Hot Rodent Men / Boyfriend

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About

Hot Rodent Men or Hot Rodent Boyfriend is a slang term for an attractive male who resembles a rodent with rat or mouse-like features, often defined as an unconventionally attractive, slender man with angular features who embodies the opposite traits associated with toxic masculinity. The term was popularized in May 2024 by the media publication Dazed Digital, inspiring discussions, reactions and memes online. The slang term is similar to precursors like "sickly skinny white men."

Origin

On May 15th, 2024, Dazed Digital^[1] published an article titled "All anyone wants is a hot rodent boyfriend." In the article, they discuss an observed interest that some people seem to have in "rodent-like men," using examples of viral X^[2]^[3] posts by users @fincherslay and @peacchip in which they compare Josh O’ Connor and Mike Faist from Challengers to hot versions of Stewart Little and Roddy from Flushed Away. In the article, Dazed describes hot rodent men as:

Rodent handsome men are usually more svelte than muscular, with more pinched, angular features. They’re often not conventionally handsome, but this only makes them more hot.

Spread

The term gained viral spread over the following weeks. On May 23rd, 2024, the @hodaandjenna TikTok^[4] account posted a clip from the show TODAY with Hoda & Jenna in which they discuss the idea of hot rodent men, garnering over 920,000 views in two weeks (shown below). On June 2nd, the Daily Mail^[5] posted an article on the term.

On June 3rd, a screenshot of the Daily Mail article's thumbnail and title, which reads, "How hot rodent men became Hollywood's sexiest heartthrobs," was posted to the subreddit /r/BrandNewSentence,^[6] garnering over 1,200 upvotes in two days. On the same day, X^[7] user @ZEFFIR3LLI posted a screenshot of an article with several examples of "hot rodent men," writing, "?????," garnering over 130,000 likes in two days (shown below, left).

On June 4th, 2024, X^[8] user @itsjacksonbbz quote-reposted a similar post, writing, "White transmasc valour being stolen everywhere you look," garnering over 5,300 likes in a day (shown below, right). On the same day, Instagram^[9] user and YouTuber justinwhangyt posted a screenshot of several media companies reporting on the term, garnering over 8,000 likes in a day.