HIMYM Gender
Set on the Upper West Side of New York City, How I Met Your Mother is a television sitcom that tells the long-winded story of the main character’s bachelorhood. The main character, Ted Mosby, narrates the story from the year 2030 to his future kids. With Ted’s four best friends (Barney Stinson, Robin Scherbatsky, Marshall Erikson and Lily Aldrin), multiple girlfriends, one-night stands and fellow “bros”, the search for his wife is narrated. Ted meets Marshall and Lily at Wesleyan College and the three become best friends. Lily and Marshall were a couple since college and eventually get married in the show. Robin is a girl Ted meets at their usual bar whom he becomes romantically involved with. They eventually become close friends with an on again off again romance. Finally, Barney is Ted’s self-declared “best friend” and notorious womanizer.
All of them form an eccentric group with rich with background stories, catch phrases and inside jokes. However each character does not always occupy a traditional role of their gender set by society. Gender “refers to the personal traits and social positions that members of a society attach to being female or male.” (Maconis, 2012) Arguably, gender is socially constructed and changeable with time. Each character has some deviation of what is perceived as a norm with their gender. The whole show embraces these non-traditional representations of gender identity for comedic affect. Humor in the show stems in the oddity of these characters. Ted posses some stereotypical feminine qualities while Robin has some masculine. But, at the same time the show reproduces and reinforces some traditional gender roles to an extreme parody like Barney. Combined these characters depict different types of gender identity and roles in the modern world.
Ted Mosby is the hopeless romantic who grew up idolizing his parent’s relationship and desperately wants to start a family. His approach on dating is similar to a stereotypical female due to his
All of them form an eccentric group with rich with background stories, catch phrases and inside jokes. However each character does not always occupy a traditional role of their gender set by society. Gender “refers to the personal traits and social positions that members of a society attach to being female or male.” (Maconis, 2012) Arguably, gender is socially constructed and changeable with time. Each character has some deviation of what is perceived as a norm with their gender. The whole show embraces these non-traditional representations of gender identity for comedic affect. Humor in the show stems in the oddity of these characters. Ted posses some stereotypical feminine qualities while Robin has some masculine. But, at the same time the show reproduces and reinforces some traditional gender roles to an extreme parody like Barney. Combined these characters depict different types of gender identity and roles in the modern world.
Ted Mosby is the hopeless romantic who grew up idolizing his parent’s relationship and desperately wants to start a family. His approach on dating is similar to a stereotypical female due to his