Relationships
A conversation with Chanté Joseph about why straight women are rethinking how much they want to center men in their lives.
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On today’s new Love Letters podcast episode:
A few of us at The Boston Globe joke about being on the flashlight team.
There’s the Spotlight Team, our department of investigative reporters who have won Pulitzers. They were portrayed in the movie “Spotlight,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture.
Those journalists are always working on BIG projects.
When the rest of us take a wildly deep dive into a smaller and seemingly less important issue, we joke that we’re doing flashlight reporting.
For example, a few years ago someone asked me, “Does Chris Evans actually live in Boston?” I said, “Sounds like a job for the flashlight team.”
There is no real flashlight team, of course.
By the way, as a self-appointed member of this fictional team, I think the answer to the Chris Evans question is: he lives here sometimes.
I like to go big with flashlight questions in Love Letters.
Does getting bangs help you get over a breakup? Is Harry Styles’s new song about Olivia Wilde? Is a surprise proposal at Fenway Park an adorable idea or a terrible public nightmare? These are all flashlight questions that occupy my brain.
Last year, only one flashlight question was on my mind. It was: “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”
That was the headline of an essay by 29-year-old London writer Chanté Joseph.
Chanté, not having to crop anyone out of a photo, at an event in YEAR. Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
I discussed Chanté’s essay in the Love Letters newsletter in November, not long after it ran. For those who missed that dispatch, here’s a summary: Chanté said in her essay that she noticed that many straight women on Instagram were obscuring their boyfriends in pictures. Sometimes these women were cutting boyfriends out of the scene altogether.
The women were opting to show photos of themselves or their community of friends.
Chanté wondered: Are we in a new era where having a boyfriend feels sort of cringy?
Her argument was that even if a woman has a wonderful boyfriend, she might want to distance herself from old models of heterosexuality. A woman might not want her public identity wrapped up in a male partner.
Maybe it used to feel like having a boyfriend gave a woman clout, but in 2025/26, not so much.
Chanté had clearly hit on something big because her essay went viral. It was debated all over the internet.
Some people created art to honor her essay. The band the Anahit turned the concept into a song, which is actually quite catchy.
The Anahit, a Budapest band fronted by Rita Csanyi, turned Chanté Joseph’s essay into music. Photo by: Sandor Bikali
Months after the piece ran, I was still thinking about it.
That’s why I reached out to Chanté. I needed to explore more. I was feeling very “flashlight team” about it.
Chanté agreed to come on the Love Letters podcast to talk. It was during the interview that I realized: this isn’t flashlight material at all. It’s something bigger.
Chanté explains that this seemingly small trend of straight women hiding male partners on Instagram points to huge questions about the state of modern relationships.
At 29, Chanté has been thinking, “Sure, love who you love – and if you love a man, that’s great, but how much do you want to center him? Does your romantic partnership have to be your most important relationship? Do you have to lose money/time/agency/identity by coupling with a man? Is there a version of heterosexuality that allows you to be a full independent person without becoming … minimized? Or … of service?”
She also asks, “Why do we seem to blame women for being single? Why do we think that the default way of being human is to be partnered?”
That’s my paraphrase, by the way. Chante says it better herself.
She states, in the podcast episode, out today:
Prior to writing this piece, I read “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality” by Jane Ward. In the book there’s a chapter and it’s what queer people say about straight people behind their back. It does give you an entirely new perspective on straightness as a culture … how inherently problematic and quite flawed it is. But we never really question straightness because it’s seen as the norm. … We don’t actually look at straightness enough.
Even if you’re a woman with the best male partner ever, it feels like you have to specify that – to say you’re the exception to the rule. It’s easy to assume that in a straight relationship, women might be doing more home management and emotional labor, and, perhaps, compromising too much.
I bet our Spotlight Team could connect Chanté’s observations to voter trends, the declining international birth rate, and the economy.
Chanté’ said that many people were furious about her essay – or feared it was another case of a woman judging other women (which was not her intent). Other people, especially younger people, were thrilled that someone was daring to suggest that a woman’s main goal didn’t have to be: “find a man.”
Chanté says in the podcast:
I’m really understanding why people felt so moved by this because they felt like for the first time they were not lacking in anything. Because the one thing that society told them to desire … according to Vogue, isn’t cool anymore. So they had that levity, that freedom, and they loved that.
I promise, this episode of the podcast is delicious and funny, despite referencing material such as “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality.” Chanté is a delight, and the episode features a montage of wild reactions to the piece, including one from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was asked to comment on the essay.
This is a two-part exploration into Chanté’s question. Today’s episode will prime you for next week, which is a story about a woman who admits she hid her boyfriend and forced him to leave his own home, for hours at a time, so her friends wouldn’t see him.
Chanté is finishing a book about women and singledom, by the way. It’s called “Picky.”
Phone a friend
As you know, we have a Love Letters phone booth – the Tell-A-Booth – in the Boston Public Library. I have started answering questions from the booth in the column. This was the first published question that came from the phone.
You can still send a letter without going to the phone booth. Just hit this button below.
BUTTON FOR LETTERS
I’ll leave you with a picture of my recent visit to the phone booth. I was so happy to spend time with it.
The face I’m making … just out-of-my-mind thrilled. (Photo by Love Letters podcast producer Jazmin Aguilera.)
– Meredith
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