Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? Dissecting The Essay That Set The Internet Ablaze
The Polyester Podcast
The Polyester Podcast
4.5 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 10 November 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The internet, left and right leaning, has been set ablaze by a ragebait headline and a deep dive into our dating practices or rather, our online posting of our burgeoning and established relationships. The British Vogue article, titled 'Is It Embarrassing To Have A Boyfriend' feels like harkening back to an earlier time on the internet, when one op-ed could get everyone talking about one topic and in this week's episode, hosts Ione and Gina take their lens to the comms on courtship.
Do we want our favourite influencers to remain perpetually single? Are we once bitten, twice shy about men after the scary stories we hear about dating online? And is any of this influenced by the rise of nuclear family and trad wife rhetoric shared repeatedly by the alt right?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi Gina. Hi, Ioni. Hi everyone. I'm Gina, the senior editor-in-chief of Pollyester. And I'm Iioni, the founding editor-in-chief of Pollyester, and this is The Polyester Podcast, a feminist pop culture podcast, dissecting the discourse on a weekly basis. Please make sure to like, rate, subscribe and review. And if you haven't yet, make sure to subscribe to our membership platform for exclusive podcast-sended perks. |
| 0:22.6 | We're offering exclusive video episodes, secret mini-episodes, and even episodes centered on what you |
| 0:28.4 | want us to talk about across different tier options. Go check it out at the link in our description. |
| 0:32.9 | Do we have any reviews I all need? We do. This is from GMF-2455 in the US of A. Review from performative |
| 0:41.6 | gay male. I don't know if a review is the space for a comment on an episode, but as a middle-aged |
| 0:45.7 | gay man who has always done this performative stuff, I have 18 iPod shuffles and just |
| 0:50.5 | developed disposable cameras yesterday. All my quirks do nothing for me in the normative gay community I live in, but get me not laid. |
| 0:57.3 | I'm conventionally handsome, but in the dating scene here, I'd be better off mute. |
| 1:01.0 | I think the performative male just comes from norm core uncreative people who can't conceive |
| 1:04.9 | of the idea people would do anything off-kilter or to revive artistic artefacts for anything but performance when I do it to |
| 1:13.4 | make art. Anyway, another five out of five episode and five out of five review from a gay cell |
| 1:18.1 | forced into it because I'm a performative freak of nature and constantly rejected for being my |
| 1:22.3 | quirky, don't get how any of this benefits anyone in the dating pool outside of New York City, |
| 1:26.4 | Loll. Tell him. |
| 1:27.9 | Tell him. |
| 1:28.5 | Thank you. |
| 1:45.9 | Bless, God bless your heart. I know. Come here. Everyone will struggle. Yeah. And then in Spotify about... Well, I was like, no one in our office. But we do have two. Go boys. We do. We do. Marie on Spotify says, |
| 1:48.1 | yes, I was hoping you'd do an episode about her album, |
| 1:49.5 | about Lily Allen's album. |
| 1:52.4 | And then Mofailda underscore Glez says, |
| 1:53.6 | Hi, I like the episode, |
| 1:55.8 | the only thing I'd say is that there are artists that make music and sell the episode |
... |
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