Opinion
Timothée Chalamet isn’t a ‘rat boy’ and neither am I
Damien Woolnough
Style EditorI could have been a contender. I could have been a rat boy.
Vermin have entered the crowded beauty lexicon to describe unconventionally attractive Hollywood actors with large ears, angular features and lanky frames.
Dune actor Timothée Chalamet, Challengers leading men Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, along with The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White and Ferrari’s Adam Driver, have been tagged as “rats” and “hot rodent boyfriends” by supposed admirers.
The Rat Pack 2.0: Timothée Chalamet, Josh O’Connor and Jeremy Allen White.Credit: Getty
I was born with the big ears, and while working at Vogue, surviving on Prada and Diet Coke, a well-meaning fashion editor described my angular appearance as fabulously gaunt. A nose like a forgotten potato ruled me out of the rat race, but should this even be a competition?
There is something insidious about the hot rodent description of male celebrities that smells like, well, like a dead rat.
Using rats to describe someone’s appearance carries a political charge leftover from Nazi propaganda during World War II, heightened by the rise of antisemitic behaviour in schools. The 1940 German movie The Eternal Jew compared Jews to rats that carry disease and devour resources.
On the US Jewish news site Forward, writer Mira Fox puts a positive slant on the term’s social media use to describe heartthrobs. “Now that we’re in our sexy Ratatouille era, can you imagine those caricatures hitting hard?” writes Fox. “Picture it: someone draws a cartoon of a Jew with a long rat nose, and instead of thinking ‘Jews are vermin,’ people interpret it as Jewish sex appeal?”
“There’s a long history of reclaiming slurs and insults, like the LGBTQ+ community’s adoption of the term ‘queer’... I say we embrace it.”
However, when racist or homophobic terms are reclaimed, it is usually done by the minority groups being yelled at from open car windows. The offensive N-word is reserved in US music culture for use by black artists, and “fag” is only acceptable from gay men and visible allies in certain situations.
The new male beauty standard: a rat leaves its New York burrow.Credit: AP
O’Connor and Chalamet both have Jewish ancestry but have had the term rodent boyfriend thrust upon them by TikTok and X rather than by adding it to their IMDB profiles. And O’Connor’s frequently reported love of the animated movie Ratatouille doesn’t count. One of my favourite movies is Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, but I refuse to be compared to Demi Moore in a bikini.
The rise of the handsome rodent began in May 2023 with a tweet suggesting that “men are either eagle handsome, bear handsome, dog handsome, or reptilian handsome.” Rats have slowly replaced snakes and lizards, with goanna or python boyfriends considered a step too far.
Now there’s an unofficial rivalry, like Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift, with rat boys pitted against golden retriever types such as Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.
It’s a competition of mostly blonde, white men against mostly white, dark-haired men. If we are honestly trying to broaden our definition of beauty, where are the rodent men of colour?
Rodent boyfriends will only be acceptable when we start describing Hollywood actresses as rat girlfriends instead of settling for “mousy”.
Since Audrey Hepburn hid behind glasses in Funny Face and Anne Hathaway wore a frumpy cerulean blue jumper in The Devil Wears Prada, mousy characters have been one scene away from a glorious makeover.
Rat girlfriends can wait behind “mum bods” in the stalled queue for beauty language equality.
We don’t need to describe actors without chiselled jaws, sweeping blonde fringes or a Hemsworth surname as rats to acknowledge their attractive qualities. Faist, O’Connor and Chalamet have held their own on screen against Louis Vuitton ambassador Zendaya, and Jeremy Allen White was asked to strip down to his underwear by Calvin Klein.
Let’s continue to admire stars with big ears, lanky frames and even those with potato noses without using labels from the gutter.
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