The Chaging Face Of Desirability
In case you missed Hulu’s Brats, the story of how a reporter once summarized a group of movie talent in their prime as a “brat pack”, this week we are living through a similar media moment. A New York Times article has branded a group of men in Entertainment as "rodent men." Simply put, this refers to "an unconventional mousy man with a toothy smile, and instead of a chiseled face like Brad Pitt or Chris Hemsworth, it’s more pointy...they come off as edgy and elusive." Jeremy Allen White, Barry Keoghan, and even Travis Barker made the list.
For Millennials, the beta male comedy characters of the Judd Apatow era summarized culture’s relationship with masculinity during their time. Following this year’s release of Challengers, the film’s central male characters had been memed online by audiences for being “mousy.” The conversation evolved this past week in the wake of the NY Times piece, and now users online have been connecting the dots between leading men broadly across Music, Movies and Series as being similarly "unconventionally attractive". "These guys embrace their unconventional looks, and break away from the more overtly muscular, macho sex appeal that has become expected from our male celebrities", says Men's Health.
As a headline that is crafted for click bait and as such sort of offensive, “rodent men” is not unlike when the “brat pack” was branded. Underneath the internet fodder today however, is a clear admiration and acceptance of the changing face of masculine desire in culture. As Vogue puts it, "they possess a Disney softness, a mischievous and enchanted charm".
From TikTok to major news outlets, headlines like “Hot Rat Summer”, “Rat Boy Summer” or “The Year of the (Hot) Rat”, are in themselves a reflection of a tension surrounding the masculine image in Entertainment. Do these titles not sound like they came from the Kelce brothers of your high school? In a year where a much more traditional image of aspirational male symbolized by Travis Kelce has led the conversation, this rodent men moment is "steering away from the hyper-masculine stereotypes historically idealized in pop culture", as another writer put it.