UNLESS you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the ‘hot rodent man’ trend. TikTokers are talking about it, newspaper columnists are writing about it and women are going crazy for men who are the opposite of what we would consider conventionally handsome. The term refers to a host of lusted-after celebrity men who resemble rodents with their rat-like features such as little pointy faces, beady eyes, and sticky-out ears.
These men are not tall in stature and are slightly on the skinny side. They’re the sort of guys women wouldn’t necessarily expect to be aroused by and the total antidote to Barbie’s Ken. But these hot rodent men — yes Kieran Culkin , Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, Jeremy Allen White, Timothee Chalamet , Adam Driver, Barry Keoghan and Matt Healy , I’m looking at you — are having their moment in the sun and I have to say I’m not surprised.
This tendency for women to go for slightly unconventional men has always been there. There have always been men who have so much charisma, confidence and talent that they prove to be irresistible, even if they’re not typically good-looking. Anyone who Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate will know what I mean.
He was hardly a hunk — he didn’t look as if he was going to seize you, take you into his cave and have his wicked way with you. But he was really sexy and women went mad for him. So this trend isn’t new, it’s just been rebranded.
As one TikToker said last week, “It’s hot ro.