How I Met Your Mother: The Woman Always Gives In

Okay. I realize I just went off on a rant about another television show last week. But I just have to talk about “How I Met Your Mother” for a second. I love this show and I hate this show. I first noticed the ubiquitous sexism in Barney’s character—Barney is a guy whose purpose in life is basically spouting stupid pick-up lines to get women to sleep with him. The running joke in the show is how stupid his pick-up lines are, and how stupid the women are who fall for them. (Spoiler: the women always fall for them.)

I keep watching Barney’s antics and wonder: why is this show telling me that beautiful women are stupid? And that there are so many stupid women in New York? Is it just me, or is HIMYM telling me that “stupid” is pretty much the default setting for women?

Still, it’s hard to hate Barney. He’s played by Neil Patrick Harris, who is so charming and fall-down hilarious that he makes the show watchable for me. So watchable that I’ve stuck with it for nine seasons, even though it sometimes pisses me off. 

But it’s not Barney I want to talk about right now. It’s Lily and Marshall—the long-term couple in the series who have been together since college. Their relationship, and the way the writers deal with it, has been problematic for me for a long time—but not so much that I had anything really articulate to say about it. Except after watching the most recent season.

Once again, Lily gets the ass-end.

[Warning: Spoilers!]

So basically, Lily has a dream job as an art buyer for a wealthy employer. That employer is planning to move to Italy for a year—and wants to take Lily with him. So Lily and Marshall plan to spend a year in Rome and bring their baby along.

Then Marshall gets a job offer to be a judge—his dream job. He accepts it without telling Lily. The buildup to their confrontation over this lasted for most of the season, until finally coming to a head in this episode and the one before it. They have a fight, Lily storms out—and then capitulates and tells Marshall they should stay in New York.

I am SO sick of this plotline. 

I am sick of being told the story of the woman giving up her dream because of her family. I am sick of the story of women choosing to be wives and mothers at the expense of their other ambitions, and I’m sick of that decision being shown as the happy ending.

In other words, I didn’t realize how very, very much I wanted Marshall to lose this fight.

This isn’t about real-life women’s choices.  I realize that being a parent means sometimes you have to make tough calls and turn down opportunities you would go for if you were single or childless. This can happen for both dads and moms. I get that.

This also isn’t about whether or not I feel women in real life should work or stay home with the kids. I feel this is every individual’s choice to make; if I worked outside the home and had a baby, I could see deciding to stay home myself--at least for a few years. I don't think individual parents choosing to stay home or make other sacrifices for their kids is the problem.

What bothers me is the way our culture messages women specifically about this issue—that becoming a mom necessarily makes your life smaller and more limited. 

And yes, I realize that a lot of people who’ve become parents would argue that it's made their lives anything but “smaller and more limited” despite the fact that they stay home with the kids. I don't mean to invalidate that. But the daily joys and revelations of parenthood are not the life-broadening things I’m talking about here. I’m talking about fulfilling dreams and ambitions outside the home. Achieving your professional goals. Traveling. Going back to school. All the things so many of us want in addition to being parents.  Why do dads get to have those in the stories we’re told in film and television so much more often than moms? Why does Marshall’s dream so often take precedence over Lily’s?

Of course, for real families, a lot of the time this comes down to finances. Women are still making $.77 for every dollar a man brings home as of 2012 statistics. If someone has to give up their job, it only makes sense for that to be the one who makes less. Much of the time, that’s the mom. But finances weren’t really the issue in the Lily / Marshall argument. For all we know, the art-buying job could have had a six-figure paycheck attached.

The reason Lily capitulates and decides to stay in New York isn’t clear. She storms out during the argument, and Marshall has an imaginary conversation with “ghost Lily” (yeah, it’s that kind of show). In that conversation, ghost Lily says it makes sense that they stay in New York because they have a baby. (“What kind of excuse is that?!” I cry out on my couch. “People in Italy have babies tooo!!!”). When the real Lily finally comes back, she tells Marshall they’re staying in New York because “it just makes sense.” That’s all we get. I waited until the next episode to post this in the hope that we’d get more of Lily’s side of things. But the show seems done with this issue, and we get no real explanation for why Lily changes her mind. 

The thing is, Lily has tried this before. In an earlier season, she left Marshall and went to San Francisco to be an artist. That lasted a few months before she came back and married him. Lily isn’t depicted as a particularly adventurous person—she stays in her safe circle of friends and in her safe college relationship—but I saw the writers developing her character more over several seasons, particularly when she got the art buyer position despite having a baby. I thought going to Italy was the natural next step for her growth. The fact that she capitulates so easily is a huge letdown from a plot perspective.

Still, to me, it doesn’t matter how well-written or character-driven this outcome is.  If the writers on HIMYM can tell a well-written story about a woman giving up her dreams in favor of her husband’s, why can’t they tell an equally well-conceived story where the husband sacrifices his own dream to make his wife's happen, or, even better, one where both get what they want? Why do I keep having to see this frustrating and depressing story of a mom laying her dream aside, masquerading as a happy ending?

There are many real-life women who give up amazing opportunities because of their families, and who don’t regret those choices. I don’t mean to denigrate those real-life decisions in any way. But there are also women who go on to professional fulfillment, travel, go back to school, and have big, bold, wildly adventurous lives outside the home and kids. Why isn’t that story told more in film and TV—and shown not as an exception, but as a reasonable, normal way a woman’s life can turn out? 

In HIMYM, I feel that everyone let Lily down. That includes her friends--not one of them supported her move to Italy. Even Robin, who moved to Japan for a year, wanted Lily to stay. But even worse, Marshall let Lily down--by undermining her dream instead of doing everything he could to support it.

Just this once, I was hoping to see a story where a woman’s family broadens her horizons—instead of shrinking them. Maybe someday I will, but probably not in HIMYM.