You’ve probably already dated a rat, but have you ever dated a handsome rat?
The new dating meme, inspired by “The Challengers,” was hilariously dissected on the “Today” show by Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb, who jumped on the relationship trend like mice jumping on a bite of Gruyere cheese.
The silliness started when the internet suggested that the tennis movie’s two leading actors, Josh O’Connor and Mike Feist, resembled pop culture rats – specifically Stuart Little (in Feist’s case) and Roderick “Rhodey” St. James from “Flushed Away” (noticeable for the big ears) (in O’Connor’s case).
“A hot rat boyfriend. Or a sexy rat man. They’re the same thing,” Hager said in a YouTube clip shared on “Today with Hoda and Jenna,” less than a year after the couple declared 2023 Rat Girl Summer. “If someone comes up to you and says, ‘Hey, sexy rat man,’ they’re calling you a hot rat boyfriend.”
They represent “the opposite of toxic masculinity,” Hager said. “They profess to love their partners, but they do so in a weird, slightly sexy way,” Kotb added.
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“I mean, you’d want to date Stuart Little,” Hager says. “Stuart Little is actually pretty attractive, right?”
According to Dazed, which appears to have coined the term, comparing men to rats is a newer version of comparing men to golden retrievers. “Rat-handsome men are usually leaner than muscular, with curvier, more angular features,” the outlet reports. “They’re often not generally handsome, which just makes them more attractive.”
If you’re thinking Tom Holland, Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Allen White and Tom Hiddleston, you’re right.
“Rat men are the type who buy their girlfriends ridiculously large bouquets of flowers,” Dazed writes. “They unashamedly adore their wives and post pictures of their partners’ looks at the Met Gala.” (We’re looking at you, White and Holland.)
