How 2024 became the year of the trophy boyfriend

In a viral post on X in March, Travis Kelce and Barry Keoghan were dubbed the “first ladies” of Taylor Swift’s Eras world tour.

The then respective boyfriends of Swift and Sabrina Carpenter posed together for a photo in chummy unison at a concert (not that of their girlfriends’). Unsurprisingly, seeing two men, who are both highly successful and famous in their own right, delighted in the success of their top-tier girlfriends propelled the internet into a flurry.

2024 was the year of the “trophy boyfriend” thanks to (from left) Barry Keoghan, Travis Kelce and Adam Hyde.Credit: Artwork: Monique Westermann

Three months later, Keoghan starred in Carpenter’s Please Please Please music video, where the couple played a pair of loved-up bandits a la Bonnie and Clyde. Again, the internet went mad for it, just as it did when Keoghan presented Carpenter with a 25th birthday cake modelled on a viral Leonardo DiCaprio meme about the American actor’s penchant for dating much younger women. In December, Carpenter and Keoghan announced they had split.

In June, Kelce appeared onstage at Swift’s Eras show in London, grinning ear-to-ear while wearing a tuxedo and top hat, and performing with a handful of back-up dancers. His surprise performance sent fans into a wild delirium.

Around the same time, Abbie Chatfield, the host of FBoy Island and It’s A Lot podcast, “hard launched” her relationship with musician Adam Hyde, one half of hit electronic act Peking Duk. Before long, he joined Chatfield in the podcast studio, where the two discussed their relationship at length in a two-part episode.

Hyde quickly became – and remains – a regular drawcard on his partner’s social media feed. Chatfield, meanwhile, appeared in a music video for his latest single, playing the role of his love interest. In another post, he was celebrated for paying for his girlfriend’s contraceptive device.

The trophy boyfriend phenomenon has taken social media by storm. A distinctly modified version of the “power couple” (think Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, Beyonce and Jay-Z, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen), the trophy boyfriend became 2024’s collective social media obsession.

A decade ago, you could expect to read interviews with these women about the pressure their stratospheric success, fame and wealth puts on their romantic lives, and why men might find it emasculating or difficult to be with them.

Yet in the dusk of box office phenomenon Barbie, in which Ryan Gosling played a doting, guileless Ken, it appears relationships that follow a similar formula are officially on-trend. Ken took the world by storm as Barbie’s loveable, dupable sidekick.

Now, perhaps for the first time in history, women have the social and career clout to do as men have long done before: make accessories of their lovers. They can afford to render them marketable arm-candy. Meanwhile, these boyfriends, many of whom have excelled in their own arenas, are hurled into a new kind of fame, largely by virtue of who they share a bed with.

On various occasions, Hyde has referred to himself as “Abbie Chatfield’s boyfriend” despite his own renown.

And when Kelce, a celebrated American footballer for the Kansas City Chiefs, makes the news, it is now mostly in relation to Swift. Will Travis spend Thanksgiving with Taylor? Will he attend her Toronto show? Are they buying property together?

Keoghan, lauded as one of the most promising actors of his generation, has starred in award-winnings films including The Banshees of Inisherin, Saltburn and Dunkirk. Yet by featuring in Carpenter’s music video, he implicitly told the world that his then-girlfriend’s pop career was as valid an artistic endeavour as any he pursues.

Unfortunately, there is still a novelty element to seeing men cheering on their triumphant girlfriends. Perhaps the public kudos they receive simply for being good partners is over the top. But it’s a welcome change from the enduring narrative in which successful women are still cast as the decoration of a successful man.

The obvious question is: What happens if these relationships end? In the 2000s, when Jennifer Aniston split from Brad Pitt, she was rendered a heartbroken wreck desperate for children. But as Carpenter has wasted no time showing, in 2024, life goes on (in her case, with a Christmas Netflix special with a reported seven-figure payday). And if Swift called time on her relationship with Kelce, she would enjoy wild success with the inevitable break-up album.

As director Greta Gerwig noted in 2023, there can be no Ken without Barbie, but there is a Barbie without Ken.

Madison Griffiths is a freelance writer and author of Tissue.

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