How I Met Your Mother- A Critique

I’ve always had trouble distinguishing between when a piece of artwork, especially satire, is exposing a stereotype or reinforcing it, because there's always a risk of taking it the wrong way as an audience member. I find the safest way to ensure I am accurately observing a piece of satire or comedy is to take the obvious jokes as exposition and the side comments, the things that the audience doesn't consciously remember but is still affected by, as a reinforcement. How I Met Your Mother, a popular comedy tv show, exposes and defies many gneder stereotypes. It exposes the stereotype of the “player” through the character Barney Stinson. Through complex and developed back stories for its main female characters it defies many female stereotypes. But, and this may be impossible to avoid, it reinforces some negative gender stereotypes and norms. The show clearly passes the Bechdel Test, but things get a little gray beyond that.

Barney Stinson's ridiculous character exposes through comedy the male "player" stereotype. In every episode he has some new absurd plan for picking up women and getting them to sleep with him on the first date. He never calls any of them back and he never treats any of them as more than an object, a conquest, a challenge (*catch phrase being "challenge accepted!") to complete. This on its own could be just reinforcing stereotypes, but in every episode his friends tell him how ridiculous he is, how rude and sad it is for him to objectify all of these women he picks up and generally that this whole picking up women for one night stands and not respecting them isn't cool, it's just mean and sad. Another important part of his character is that he has these moments of clarity where he really does fall for a girl and he messes it up because being a "player" ruined him. He falls in love with his friend Robin but can't admit he has feelings for her. In the episode Miracles Barney admits he's in love with her and as soon as she admits that she may have feelings for him as well, he starts to dash in the other direction, because the thought of a committed relationship is, well, unthinkable. A similar issue occurs when he meets Nora, a beautiful girl that Barney falls for in Challenge Accepted.  He tells her a bunch of lies to try to have sex with her on the first date, even though what he really wants is to have an actual relationship with her. 

The two main female characters (I won't start on the fact that there are three male leads and 2 female leads), Lily and Robin fit some female stereotypes, which is okay because they break stereotypes too! And it's important to make sure that people don't feel like they can't have traits of a stereotype. It's only a problem when people are a stereotype, when they can be defined in only a few words. Lily is a sweet kindergarten teacher who likes shopping. So we say, stop right there! Feminists everywhere get ready to break your keyboards! Except that we don't, because Lily is also the dominant person in her marriage, is incredibly witty, and isn't afraid to physically fight someone. And Robin defies gender stereotypes all over the place. She doesn't want to settle down and have children or get married (while Lily does want those things, allowing for a variety that shows women there is no one thing they have to be). She is also the dominant character in her relationships with men. Ted actually tells her in one episode that it made him a little uncomfortable that she is so fiercely independent and strong willed. 

Unfortunately, that brings me to my final thought. While this show exposes and challenges many gender stereotypes and does it in a comedic and interesting way, there are undertones that reinforce some stereotypes or negative gender norms. For example, nearly every woman is thin and gorgeous and if they aren't they will most likely be made fun of. And while that could be an attempt and exposing that problem, it's a little too subtle. It just comes across as reinforcing those gender norms. The "Hot Crazy Scale" (which compares a girl's hotness to her craziness so as to accurately judge whether she's worth dating/sleeping with). If a girl is really hot, it doesn't matter if she's crazy because she's hot and her beauty makes everything alright. If she's not hot, then, frankly, she's just not worth your time. 

(this video describes some of the ridiculous lines Barney uses to pick up women.)