Let’s Talk about the “Hot Rodent Boyfriend” Phenomenon

At this point, it seems like the Internet will go through every classification in the animal kingdom for its dating metaphors. This summer, the spotlight is on romantic vermin.

Yes, you read that right.

Women are now looking for a lover with an angular face, scrawny physique, and beady eyes with dark circles that can mean either he’s hiding a troubled past or he hasn’t slept in three days (or both). They’re calling him the “Hot Rodent Boyfriend.”

Make my job as a dating and relationship consultant even more difficult, why don’t you?

On “Rat Boy Summer” and Beauty Standards for Men

This season of “unconventionally” attractive men is often credited to Luca Guadagnino’s new movie Challengers as well as Sabrina Carpenter’s music video for her single “Please Please Please” where she starred with her equally new boyfriend, actor Barry Keoghan.

Keoghan and the two male leads of Challengers, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor, all seem to fit the bill for the Hot Rodent Boyfriend. This is because their physical features are said to resemble popular animated characters like Stuart Little and Roddy from Flushed Away. You know, the animated rodent characters.

In all fairness, this kind of beauty standard with ridiculous origins isn’t new or exclusive to men. Even women struggle with it and have been subject to trends that spawn unrealistic dating expectations.

But men in particular are the favorite when it comes to comparisons with animals (remember the Golden Retriever Boyfriend fever?), and the Rat Boy Summer is shaping up to be a similar phenomenon.

Some say this is an improvement. That women’s current preference for men who look like fictional rats is a step away from previous beauty standards that encouraged men to go to the gym or dye their hair to emulate pop idols from South Korea.

A Hot Rodent Boyfriend is a lot closer to your Average Joe. Sure, the features are still distinctive, but they’re not impossible standards. You can go out to do a quick errand and pass by a handful of these guys.

But does this really indicate a cultural shift where men who don’t necessarily look like Hollywood superstars can now have better chances with women?

Or is this just another intense but fleeting craze that will soon be forgotten as soon as the next online trend sweeps the globe?

What This Means for Modern Relationships

Personally, I’ve always seen the practice of comparing people to animals as a double-edged sword.

I’m sure there are men out there who would balk at the idea of being likened to an animal many of us associate with dirty kitchens and dark, stinky alleys. A woman may see a man as Hot Rodent Boyfriend material and therefore desirable, but there’s still a huge chance he will think that’s not a compliment, thank you very much.

Any beauty standard that starts from Hollywood or fictional media will always, in some ways, have unrealistic qualities. They will hardly apply to everyday people, which makes them not ideal to use as a basis for dating preferences.

While it’s nice that modern women are diversifying the characteristics that they find attractive in a man, I still think there are better traits to focus on, like how committed he is to a relationship and whether or not he’s the kind of gentleman we can introduce to our parents.

If a Hot Rodent Boyfriend is really your type, then be my guest. But it also doesn’t hurt to make sure the resemblance is only in appearance and not in personality.