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Gender roles are a specific set of roles that society establishes based on one’s biological sex. Gender roles have been present in our society for decades; they are produced due to the mixture of society, culture, and sometimes even religion. These roles often differ in varying societies and cultures, and they can also change over time. They are often portrayed in television shows, and many TV shows depict the stereotypes that society assigns men and women. While it makes for good television, gender roles often limit a person from achieving their best, as well as creating stereotypes and leading to a false perception of how people of different genders should behave. For this analysis, I viewed the episode titled ‘Baby Talk’ of ‘How I Met Your Mother. This episode places a particular focus on the roles of men/women and boys/girls in today’s society; a focus that shows like this do not pay much attention to typically.
While in some communities gender roles may have been normalized, one should not be judged or be correlated with their sex or gender to determine their ability to perform certain tasks. In the episode I watched of How I Met Your Mother, gender roles are very much perceptible, plus all of the characters had to re-evaluate the way they perceive gender. As Marshall and Lily began to plan for their firstborn baby, they encountered many challenges from society. At the beginning of the episode, Marshall’s best friend Ted calls him out and says “Your list is entirely boy names” to which Marshall responds by saying “I have never thought about having a girl, I don’t want to think about having a girl” (Baby Talk How I Met Your Mother). Marshall only had boy names because he was terrified of having a girl. He thought of the fact that she would have to deal with the difficulties of being a woman in today’s society, and deal with men that would treat her similarly to the way Barney, a womanizing friend of his, treats other women. Marshall also feared that having a baby girl would mean she would grow up in a very prohibitive and oppressive environment, which may cause her trouble. Marshall then began to drain his time figuring out every conceivable homemade remedy to have a baby boy (Baby Talk How I Met Your Mother). This idea of wanting your child to be of a certain gender is determined by biological capabilities.
Similarly to Marshall, Lily also had her reasons as to why she did not want a baby boy. At the beginning of the episode, as Marshall was listing boy names for the baby, Lily began to have flashbacks of her own; of all the men she had known. Lily’s personal experience with those men made her not want to raise a baby boy. These feelings that the couple had about the gender of the child were due to experiences from a certain place for them as well. They were raised in very gender-based traditional families; Marshall’s father called him often to remind him that five generations of their family all bore sons before they had any daughters and that he needed to do the same. This pressure they had from society made them want to somehow control the unborn child’s sex by using homemade remedies that are often practiced by many cultures around the world. The couple worried about having a baby of certain sex because of the gender roles they would have to inevitably face.
The female side of the gender roles is very obvious in another character’s situation as well. Robin Scherbatsky, a news anchor and a close friend to Lily and Marshall has to deal with her new coworker Becky. This new girl has a tendency of acting like an incompetent confused little girl in order to gain more recognition from men. She brings this act into her place of work to gain popularity and more viewers. Becky rapidly begins to dominate the news channel by having her own personal photoshoots and commercials in knee-high socks licking lollipops and ice cream cones. This causes Robin to get annoyed and she attempts to get all of her friends to dislike Becky (Baby Talk How I Met Your Mother). The reason behind this association between the two characters is to appeal to the men audience of the show. This little girl’s act feeds into the male fantasy. To add a man’s point of view in the situation, we learn that Ted, another friend in the group, finds Becky charming because of how dependent she is on other people, which boosts his self-esteem as it makes him feel needed as a man (Baby Talk How I Met Your Mother).
Gender roles have a huge impact on adolescents since it is introduced to them at a very young age. Around age two children grow conscious of physical differences between boys and girls. By age four most children have a solid understanding of their gender identity. During that age, children begin to learn gender role behavior; saying phrases such as ‘things that boys do’ or ‘things that girls do’ (“Gender Identity Development in Children” Jason Rafferty). A child’s perception of gender roles influences how they socialize with their peers and build relationships. As they grow older, the roles they learned at a young age stays with them and impacts them throughout their life. Because of these assigned roles we have created such as raising the boys as the provider and the girls as a nurturer and caregivers, gender inequality issues have arisen greatly. An example of gender roles being applied to children would be when we give girls toys such as a kitchen set or a baby doll and boys get firetrucks, a policeman, and weapons such as swords or guns. This has not helped strengthen our society and has a negative impact on the way we raise our children considering it influences their future decisions.
Some characters in the show conform to gender roles while others break out of them. This can be seen in Robin’s dilemma with Becky, who uses the gender roles placed on her such as being extremely feminine and fragile, as a means to an end. Marshall and Lily broke out of the more traditional gender-based habits and eventually agreed on a gender-neutral name for their future child, Jamie. Gender roles are drilled into children from a young age, and they learn to have a perception of what their future should look like according to their given roles. Gender roles build boundaries and restrain people from performing their best. This episode effectively showed the two ways one can deal with gender roles; use them as an advantage, or try and advance as a society and remove them altogether.
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