When You Call Your Boyfriend Your Partner in Crime, You’re Disenfranchising Real Criminals Who Do Crimes in Pairs.
A quick search of the #partnerincrime hashtag on Instagram recently yielded some startling results. Thousands of pictures: couples at concerts, couples in dual Halloween costumes, couples making funny faces in selfies, couples kissing in a sunset…you name it. Everything except, you know, couples actually doing crime together. Ummm, fucked up much? Using social media as a platform to gush about how great your guy is is one thing. Using it to appropriate the identity of real criminals who do crimes in pairs? That’s a different story. When you call your boyfriend your partner in crime, here are some of the infamous duos you’re disenfranchising, hardened criminals who have risked their lives in pursuit of evil and corruption.
Bonnie and Clyde. Obviously the most iconic crime duo, Bonnie and Clyde were robbing banks all over Texas before your grandparents were even born. They literally killed nine police officers and more civilians in violent shootouts from Louisiana to Minnesota. How many police officers have you killed? I’m guessing one at most. When you call Travis your partner in crime, you’re co-opting an identity that legendary criminals like Bonnie and Clyde worked for years to cultivate, all for your own personal gain and some likes on Instagram.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh, AKA Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, respectively, are icons of the Wild West mythos in modern times. I’m not saying Spencer isn’t a great guy, I’m just saying you two aren’t outlaws on the run from law enforcement after a string of train robberies in the Old West, and I think you should reconsider the language you’re using before you really offend someone.
The Menendez Brothers. The Menendez brothers are both still alive, and if your post about your two year anniversary with Chase got back to them, I’m not sure you realize how upsetting it could be. Just because they’re murderers convicted of killing their own parents for financial gain doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings, and those feelings could be hurt by careless tossing around of the term “partners in crime” by those who don’t even know the first thing about what it means to do crimes in a pair.
Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. When you use a picture of your and Brendan’s Gulf Shores vacation as a platform to boast about how he’s your partner in crime, you’re displaying alarming ignorance of what Walter White and Jesse Pinkman went through on their way to building a literal drug empire. When you hear it repeated back to you like that, do you see how offensive it is?
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. If calling your significant other your partner in crime on an Instagram post made it true, do you think the Rosenbergs would have dedicated years to transmitting nuclear weapon designs to the Soviet Union? When you call Spencer your partner in crime just because you ran a 5k together, it’s like you’re picking and choosing which aspects of crime life you subscribe to and tossing out the ones that aren’t so glamorous, like, you know, getting convicted of espionage and sentenced to death. Also, and I hope this goes without saying, unless you’re sitting in his and hers electric chairs about to be executed together, don’t even think about calling him your “ride-or-die.”
The dog catchers from 101 Dalmations. Look at these fuckers. One is fat and one is skinny. It’s hilarious. Unless one of you is comically short and fat and the other is comically tall and skinny, please don’t use Garrett’s birthday as an excuse to liken yourselves to the real criminals out there who follow draconian diet and exercise regimens to ensure the aesthetic of their crime duo remains comedically-satisfying.
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. When you post an engagement picture of you and Derek and write that you’re “so excited to marry your best friend and partner in crime,” you’re appropriating the experience of sexually assaulting and murdering five children between the ages of 10 and 17 and burying them in shallow graves in the English countryside during the mid-1960s. Words matter. They’re how we share information and tell stories that shape our reality, so when you use words irresponsibly, you’re contributing to a culture wherein criminal couples are getting pushed out of their own space in the game of identity politics, and their voices are being drowned out by those wrongfully adopting the “partner in crime” identity as their own.
It’s awesome to be excited about how great your boyfriend is, but if you can’t build him up without tearing real criminals down and making a mockery of their life’s work, I suggest taking a long hard look in the mirror. When posting a picture, ask yourself if you and Mason are in a high speed car chase, or a shootout with Bolivian police, or luring young girls into a van under the guise of helping you look for a lost glove. If not, maybe revise that caption out of respect for true “partners in crime.”
