It must be the year of the rat because chronically online people are assigning another term to uprising actors and musicians, “hot rodent me.”. These unconventionally attractive celebs tend to have beady eyes, messy hair, a V-shaped jawline, a toothy smile and a more scrawny build than an average actor. People that fall under this category are quite desirable right now, so if you have any of those attributes, I would book a flight out of the U.S until this dies down.
Though this term originated from the film “Challengers” where costars Mike Faist and Josh O’ Connor were being compared to rats and mice. Following this, actors like Matty (Ratty) Healy, Barry Kheogan, Josh O’Connor, Robert Pattinson have fallen victim to this hurtful comparison. Though this term is meant to be endearing, there is history behind animalistic rhetoric and imagery. Throughout history, comparing human beings to animals can be used to put down certain racial and religious groups.
Morgan Maples ‘26 said, “I think the history behind this whole rodent situation can be taken as disrespect because of antisemitism, but I don’t think people started saying it intentionally to try to disrespect these actors.”
Now, why does this term invoke antisemitic (hatred towards Jewish people) history, whether intentional or not? Most popularly used during the holocaust, Jewish people were referred to and depicted as rats. Caricatures of the Jewish community that were created by a Nazi at that time, Der Stürmer, showed the Jewish creating chaos and even being killed. A new instance of this was a depiction of Israeli leaders as rodents in a block of cheese.
The most disparaging part of this “rodent man” debacle is the fact that most of these actors are Jewish or have Jewish ancestry, such as Josh O’Connor andTimothee Chalamet, , which just takes this situation to a whole other level.
Despite Jewish and Black people being the target of this slande historicallyr, other groups have been depicted as rats, such as the 2015 cartoon in the Daily Mail that touched on Muslim migration into Europe using more rodent references. These terms don’t seem to have limits, so they unfortunately can be applied to anyone.
Natalie Jones ‘26 said, “I don’t think the term is disrespectful. I think it’s accurate. I think Robert Pattinson looks like a larger rodent, Josh O’Conner looks like a mouse and Matt Healy looks like a rat that got run over by a car.”
Although many people are ignorant to the origins of the term “rodent man” and intend to use the term in a lighthearted way, influencers and other viral Tiktok accounts such as “@j14magazine” are spreading the term into many of the audience’s common vocabulary, without taking the time or effort to really deep dive into the terms original hurtful meaning.
Analogies and equivalencies of this nature have served throughout history to enable, if not fuel, some of the injustices and persecutions at the heart of some of society’s darkest hours-including the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust. Seemingly innocuous or funny, we’ve all learned time and time again that words-and the actions they inspire-can have profound and grave consequences. Language is important –treat it that way.
