A few weeks ago, Vogue published an article with a headline that sent the internet into a spiral: “Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”. As soon as I saw the first TikTok video discussing the article, I knew I had to read it. As a 20-year-old girl in her final year of university who has never had a boyfriend, this was right up my street; finally, a piece of journalism I felt uniquely qualified to have an opinion on. Personally, I’ve never wanted a relationship, and I cannot stress the number of times I have had to justify this decision to people when they ask why.
Immediately after reading the article, I loved it. It managed to sum up everything I feel in one amazing piece of journalistic expression. I thought it was pretty clear that the article wasn’t mocking relationships and love, nor did it ever actually claim that having a boyfriend is embarrassing; it simply stated that the times of women dulling down their personalities, or centring their lives around men, are gone. It was about rejecting the outdated idea that having a boyfriend and being in a relationship is the pinnacle of womanhood. Within the entire article, the only thing that Vogue claimed was embarrassing was losing oneself in a relationship – and I think that’s a pretty good opinion.
The article began flooding my For You Page; every video was discussing whether it is embarrassing to have a boyfriend. But, as I looked further, it became obvious that people were completely missing the point. The internet collectively decided that the article was an attack on relationships themselves. I saw tons of women posting videos of their boyfriends as a dig to show they’re not embarrassed, with some captioned ‘Vogue is wrong, my bf is not embarrassing’.
Every single take on the video had one thing in common: none of them referenced anything from the actual article. Instead, they took one look at the headline and ran with it.
What Chante Joseph, author of the article, had produced was a nuanced reflection on how women are shifting from the ‘boyfriend-ified’ versions of themselves, towards a more self-defined way of living. It was a piece about autonomy, not antagonism.
The longer I scrolled, the more surreal it felt. How could so many people confidently critique something they evidently hadn’t even read? How did a playful headline become a cultural crisis? And when did actually reading the article become an optional extra?
The truth is painfully simple: this is a media literacy failure.
On TikTok, the headline floated around detached from its subheading, its introduction, its tone, even its punctuation. Out of context, it was no longer an editorial wink but a supposedly serious statement. People were reacting to the idea of the article, rather than the article itself.
It appears we’ve slipped into a cultural moment where headlines now function as whole arguments, and opinions are formed long before information is gathered. It’s almost impressive, in a depressing way: thousands of people so confidently critiquing a piece they never bothered to click on. It also points to a wider issue: when we react to information we see on the algorithm, without even considering the full context, we lose the ability to have meaningful conversations about the world we live in.
Vogue didn’t declare boyfriends embarrassing. The internet did.
Misunderstanding an entire article because you only bothered to glance at the headline is far more embarrassing than having a boyfriend will ever be.
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
