Is Boysober a new feminist movement or yet another self-improvement trend?

In my TikTok scrolling (aka research) this week I came across a video where a twenty-something woman was talking about her journey towards becoming boysober.

Although I hadn’t heard the term before it peaked by curiosity since I’ve been on a similar journey over past few months. Boysober, what is that you might wonder? It was coined, in its current form, by Hope Woodard, an American comedian. Woodward made a TikTok in January talking about how she was swearing off everything romantic in 2024 and she now has a playlist of 18 videos outlining what it means to be boysober. I spent a good chunk of time watching all the videos so that you won’t have to and, I have to say, it’s pretty much celibacy. Although I really like, and buy, Woodard’s argument to distance oneself from the word celibate as it has too many religious connotations and is very male-centred. Sometimes you need a new word for something to make it your own.

Instead, boysober is about figuring out how to interact with sex, love, and relationships in a healthy way through detoxing old behaviours. The rules as Woodard lays them out are, no dates, no dating apps, no exes, no situationships, and no sex. She talks about how she doesn’t know who she is without romance, without having someone to distract her from herself and her own issues. Ultimately, her goal with being boysober is to get over her addiction to romance. I honestly think this is something that many people can relate to. When you’re not happy in your own life it’s easy to throw yourself into the rollercoaster that is romance.

Woodard’s trending videos on TikTok made their way out into mainstream media and have sparked a discussion on how healthy our modern dating culture is, comparing the relationship young women have to dating men with alcoholism. Many commentaries also draw connections to the tendency of twenty-somethings today to withdraw from different habits. For example, young people are drinking less and having less sex.

My concern is the fact that the practice of going boy sober has the potential to fall into the toxic world of self-betterment. While I can see that Woodard visualise it as a strategy to take back your power and focus on yourself, she also stresses that if this is something you want to do, you have to make sure you’re not expecting something. This is where I get a bit stuck, ridding yourself of expectations in relation to dating is SO hard when women often are sold the idea that the end goal of life is to find a partner. And strategies of focusing on the self often becomes another gateway to eventually meeting someone. For example, one TikTok video mentioned the idea that it’s when you stop looking and focus on yourself that you meet someone. How many times haven’t we heard that? Or that you cannot actively chose someone when you’re waiting to be chosen. Although the latter one at least involves a degree of agency, it again re-emphasises the idea that the end goal is to partner up.

I feel an aversion to the idea that women should spend their single years preparing to be the best version of themselves with the expectation that it’ll make them more suited to be someone’s future partner. Now I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with wanting to be partnered up or wanting love in your life. But this idea that you’re not whole until you meet someone has unproportionally fallen on women. I see it in the way my male friends approach dating. Their instinct is to check in with themselves, seeing if they are interested in the person they’re seeing. My female friends (and myself) often get stuck in conversations of ‘is he interested in me’, loosing sight of ourselves in the process. It’s hard when the society imprints in women that it’s crucial to be wanted to the extent that we become so caught up with being wanted that we forget what we want ourselves.

So is boy sober a new feminist movement or yet another self-improvement trend? Honestly, I would say a little bit of both. I think it’s really great to start having the conversation about how you approach dating. And while this may be the core idea of the boysober movement I think a lot of girls and young women will be drawn to it as a strategy for eventually meeting ‘the one’.

Ultimately, I think we need to ask ourselves, why we allow the continual existence of a society that make us need to do things like going boysober in the first place? Where women are socialised to place our attention and energy on a potential significant other to the extent that we need to cut out dating altogether to claim our power and attention back.