How I Met Your Mother is a show about a group of friends living in New York City, and is centered around the main character Ted Mosby, played by Josh Radnor, trying to find his true love. This show breaks gender norms in a lot of ways, such as making Ted a hopeless romantic, and making his love interest, Robin Scherbatsky, played by Cobie Smulders, a tough girl who can take care of herself.
But there is one major downfall when it comes to the show, and that is the slut-shaming of women while the men traipse around sleeping with whatever women they feel like. The episode in particular is in season 4 episode 9, where Robin sleeps with a blind date because he pulls a stunt (stunts are common throughout the show to sleep with women) in which he gets naked in her apartment when she steps out, because he has nothing to lose if she rejects him, and has everything to gain if she accepts him. He becomes a sort of hero to the male characters of the show.
When her friends find out she sleeps with this man, they call her a slut because she slept with him for convenience. She is shamed into thinking that she is wrong for what she has done, and pretends that she has feelings for him so she does not feel like the slut she has been called. This turns to the naked man, played by Adam Paul, explaining this has happened before and he knows she does not actually have feelings for him, she just does not want to be a slut. Because this is a pattern where women are sluts, but the naked man is glorified for this, even though he has slept with many women because of this action and the women who are sluts have just slept with him, as far as we know.
However, the show takes a turn because the other characters Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and Ted both perform the naked man in order to sleep with women. But neither of them are called sluts for their actions, or for their other actions regarding their attempts to sleep around throughout the series of the show.
Why is it that when a woman, Robin, sleeps with a man she does not have feelings for gets called a slut and the other main characters are high-fived for their efforts? While Barney is rejected in his attempts to seduce a woman, he is still laughed off for his usual antics, instead of disgraced for trying to have sex with yet another woman, adding to his list of over 200.
Popular shows like this that slut-shame are portraying a bad image for women who enjoy sex. Even though it is not directly making this statement, it is showing how women should not have sex because they enjoy it, but men can do whatever they want. Women are not allowed to even enjoy sex, because sex is a man’s game.
I don’t even want to get into how harmful this act could be to victim’s of sexual assault. How this could even be, itself, an act of sexual assault. What woman wants to come into a room with a man she is not interested in naked, expecting sex? How is it that the worst thing that could come out of that is the woman telling him to leave? What about the harm it could cause the woman? The fear it could cause? There is a lot more to this joke then just “harmless fun” that the writers are trying to display.
