Calling out piles of dirty sheets, mountains of trash, and an unexplained pile of wigs, "Boy Room" is bravely going where many wish to never return.
Courtesy of Gymnasium
New York City-based comedian Rachel Coster, 28, sits on an unmade bed in a cramped West Village apartment and tries to make sense of what she's seeing.
"His shoe rack is a crumpled box and his bedside table is an abandoned suitcase," Coster exclaimed.
This is the apartment of a 25-year-old man.
Welcome to "Boy Room," the new series in which Coster and a cameraperson venture into the unruly habitats of New York City's men and try to offer advice. The show, produced by Gymnasium, airs on social media where it has already become a sweeping success, racking up 76,000 followers on TikTok and 26,000 followers on Instagram in just a few weeks.
A kernel of the show's inspiration came from a road trip Coster once took with a male friend. He confessed his bedroom was so off-putting to girls that he'd reached a breaking point. Coster offered to help when they returned to New York, but when the time came, he was too embarrassed to let her through the door.
"If any boys would let me in, I think I could really help them out," she recalled thinking to herself. Now, she got her wish.
Courtesy of Gymnasium
Launched in late March, the series has already visited six subjects, offering spaces that Coster has described as "scary" and "stressful." The sights are also humorous. Navy sheets on an unmade bed, a stray deodorant tucked under a pillow. A floor cloaked in dirty laundry and plastic take-out bags. Wall decorations including a car steering wheel or a Darth Vader mask.
The show uncovers all the strange idiosyncrasies of the ways some men inhabit their spaces, which Coster believes might be the fault of traditional social conditioning. "Girls are raised to take care of the house, generally. It's demanded of us or there's a shame around it," she said. "I don't feel like my guy friends were experiencing the same thing."
One subject, Chris, a 27-year-old living in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill neighborhood, existed in a sea of clutter with random paraphernalia like corks tied together with a string and a pile of wigs sitting under a dresser.
"I get nervous throwing stuff away," Chris explained during the episode.
"Well, let me tell you, it's awesome to do," Coster deadpanned to the camera.
Coster said she has sympathy for many of the men she features and at the end of each episode, offers her advice to improve their space. She recognizes that many, like her, are young and hustling in ambitious careers, and probably have very little time to focus on interior design and cleanliness.
Courtesy of Gymnasium
That's an argument that rings true for another subject, Jerome Peel, whose sparsely-decorated bedroom in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood attracted a number of detractors on TikTok. He even drew heat from the official Wendy's account. "It just gets worse," the fast-food chain wrote.
"I'm in my apartment 10 hours a day," Peel, 32, told BI. He runs his own fashion brand, Peels, and the popular Instagram account Citibikeboyz, which features Peel and his friends executing daredevil tricks on New York City's bike-share network.
Peel stands by the way he has set up his room, including three nail clippers that sit on a windowsill. "It's so I can clip them out the window," he told BI.
Courtesy of Gymnasium
Some subjects volunteer to be on the show, while others are recommended by friends. But Coster said they've denied applicants they believed were exaggerating or faking their mess. Even though subjects have some advance notice of when they will be filmed, Coster said a vetting process lets the team find authentic examples.
Take, for example, recent subject Dan, the 25-year-old West Village resident, whose dresser had a layer of dust so thick it turned the pine-colored wood as white as snow.
"The messes we've been leaning into are the ones clearly made over the course of a really long time," she said. "Like the dust on Dan's dresser couldn't possibly have been just put there."
Coster hopes to take the show outside of New York one day, and explore the messes of men in Boston, Philadelphia, or Los Angeles.
"Although," she said, "I kind of suspect everyone in LA is living kind of nice."
