#RatGirlSummer: I’m nibbling, scurrying and embracing ‘rodent energy’
Who gives a rat’s sass? These girls do.
Mousy energy is taking a back seat this season as wildly fierce, heat-seeking millennial and Gen Z women have unapologetically declared this a #RatGirlSummer.
“Embrace the rodent energy!” howled TikTok trendsetter Lola Okola in her viral advisory about the summertime trend, which scared up more than 4.2 million views.
“We’re scurrying around the streets. We’re nibbling on our little snacks,” she continued. “And generally finding ourselves in places we have no business being in.”
The buzzy hashtag RatGirlSummer, which Okola, a screenwriter, coined at the dawn of June, has garnered more than a staggering 11.6 million views and has amassed a colony of willing participants into its virtual nest in less than a month.
Much like the seasonally stylish “Hot Girl Summer” mania, which invites saucy sirens to unabashedly live life to the fullest extent, “Rat Girl” rage is rooted in carefree, shameless debauchery.
In a subsequent post on the popular fad, Okola stated the rules of play.
“No. 1: You have to go outside,” she said, repeating the directive for emphasis. “You cannot scurry in your bed. You cannot scurry on your couch. You need to leave your home.”
Cutting her sisters in vermin a little slack, Okola said, “You have two days a week allotted for decaying. Do all your scrolling, do all your binge-watching, do all your rotting in bed those two days.”
She threatened: “If I find out that you’re rotting in bed for more than two days a week, I will be forced to pull up and beat your ass. Actions have consequences.”
Okola went on to list “Nibbling on our little snacks” as the second cardinal rule of ratting.
“We’re eating and enjoying eating,” she said before highlighting to anti-diet delectables like pasta, potato salad, sandwiches and ice cream as rat girl approved treats.
“Starving yourself to be skinny for summer is out,” the online authority decreed. “Eating nourishing meals so you can make mischief and cause mayhem is in.”
She continued: “No. 3: We’re killing the cringe.”
“The part of you that feels embarrassed when you want to do certain things,” Okola said, “kill it immediately and bury the body.”
“Whatever your drive, your whimsy tells you to do,” she encouraged, “follow that urge.”
Her final — albeit most profound — summertime law is: “No overthinking.”
“Do you think a rat thinks twice before stealing a slice of pizza and scurrying across a subway platform?” she questioned. “No!”
“We’re going with our gut, we’re going with our intuition,” added Okola. “When you move with your gut, you usually make the right decision anyway — if you don’t, it makes for a better story.
“And with that,” she concluded, “go and scurry with my blessing.”
And her fellow savage strays are doing just that.
“I am a rat,” boasted fitness instructor Delani Kay, from San Diego, California, in a video celebrating the movement.
She chugged a friend’s liquor, as well as five beers, and stole candy from a convenience store. “I vomited a little bit, my friend had to drag me into his bed. I am a rat,” she admitted.
Another woman named Jemimah Freeside, from the UK, said Okola’s trend gave her permission to “be feral” and drunkenly eat an open container of noodles that she’d left on the side of the road before hopping into an Uber and partying all night long.
A separate TikToker named Lyss, 24, who’s admittedly intrigued by the ratty craze, said: “As a person who is indoors, stressed out and not eating any snacks, I am highly encouraged by rat girl summer.”
