In May, when The Hollywood Reporter published its debatable “new A-list” of stars for 2024, a web word used to describe the appeal of a singular organization of male celebrities has become a moot topic in itself. The term “Hot Rodent Man”.
Memes from the 2007 Pixar animated film, Ratatouille, have been put forward through online commentators to suggest that there is an organization of new male celebrities considered Hollywood’s newest sex symbols despite (or because of?) its “rodent-likeness. ” features. They come with Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, the stars of the three-way tennis drama Challengers, Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan, Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) and Glen Powell (Hit Man). Other examples of the “hot rodent” The aesthetic would come with Tom Holland, Adam Driver, 1975 singer Matty Healy and Timothée Chalamet. Angular features, a wider nose and unkempt hair were the trend’s usual physical characteristics. In June, the New York Times (among others) asked Who is a “Rodent Man”? The verbal exchange had reached its climax.
“Hot Rodent” joins the ever-regenerating list of male celebrity labels that includes the “Golden Retriever boyfriend,” described to describe an affectionate and excitable guy (see Taylor Swift’s spouse, Travis Kelce). The name “Short King” has been for the longest, embodied by Daniel Radcliffe, The Weekend, Jeremy Allen White (again), Tom Holland and Cillian Murphy, whose looks and air of mystery are celebrated throughout his small stature. “Little kings” are said to have self-confidence. and content with their height, an implicit popularity that Western society considers shorter men to be a little less masculine than their taller counterparts.
Beyond their inherent stupidity in the Internet trend, there has inevitably been a backlash against the belief in the objectification of those labels. These tags are created through the same generation that uses the hashtag #prettyprivilege, a popularity in which good looks are perceived as a thing of advancement in society. The “hot rodent man” has been derided by some as a particularly unflattering nickname for its recipients. Whether offensive or not, it’s evident that when it comes to deciding what’s sexy, it’s the web that Hollywood. who leads the conversation.
Earlier this summer, memes from Pixar’s 2007 animated film Ratatouille seemed to illustrate the “hot rodent men” trend (Credit: Pixar)
According to anthropologist Roberta Katz of Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, “it used to be that studio executives were the ones who made the videos and were horny enough to appear in a movie. The fame associated with those movies was has become a way to influence a huge number of people, who would eliminate this perception of excitement.
The actors themselves feel the lifestyle of a Hollywood folk of traditional male appeal. Speaking of his transition to sex symbol through his role as a killer sociopath in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, Barry Keoghan told GQ magazine that “my beauty didn’t get me that far. “He added, “It’s great not to be noticed as just a weird guy, a weird, weird, weird little kid. “
However, this is arguably just a small burden compared to the physical objectification that female stars have endured in the media. The French expression jolie-laide (“ugly enough”) has been used for over a century, intended (although not exclusively) for women who consider themselves slutty despite their abnormal features. Since the late 1990s, celebrity media sites have focused on the bodies of prominent women, listing the horniest female celebrities and examining their physical condition, especially after giving birth. Men’s bodies are increasingly appearing on such sites, but so far there are no comparable web lists of women grouped by their physical attributes based on “hot rodents” or “little kings” – a tacit acknowledgment perhaps that the message about the objectification of women (at least overtly) is sinking in on him.
With his role as the killer sociopath in Saltburn, Barry Keoghan has an unconventional sex symbol (Credit: Amazon MGM Studios)
Traditionally, actresses have also suffered disproportionately from arbitrary criteria of good looks than men in Hollywood, especially in the context of being allowed to play a romantic lead role, according to Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, a documentary filmmaker and professor at UCLA. The history of cinema has been based on a narrow attitude about who can be attractive, who can be sexy, who can be a romantic partner, especially when it comes to women,” he told the BBC.
“Traditionally there was a certain type of strong actress, like Bette Davis, who had gained some notoriety, but more as an actress of character or archetype, and less as a romantic lead. Romantic lead roles for women were usually blonder and with smaller features. And I would say this has been profoundly replaced. Women will have to be slim, young The higher the box office success, the narrower the range.
So is the “attractive rodent” or the “little king” just a continuation of male privilege in Hollywood, where men have had more opportunities than their female counterparts to get noticed as attractive?Male studio heads would have arguably cast Cary Grant or James Stewart as romantic leads, but that didn’t stop the less conventionally handsome Humphrey Bogart or Bing Crosby from standing out as well. In the 1970s, Robert Redford, blond with blue eyes, and Dustin Hoffman, of short stature, were considered, in the parlance of the time, “pin-ups”.
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“Men have had it less difficult because the ideals of masculinity in Hollywood have been much freer,” says Professor Viren Swami, a social psychologist at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and an expert on charm and image framing. “You may be successful at work, in power sports, or in monetary terms. None of them had anything to do with appearance. Rather, focusing on your appearance was socialized to mean that you were a woman and for a long time, a boy”. They didn’t have to focus on their appearance the same way women did.
