How I Met Your Mother 7x06, "Mystery vs. History"

By Kimberly Nguyen

This week, I will analyze an episode of How I Met Your Mother called “Mystery vs. History,” the sixth episode of the seventh (current) season. How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) is one of my favorite shows on television right now, so I almost don't want to find problems with it, but after this episode aired a couple weeks ago, my immediate reaction was disagreement with the dominant message put out by the show on two different issues related to gender. The first is the obsession with labeling and identifying people's genders, especially with soon-to-be-born babies; this is expressed through Marshall and Lily's desire to remain oblivious to their future baby's sex, and the conflict that arises from that decision. The second is Ted's fear that the woman he is dating might be transgendered, which is treated as a passing joke and is actually a joke that has come up at least twice earlier in the series.

We have previously discussed in class the need to identify children as either boy or girl, and assigning them everything from appropriate toys to colors according to their gender. In this episode of HIMYM, Marshall and Lily abstain from learning the sex of their unborn child, Lily stating, “We just don't want to burden our little angel with all kinds of gender-specific expectations. Boys can do ballet, girls can play football.” I was pleasantly surprised by the stance they took, especially since HIMYM is a sitcom meant for mass appeal and I found this to be a small but clever way to make a comment about gender assignment. This is shattered throughout the rest of the episode, however, beginning with the very next line. Marshall quips – with what I thought was a rather unnecessary joke – “Hell, the Green Bay Packers have been proving that for years.” The obvious joke here is that the Green Bay Packers are girls because, in Marshall's opinion, they do not play well. The writers of the show introduced a few lines of dialogue challenging the structure of gender role assignment encoded in us from birth, but felt that they had to immediately follow that dialogue with a comment reinforcing the structure as it is. It is as if they tiptoe forward and pull back sharply, so as not to alarm viewers and upset the status quo.

In the same conversation, Robin offers her two cents on the matter, saying, “Define gender roles early. All the other girls got a pretty dress and a cake when they turned fourteen...” The scene then cuts to a flashback of her fourteenth birthday, in which her father literally pushes a terrified and resistant Robin out of a helicopter to parachute down into a forest for a three-day survival challenge. To understand this joke, viewers must be familiar with Robin's relationship with her father, who wished so badly that he had a son that he ignored the fact that Robin was a girl and treated her like a boy, causing her great emotional stress. This extreme situation is obviously used for comedy, but is also a way of distancing the show and its producers even further from the brief support it expressed earlier for defying gender roles. This sequence shows that reversing gender roles can be ridiculous, as Robin's father is portrayed as sadly in denial that he did not bear a son, and traumatic to children, as Robin continues to carry scars from her relationship with her father because of this gender-bending.

Later in the episode, Barney plays a ridiculous slide show for Marshall and Lily, in an effort to convince them to learn the sex of their baby. Barney tells them that a baby of an unnamed sex will only receive generic gifts at the baby shower, while a clearly defined boy or girl can look forward to better gifts. This could be received as a message translatable to later in life: if your gender is not well-defined in adulthood, you will not claim all the good things you are entitled to, be they social relationships or material objects. The first picture in Barney's slide show is of a baby boy dressed in a baseball uniform, and the second is of a baby girl dressed in a princess gown, which Barney describes with a high, cartoonish voice. The gender binary is clearly drawn between blue and pink, sports and fashion, robust and gentle. The third picture in the slide show is of a baby dressed in a brown burlap sack. As ominous music plays, Barney warns, “But if you don't know the gender, little Fran is sure to be the pariah of the playground in this hermaphroditic burlap sack.” This firmly labels gender ambiguity and lack of gender definition as detrimental; people who are androgynous or who go against gender expectations are portrayed as undesirable, not just to the characters of the show but to the world.

The second gender-related issue in this episode is one which I have noted across seasons of HIMYM, and that is a negative attitude toward transgendered individuals. In this episode, Ted goes out with a woman named Janet, who he has just met. When his friends do some internet research on Janet, they uncover a huge secret, which Ted declines hearing before he gets to know her. The type of wild scenarios that he imagines her secret to be are a source of humor and a trademark of HIMYM. First, he imagines that Janet is actually a prostitute and is led out of the restaurant by two police officers; the entire restaurant bursts into laughter at Ted for being fooled into thinking she was actually interested in him. In the second scenario, Ted is in the men's restroom when Janet swaggers in, speaking with a deep voice, and pulls up her dress to stand at the urinal; when Ted objects, she says, “I'm a dude.” Ted gasps in horror.

This is not the only example of a queer-negative attitude I have noted on HIMYM. In season 2 episode 9, “Slap Bet,” Ted imagines that the big secret his then-girlfriend Robin could be keeping from him is that she “used to be a dude,” which she reveals in front of everyone at their wedding. In season 3 episode 8, “Spoiler Alert,” Ted imagines what huge flaw his then-girlfriend Kathy could have revealed to his friends at dinner while he was away from the table: could she have lied about an affair with a high school teacher and put him in jail for fun? Could she volunteer at a pound just for the rush of killing puppies? Could she have once had a penis?

The trend here is a man's fear that a woman he is seeing could secretly be a man or have once been a man. HIMYM has only provided images of transgendered characters that are hypothetical and closeted; the show has gone further by propagating the idea that being transgendered is something that people will not accept and will run away in fear from. In “Spoiler Alert,” being a post-op transgendered person is portrayed as on the same level as sociopathic behavior. I found this distinctly queer-negative attitude disturbing the first time it appeared, and have been surprised every time it has been repeated. It is not any kind of in-joke that bears repeating for effect, but it is used continually. Perhaps the humor comes from the idea of a man being fooled by very feminine looking male-bodied women. Perhaps it is a statement on heteronormativity, reinforced by the relationships of most of the main characters and by the hypermasculine rake qualities of Barney Stinson. For whatever reason, HIMYM has made it clear by its repetition of this joke that it will continue to cast transgendered people as the butt of the joke or HIMYM is simply not thinking of its implications about gender.

You can watch "Mystery vs. History" here.

I also found an interesting article about a Toronto couple that has decided to raise their newborn baby as "genderless." The response from readers has been largely negative.