For Latinas Having a Boyfriend Isn’t Embarrassing, It’s a Reclamation of Softness

When Vogue asked, “Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?” the internet had a collective moment. Some laughed, others rolled their eyes, but most of us, especially women, knew exactly what the question meant. Because it’s not really about the boyfriend, it’s about what it says about you to have one. For Latinas, that question hits differently. Our relationship to love, independence, and visibility has always been complicated. We grow up between cultures that tell us to be strong yet nurturing, independent yet family-oriented, and ambitious yet humble. Somewhere between marianismo and modern feminism, between “mija, focus on your career” and “y el novio pa’ cuándo,” we learn that who we date, or whether we date at all, says something about our worth.

So when the internet jokes about being “chronically single” or “embarrassed to have a man,” it’s easy to laugh along. But underneath the humor, there’s a real tension. Latinas are expected to embody strength, to be caretakers, go-getters, the ones who always have it together. Admitting that we want softness, partnership, or even romance can feel like breaking character.

For me, and for so many of my friends, it’s not that having a boyfriend is embarrassing. It’s that being seen having one feels like losing control of our own narrative. We’ve spent years building identities rooted in self-sufficiency and achievement. To say “I’m in love” feels vulnerable in a world that tells us vulnerability makes us weak.

The “strong Latina” archetype leaves little room for emotional complexity. We’re praised for surviving, not for being soft. But that armor, built from generations of resilience, can also become a trap. Online, that same energy gets repackaged into the “hot girl single” aesthetic: hyper-independent, unbothered, always choosing herself. It’s empowering, yes, but it can also feel like another kind of performance.

What if you want to choose yourself and choose someone else? What if you like being loved out loud?

In Latine spaces, humor often serves as a bridge between what we feel and what we can say. We joke about red flags, about “men not being worth it,” about keeping relationships off social media. It’s part cultural protection mechanism, part survival strategy. Because love, for us, has always been public and private at once, something we celebrate in our families but protect from scrutiny outside them. There’s always that whisper of mal de ojo, or the fear that showing your joy too openly might make it disappear.

But here’s the thing: wanting love doesn’t make us any less independent. Being in a relationship doesn’t erase our ambition. It doesn’t undo the generations of women who worked, raised families, and fought to give us choices. If anything, it’s one more choice we get to make on our own terms.

Embracing love, ambition, and softness all at once is how we break those generational curses: the ones that taught us we could be everything except whole because being a whole woman means being capable of both tenderness and drive, of loving deeply without losing yourself.

So maybe it’s not embarrassing to have a boyfriend. Maybe what’s actually embarrassing is how afraid we still are to want things that make us feel human.

Because for Latinas who have spent decades unlearning shame, rewriting narratives, and reclaiming softness, love isn’t a step backward. It’s a reclamation.