In reading Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs, I have not always agreed with her many critiques of raunch culture and more specifically, her attacks on public sexuality by modern women. However, I have relished in the fact that we are studying feminism and gender roles in a modern world. This is not to discredit past feminists like Betty Friedan; I just believe that so much has changed in terms of modern society and pop culture that to study current feminism in a past world would be an injustice.
Speaking of modern society, I have spent much time with my family watching television together as many modern families do. Before my Colgate career began, my parents and I would have a traditional dinner and then move onto the couch to enjoy the major networks’ primetime sitcoms. One of our favorites was the Monday night lineup on CBS because it featured a show called How I Met Your Mother. We liked the show so much, my dad and I were perfectly willing to watch it over Monday Night Football, which is saying something considering our propensity for professional football.
When I initially looked at this assignment I thought How I Met Your Mother would tie in perfectly due to the basic makeup of characters in the show. The show centers around a main character named Ted (who is in search of his future wife), his best friend Marshall and fiancée Lily, another friend named Barney, and another woman named Robin. The show initially lends favorably to a commentary on gender roles because Lily and Robin are completely embodied as “one of the guys.” Although Lily marries Marshall and Robin dates Ted, the whole groups of friends regularly socialize at a bar and openly discuss women in a sexual manner.
After reading much of Levy’s book, I realized that How I Met Your Mother truly syncs up with much of our class discussions on traditional attire and gender dynamics in the workplace. This became evident after watching two episodes from the previous season of the show, “Girls versus Suits” and “Jenkins.” The former focuses on the bar the gang frequently visits and the hiring of a new attractive bartender named Karina. Barney is known as a complete womanizer who always wears suits, whether or not he is at work or relaxing at the bar. He vows to hook-up with Karina but discovers that she hates guys who wears suits so reluctantly starts wearing casual clothes. This is such a struggle for Barney that he even sneaks to the bathroom to put on the suit for a moment, only to have it rip beyond repair and have the ashes put in an urn. Comically, Barney uses the ashes as part of a fib to get Karina to go back to his apartment where she discovers his closet full of suits. Karina then tells Barney to choose between her and the suits.
This scenario relates to our class discussion of how suits are the traditional symbol for male professionalism and masculinity. Karina initially does not like suits because she claims that her previous boyfriends wore suits and were insensitive jerks that worked for Wall Street. This shows almost an inverse of our typical outlook as in this case Karina is criticizing men for exhibiting masculinity. Barney’s impulse to put on the suit in the bathroom and his melodramatic decision to have the ashes put in an urn symbolize his inability to disconnect his own personality from the masculine image he tries to represent. It is almost as if without the suit, he would lose his masculinity and become feminized. Ironically, when Karina asks Barney to choose between her and the suits, he breaks into a musical number where he dances on the streets and pictures everyone in suits whilst claiming that every person, man or woman, should be able to wear a suit. This is a commentary on how both genders should be able to dress as they please but also feel the supposed power they give off. Levy would claim that such a scene would aim to prove that such power is intrinsically tied with masculinity but I believe the scene is contrastingly showing the need for equality between the genders.
Meanwhile, the perceived attractiveness of Karina plays into the other characters also, as they discuss how the bar was so packed because the normal bartender, Carl, was now replaced with an attractive female. This is clearly a case of a woman becoming successful off her sexuality to which Levy would argue frustratingly against. However, in today’s business world much of success is predicated on networking and opportunity as many intelligent people often miss out. Thus, it seems that Karina is merely on the practical side by using sex to her advantage as opposed to selling out. The group of friends also debates whether it is the position of bartender in itself that makes Karina more attractive, to which Robin decides to go behind the bar and prove such a theory. Robin is kicked out from behind the bar, thus proving that Karina does have a particular talent and is merely heightening her success by further playing out her sexuality.
The follow-up episode to “Guys versus Suits” is entitled “Jenkins” and continues in connection to our class discussions of femininity and the workplace. The episode begins with Marshall discussing how his new co-worker, Jenkins, is hilarious and tells funny anecdotes. He describes Jenkins getting drunk and stripping, smoking cigars at a club, and pouring food down their throat. Ted thus perceives Jenkins to be an overweight man until Barney comes over and explains how Jenkins is an attractive woman he wants to sleep with. The show originally showed a chunky man exhibiting these anecdotes and now shows the real Jenkins doing so. This could not be more closely related to our previous class discussion on woman in the workplace and the perception of “acting like a man.” Levy explains that women who exhibit such behavior do so because that is what they perceive it takes to be successful but that at the end of the day, they are still considered as women. However, the show portrays Jenkins as naturally being herself as she enjoys being the jokester and getting drunk often. This shows that some women who are perceived to be “acting like a man” to fit in and get ahead are actually just being themselves but are not naturally a “girly-girl.” In terms of raunch culture this example seems cluttered because women of raunch culture are perceived to be doing so to impress others but Jenkins is a true example of a woman who happens to enjoy such behavior. This should prove to us that these traits should not be perceived as masculine but just traits of human beings, regardless of gender. By the show exemplifying both an overweight man and an attractive female performing the same seemingly “masculine” traits, we should understand that the terms masculine and feminine are used too often. Instead we should just view such characteristics exactly what they are on the surface. Some women enjoy inappropriate jokes and public drunkenness more so than many men, so it seems questionable that these traits always be associated with masculinity or “acting like a man.”
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