Josh O'Connor, a tennis-playing Rat Boy, in Challengers.
First came Hot Girl Summer, after the US rapper Meg Thee Stallion released a song in 2019 that quickly became an anthem for carefree female sexuality. Then, inevitably, followed White Boy Summer, released by Tom Hanks’s errant son Chet in 2021, which spoke to internet edge lords. Since then, we’ve had Short King Spring, Adam Sandler Summer (dressing exclusively in shorts and baggy T-shirts) and, in its final and most bizarre form yet, Rat Boy Summer.
The “rat boys” in this case can only be described as Hollywood’s scamps — Barry Keoghan, Timothée Chalamet, Josh O’Connor, Jeremy Allen White. The “rodent boyfriend” is a left-field choice of partner for the “hot girl” but has a certain something that mainstream beefcakes could never provide — an angular broodiness, a wiry weirdness.
Of course, we must remember that the trend is, at its heart, a joke. This is the phrase that has launched a thousand thinkpieces in the past two weeks; it would be a mistake to earnestly use it as a litmus test for “Gen-Z sexuality” or what not. But what it does provide is a fascinating framework to see how male bodies move within the romantic world. Are men tired of being categorised — or liberated by an alternative to rippling abs and broad shoulders?
Although it’s tempting to frame Rat Boy Summer as a baseless media invention, the concept does speak to many of my peers. One tells me she would “date Roddy the Rat” from Flushed Away if she could. “I exclusively like rat boys because they’re flawed and cheeky,” she says. “Most rat boys have a little sparkle in their eye. Alex Turner [the Arctic Monkeys frontman] is the original hot rat boy, and I won’t hear otherwise.” Throwing in another layer of complexity, however, she adds: “I’m disturbed however that no one is distinguishing between rat boys and bird boys. Jeremy Allen-White is definitely a bird. It’s a vibe thing.” Another friend says she prefers “more feminine” men; “I mean, they aren’t actually more feminine,” she qualifies. “But something tricks my brain into thinking they are.”
One committed rugby WAG isn’t convinced. She has just two words for me: “Thumbs only.” Another shares her sentiments: “I like to feel protected. I think for me I feel weakness when a man isn’t physically strong and doesn’t have much muscle definition. And I don’t like weakness in anyone I meet because I’m mentally strong, so I can’t relate to it.” She laughs, telling me she found her latest conquest at Soho House: “That cesspool is full of rodents but he’s a good guy, actually.”
This could all be easily dismissed as just another Gen-Z in-joke blown up by the desperate media. But desire matters — and holds a mirror up to the times.
There is a clear class element to physical preferences within heterosexuality: the ripped, tanned, Daz-white-toothed Love Islander and the lanky, princely rogues of Made in Chelsea are only the start of it. On Hinge, these two tribes are sure to pack out their profiles with class signifiers. One wears the Stüssy t-shirt, bumbag slung over the chest like a bandolier, Gucci belt glinting in the disco lights of a regional Pryzm. The other sports a Schoffel gilet (logo visible), skiing gear (cheery pint on a mountain) and, if you’re really lucky, an exotic holiday photo (Kenya or Sri Lanka) involving girls in floaty linen trousers. Body type, in this context, becomes another of these signifiers, with stocky muscularity and wispy ease tied in the cultural subconscious to ancient ideas of labour and leisure.
While Rat Boy Summer is just the latest incarnation of this, one distinctive feature is its feminisation: Rat Boy Summer shows how male attractiveness is, for the first time, framed exclusively in ways (however weird or tongue-in-cheek) that relate to the female gaze. No straight men are describing each other as “boys”, least of all “hot rodent boys”: the giggly absurdity of the sleepover, the giddy solidarity of the club toilet, has crept into public lexicon. The primarily male-male signifiers of being sexually competitive have for now at least been shoved to the back of the cupboard (“alpha” behaviour, aggression, being a hustler) and have been displaced by camp fantasies which cast a sly glance at masculinity and make, for a brief summer at least, light of it all.
Think of the endless “types” women have forever been categorised into. “Girl next door”, “femme fatale” and “career woman” have done much for the way women perceive themselves (I cannot put on a cardigan or anything remotely “girl next door” without instantly subsuming the traits of Bridget Jones). “Jock” and “nerd” would be the only comparable stereotypes for men, but they are specifically American and not specifically about sex. Rat Boy Summer signals that men can now be dragged into such categories, as certain corners of online culture (TikTok in particular) are increasingly dominated by the dating stories of young women. This is not to assign it the power of a liberating force — that would be ridiculous — but suggests, if anything, that the power of the internet is inescapable for everyone, touching something as historically impenetrable as the male gaze.
Rat Boy Summer is also part of a wider project of making sense of the chaos of personality. The timing is important here: female tastes seem to be privileging unthreatening, low-testosterone men at a time when harmony between the sexes has hit a real low. While some women still certainly prefer hunks, it may be that less manly types — or “ectomorphs” — are associated with virtuous “feminine” qualities such as sensitivity and openness (this is, needless to say, a false equivalence). I myself have always found the “protective” vibe of hench lads instinctively offputting. There’s something about the performative alpha-ing, the “don’t worry babe, I’ll square up to him on the dancefloor”. A twinkle in the eye is infinitely more appealing than manly aggression. Of course, equating slender wrists and pretty faces with “being nice to women” is, as I have learned, a mistake.
So, what do men themselves think? In 2021, Bony to Beastly, a bodybuilding website, conducted a survey of 423 straight women, showing them four male “body types” — ranging from, you guessed it, bony to very beastly indeed. Despite the website’s entire MO being the virtues of being really muscly, the most attractive type, according to the survey, was “athletic” — a tennis player-type build and the second skinniest, with no evidence of ‘roids or obsessive chicken breast consumption. Some 51% of women chose this, with 43% going for “strong”, a moderately muscly man.
The survey then goes on to poll respondents on particulars — preferences over leanness, neck size, “v-taper physiques”, whatever that means. The conclusion? “They [women] prefer men who are in much better shape than average but not as lean and strong as most men wish to be. Certainly not as muscular as most bodybuilders. Think of the bodies of soccer players, rugby players, and mixed martial artists.”
The comments under the article show us, albeit from a strange and small corner of the internet, how some men talk about their bodies with one another. “I wish this study could have ended with the participants getting scolded for their ableism and bigotry,” sniffs one. “A weird question: how big are those butts?” ask another, who goes on to enquire about specific measurements for the ideal behind. A third reads: “Skinny guys with fat wallets win in the end.” One can only imagine a bloke writing this in between gulps of Huel, forcing a smirk as a single tear rolls down his Gigachad cheek.
The frenzied defensiveness of these remarks tells us something: that many men, in an increasingly isolating world, are joining women in seeing bodies and conventional attractiveness as barriers to social fulfilment, even love. Of this, the greatest evidence is incel culture and “looksmaxxing”. Rat Boy Summer may be an ultimately empty TikTok invention, and the media’s recent obsession with it symptomatic of an unease about masculinity. But perhaps it can at least be a comfort to these men stalking the forums of bodybuilding websites, anxiously moulding their bodies to imagined female ideals. For it shows, if anything at all, the full range of human fanciability. Every dog has its day, and every rat its summer.
