last long as she made a joke about how doing a film like Shazam was for the money, or how Snow White maybe needed a revamp after nearly a century for the live-action remake.

This massive campaign against her was also propelled by her outspoken support of Palestine and her public condemnation of the genocide. Her use of literal free speech led the film to underperform at the box office, which is just wildly ridiculous. Although her talent speaks for itself as she continues to succeed, the harm that comes with mass hatred needs to be acknowledged. 

In June of 2015, musician and actress Christina Grimmie was shot and killed at a meet and greet in Orlando, Florida. While the investigation that followed the tragedy pointed to signs of an obvious motive for murder, her killer was found to have had an “unhealthy and unrealistic infatuation” with Grimmie.

A musician, excited to hug and share a moment with someone she thought to be a safe fan of her art, ended her life on account of an obsession and a lack of protection. While this tragedy holds no direct correlation to any of the cultural moments or women above, it calls into question just how much the Internet and the general public care for the safety of women.

The horrific events and revelations that have come out of elite Hollywood’s sexual abuse rings (i.e., Epstein's Island, Diddy’s house)  are trivialized and desensitized for mass consumption via algorithm. 

Jokes have flooded mine and many others’ feeds about Roan’s security and her relationship to her fans in public, and while it can be fun to point and laugh now, we have to wonder what may be next for her. Will someone try to break that boundary in a way that no one is prepared for? What will she have to do to ensure her safety? She is quite literally banned from performing at Todo Mundo by the mayor of Rio de Janeiro. Chris Brown has a recorded history of abuse toward women, and yet every year without fail, his albums sell, and fans push for him to perform at the Super Bowl. All Time Low is still headlining Warped Tour. And to be frank, it's exhausting.

It's exhausting to see this onslaught of smear campaigns against women constantly, and to find casual misogyny in every conversation around women.

The everyday woman posting a slice of her family life on the Internet or a bit of her relationship unwillingly becomes the center of what could be a Vogue think-piece. A makeup routine becomes a comment section of suggestions. A documented fitness journey becomes a forum for body-shaming.

There is no answer or right way for a woman to be famous, because it's nearly impossible to just exist at times. 

To be a woman in this age is hard enough, so I say, let Chappell Roan be as (allegedly) rude as she wants to be. Who cares?