Maybe there is a cultural component. My guess is that on one hand they were jealous of his grades. But at the same time, at our age, what was cool wasn't to be a "nerd", but be good at sports. For them, being well behaved, study and that kind of thing was "femenine".
Patriarchy hasn't reduced as much, but now studies are a little more valued. Tough still sports and videogames are considered "cooler" and more important for boys.
To be fair, at the same time, the "popular girls" cared about sports and fashion, not studies. Studies wasn't cool for us either. But for girls it was slightly less enforced. There were enough girls with good grades that didn't care about coolness that it didn't matter.
But you only need to look at Elon Musk, paying for a fake account at some videogame in order to "look cool". Even for an adult, that kind of thing still happens. And he is rich, he doesn't have the need. Why do that? My guess is that he likes the approval.
At the end of the day, society values doctors, but not as much as "influencers". And yes, boys are the first to fawn over some streamer and not over some novel prize. Boys want to be popular and cool at the eyes of other boys. Then they just assume that they would be considered cool by the girls (the more traditional do). They claim that they do it for the girls, but it is the approval of other boys they seek. And the boys who have stronger character like that one, are the ones who really got ahead. I'm still friends with him, really nice person. And now he has other male friends like him, less aggresive, but brilliant. He met those at university.
The fact is that when we are teenagers, we usually are "lazy" and prefer to have fun than study. The hard work to study requires discipline and that discipline is usually more enforced on girls than boys. My brother resented the discipline from my father, even if he eventually thanked him when he grew up. But as a teenager, my brother only wanted to play games (normal XD). And since he was good at them, he was popular. But his grades were average. On the other hand, his average grades didn't prevent him from going to university and finding a job, so maybe the men who complain now just have to assume that some things take hard work and university is one of those. Women aren't taking "their places", some women are doing the hard work, others are not and won't go to university either. If they don't make the cut, it is on them. And my country doesn't have cuotas for women (or anyone) but there are still more women going to university.
The thing is that the real choice to study or not is one you made when you are 12 or 13 years old and way inmature. If you don't study at those years, you average at 18 would be bad and you are going to have a hard time at university because you don't know things that you are supposed to know already. Recovering from that requires even more hard work than doing it at 12-13 to 17-18 when you were supposed to study that. Probably your country do better on teaching that to boys, I don't know. But here, it is all about soccer, video games and other sports. XD
