Pathetic Men Are This Summer’s Hottest Accessory, Thanks to Challengers

MGM

There’s a moment in Zendaya’s new horny tennis movie (aka Challengers) where her husband crawls over to her in bed, placing his head on her lap like a puppy as she stares at him with disdain. And like, damn, that’s hot.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find a guy who’s just a little pathetic? Honestly, we straight women are tired, and we don’t have time for the effort of taming a playboy. Many of us are working 40-plus hours a week. Some of us are raising kids and doing way more of the work than our male partners, regardless of supposed “equality.” We have the “mental load” and the wage gap. Sexism and the patriarchy. The loss of reproductive rights and another Trump election.

Also, men just keep behaving badly and causing more trouble than they are worth. Just listen to the 30 songs on Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department describing Matty Healy’s (alleged) crimes in excruciating detail. That small man loved her and left her, and she’s Taylor Swift.

Ladies, aren’t you tired of chasing around idiots who would rather chase tail than take out the trash? Who would rather send a “u up” text than declare their love and utmost devotion, preferably on their knees? Who would leave you to deal with a devastating, career-ending injury alone on a tennis court, screaming in agony of your failed dreams of glory?

This is, essentially, the plot of Challengers. And before all you film buffs get all up in arms that there is way more to it than that, I know, I know. It’s about tennis and failed ambitions and passion and homoerotic churro shots too. But in a very simple form, it’s about a choice. Would you rather sit by the phone and cry over the fuckboy who makes your heart race, or give in to the sad boi who just wants a cuddle and attention? Who would do anything—including drop his best friend—to win you over? Who would become your cipher through whom you channel all your dashed dreams, just to have you?

Sure, Josh O’Connor’s Patrick Zweig has many moviegoers’ hearts racing with his rakish good looks and asshole demeanor. But, as I told my colleagues in our group discussion, we know this man doesn’t stay loyal, doesn’t pick up the phone, and definitely doesn’t clean his bathroom. Does that make him even more attractive? Sure! But who has the energy?

Imagine how refreshing it would be to have Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) as your little sweetie instead. He may be dead inside, but he’s loyal. I mean, the man makes his entire life into a humiliation kink for his crush turned wife Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), and she doesn’t even care! She actually kind of hates him for it, and that makes him want her even more.

Tashi can’t play tennis anymore, so Art trains with her until he becomes everything she dreamed of being, giving her the lifestyle and money and fame she would have had if her career hadn’t gotten derailed. In the end, he asks her for permission to quit. It’s not his career, after all; it’s both of theirs. He doesn’t just ask though—he grovels.

TL;DR: Art is so sprung by Tashi, he will literally do anything for her. She could slap him in the face—literally or metaphorically—and he would say “thank you.” He knows she has slept with Patrick many times, but he will never leave her. Like, you know it’s true. If she wants to dump him, she’s going to have to shake him off her leg like a toddler fighting bedtime.

As one TikTok creator, Alexis, put it, just one screengrab from the film of Art’s sad face being cupped by Tashi’s hand is simultaneously the saddest and sexiest thing we’ve ever seen.

“He is so down bad it should be criminal,” she says. “And I need that. That’s the energy I’m looking for in my future husband.”

Exactly. We deserve this, don’t we? A man to be down bad crying at the gym over us, for a change?

“Challengers needed to bring back men being pathetic for women, we are in a yearn drought,” wrote one person on Twitter. Amen.

Stephanie McNeal is a senior editor at Glamour and the author of Swipe Up for More! Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers.

Originally Appeared on Glamour