It’s a common assumption in our culture that boyfriends are a fact of life and that all straight women should aspire to maintain a relationship with one. But in truth, boyfriends and the role they play in our lives is entirely a social construction. Did you ever think about that? I bet you didn’t.
You might think that our universal biology predicates the need for a boyfriend. My entire family and friend group thinks that, too. However, there are actually a variety of bullshit societal factors that influence our so-called “need” to invest time and energy in a boyfriend.
Say, for example, that I have a friend, “Lucy,” who loves spending her winter weekends doing the Netflix and chill thing with a young man, “Todd.” Some might say that Todd is her boyfriend and that it’s weird that I am the only one in my friend group without a boyfriend and maybe I should just lower my standards and settle down for my own good. But knowledge is also a social product and our accounts of reality are produced collaboratively as a community. Your use of the term “boyfriend,” albeit common and mutually agreed upon, might appear to a visitor to our planet as just “some guy” and “what’s the big deal anyways, I’m doing fine.”
Just because a man behaves in a stereotypically “boyfriend” role toward a woman, and describes himself using the term “her boyfriend,” does that make having a boyfriend an absolute law of human existence? Who’s to say I don’t also have a boyfriend, just because I am using the term to refer to my remote control? Can a remote control be my boyfriend? Think about it, okay? I have. A lot.
Again, a subject, “Todd” might buy flowers for his “girlfriend” “Lucy” “my best friend” on Valentine’s Day and his behavior would fit in the realm of boyfriend normative behavior. But the fact that a pattern of behavior has been labeled by us as being normal does not mean that it is de facto the rule. A person could exist in the world sans “boyfriend” (if you choose to accept that paradigm), or without ever uttering the term boyfriend, and their experience would be equally real and legitimate. We just happen to exist in a society that has deemed boyfriends the norm. Scientifically speaking, this is all fucking bullshit.
In conclusion, we should all stop perpetrating the idea that showing up at brunch without a boyfriend to cheerfully complain about is somehow “not normal.” So please open your mind and see why my life choices are indeed correct after all.