The physical objectification of men, Swami says, began in earnest in the 1980s and 1990s: the era of Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator, and Sylvester Stallone in Rambo. “For the first time, men were socialized into thinking that if you have to be masculine, you also have to be muscular and at the same time lean,” he says. “I use the example of James Bond in my teaching. With all due respect to Sean Connery. . . he was toned but not muscular as one would expect today. Daniel Craig, on the other hand, spent a lot of time in the gym to make up James Bond of the cooler way.
Jeremy Allen White is one of the male celebrities cited as personifying the (Credit: Getty Images)
This emphasis on fine musculature, combined with the publicity of the time that basically provided a Caucasian ideal, may be why names like Brad Pitt, Chris Hemsworth, Hugh Jackman or Ryan Gosling have been held up as the pinnacles of good looks for the past 25 years. It can also help address, in addition to long-standing media biases, why there have been so few black and Asian male sex symbols in Hollywood, a trend that continues, adding to those new web terms, and in the 2024 Hollywood Reporter. A list report, where Zendaya was the only actor of color included.
“Until the 1960s, for example, the number of other people of color who appeared in Hollywood videos was minuscule and did not reflect the population as a whole,” says Swami. “In advertising until the 1980s, the representation of other people of color was nothing, if you look at the world’s population. And there is some evidence to suggest that even when local media, for example in Asia, described what was ‘ideal,’ they described what was ideal for a Western consumer, as they opened their doors to the West. “
While the categorization of those new male sex symbols of the 2020s doesn’t yet seem to have lived up to the decade’s emphasis on diversity, what is different is the emphasis on the “friendliness” of their personalities. The rise of actor Timothée Chalamet as an icon of Generation Z. It shows how this generation’s values influence their potential choices about what they find attractive. Chalamet, 28, might have a classically attractive face (also, apparently, that of a “rodent”), but he is well known for his commitment to the “good boy” symbol, dressed in sustainable and moral garments in red. The carpet and the design of a garment whose profits were donated to a charity that preserves women’s rights in Afghanistan. Other male actors, such as Josh O’Connor, have a reputation for being friendly and flamboyant in interviews, whose videos can be viewed online and move in seconds.
“There used to be an archetype of male attractiveness very narrowly explained in Hollywood, the popular stereotype of the best white school athletes, but now we see that these are ‘good-looking’ men who are also related to sensitivity, emotion, vulnerability and intelligent morals. and an original personality,” Meghan M Grace, a Gen Z author, researcher and podcast host, told the BBC.
“In our studies of what themes in friendships and relationships, Gen Z ranks shared values well ahead of physical appearance, as well as shared identities, backgrounds, or even hobbies. Of course, a celebrity’s good looks can and will be valued across the public, regardless of stories of bad behavior, but Gen Z enthusiasts in particular might reevaluate how they found that person.
“I think gone are the days when a ‘lead’ could be horny and publicly popular for his intelligent appearance, but be an idiot in the scenes,” says Grace.
Timothée Chalamet, one of THR’s “new A-listers,” is a Gen Z icon known for his “good guy” symbol on and off screen (Getty Images)
Dr. Roberta Katz, co-author of a book on Generation Z, believes that authenticity is important to most young people, hence the emphasis on the character attributes of the so-called “golden retriever” or a “little king. ” . Authenticity is a price partly related to the fact that these young people have grown up seeing a decline in their trust in the world,” she told the BBC. “In all our institutions, we see fake news, we see a lot of advertising. Seeing so much advertising, authenticity really means, ‘Can I accept that as true with you? Can I accept as true that what you are saying is what you are saying? you will do it? If it turns out that is not the case. Then you have lost all my acceptance as true. Their other prices include diversity and preference over hierarchical structures.
It’s clear that the shift of taste-making power from studios to social media will have profound consequences for Hollywood unless the industry takes notice, according to Professor Stacy Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. “Gen Z has a set of rules on TikTok, Instagram and other sites that provide them with something in particular tailored to who they are and what they are interested in. They are constantly receiving content that is different, but consistent with what is vital to them,” he said. . informs the BBC.
“So when you translate that to the screen, it means they need to see the genuine global in the storytelling. It’s not [what] an executive in his 50s who is a white man [thinks] is attractive. Their criteria are not focused solely on the physical. They enjoyed Saltburn, they enjoyed the Challengers, but for them to buy a price ticket for the videos is based on the physical inclinations of the former studios, there is a general disconnect because their tastes are other than the executives. “
And there’s a direct correlation between what Gen Z liked on screen and who they consider horny in the real world, although some so-called “horny rodents” or “scavengers” might be a backhanded compliment. However, those trends remain just one facet of the online world. Many “ordinary” non-celebrity men still feel stressed about achieving the contemporary, tight, muscular ideal figure they see on social media.
“Influential men portraying physical muscularity as something that can be achieved smoothly and through herbal means is a huge industry,” says Swami. “It has completely replaced the way men relate to themselves and their own ability to serve as masculine individuals. ” Nor has Hollywood completely lost its grip on sophisticated communication of what is desirable to an audience,” he adds. .
“Remember who’s still the leader in terms of box office revenue?Dwayne Johnson. ‘The Rock has not disappeared. “
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