How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy (9 page)

At the same time that Robin has everyone lining up to tell her what she should be they're also constantly pressuring her to avoid what they feel she shouldn't be. From her character's introduction, Robin's always had a free attitude towards sex and one-night stands. She's not only able to separate the physical from the emotional, that's actually her involuntary response. She views sex as a physical desire, a need that's totally separate from romance or love and therefore does not require any sort of emotional connection. In other words, she approaches sex in the same no-strings-attached, Path B way that Barney does.

As a man, Barney's liaisons are overlooked and sometimes even applauded by his friends, but not so for Robin. Instead she's judged for her open attitude towards sex divorced from love. She's called ‘cold' or sometimes far worse. In “The Naked Man,” Marshall announces he's “calling slut,” labeling Robin in an extremely derogatory manner because the group discovered she had a one-night stand with a man she has no interest in seeing again. It's clearly sexism at its height, but rather than take up the feminist torch Robin quickly succumbs to peer pressure. She feels so badly about herself that she attempts to seriously date the man and pretend to have feelings for him just to save face until Marshall takes back his claim that she's a slut.

“The Naked Man” illustrates the double standard that exists for men and women, but more specifically it highlights how even Robin, a woman who presents herself as a forward-thinking feminist, still feels compelled to conform to the traditionally approved path for women.

Daddy Issues

Just so we won't miss the ideological war happening within her, the writers compound Robin's struggle with the history of her upbringing. With a domineering single father who wanted a son and raised her as a typical boy, Robin was automatically pushed into feminist thinking from a very young age. The abnormal, exaggerated experiences of her youth set up immediate turmoil for Robin as to gender roles and what a woman should want out of life.

In “Happily Ever After” and “Who Wants to Be a Godparent?” Robin talks about the horrors of her young life and how all signs of traditional femininity were punished. In “Mystery vs. History” she even tells of how she was literally left alone in the wilderness and forced to become independent and self-reliant simply to survive the ordeal. Those are just a few of the episodes that in sometimes comical, sometimes heartbreaking, but always unmistakable ways demonstrate how Robin has been programmed since childhood to believe that all “girly” traditional things are bad, and has instead been shoved down a path of unrelenting self-sufficiency with a complete focus on career.

Do we all have a maniacal father who forces us to burn our feminine clothes in an oil drum, pushes us out of a plane over a wolf-infested forest, and sends us off to military school if we're caught kissing our crush? Do all of our friends “call slut” and instead promote saying “I love you” on the very first date? Of course not, but by placing Robin squarely in the middle, caught between the two opposing philosophies, the writers create the instantly recognizable struggle facing countless modern women over which version of themselves they can and should be.

I Never Said Never

At the same time that Robin is tugged in opposite directions by friends, family, and society both to remain a stanchly independent, career-focused feminist and to bow to the time-honored love and marriage lifestyle, her dilemma is further complicated by the fact that she feels a secret desire for some of those traditional things herself, leading to an increased sense of guilt and confusion.

In the second half of “Nothing Good Happens After 2
A.M
.,” when Robin goes home to her empty apartment, she realizes that those kindergarteners were right; she is lonely. It's that loneliness that compels her to start a relationship with the very conventional Ted in the first place, something she's avoided for months.

As the series goes on, that side of Robin begins to increasingly escape the hold it's been under since childhood, and her
longings for love and a long-term relationship become more and more apparent. A third of the way through Season Two, in “Atlantic City,” Robin's reaches the point of willingness to admit that she actually might consider marriage someday.

By the time the show is in its third and fourth season, Robin has the chance to experience firsthand the life of a single, independent, globetrotting journalist, but she quickly discovers she doesn't like it at all. “Wait for It . . .” and particularly “We're Not from Here” reveal that, while living in Argentina, Robin was sad and lonely and the first thing she did was take the very traditional step of starting a long-term relationship with a local man she even brings back home with her. Once she settles into her normal life again, she finally admits how unhappy she is and that Island Robin isn't who she really wants to be.

Similarly, in Season Four, when her career starts to take off and she's offered her dream job overseas, Robin doesn't want to go. By her own words in “Intervention”, what she really wants is to cling to the creature comforts of home and family. When she moves to Japan anyway she's miserable there all alone and winds up quitting her job and coming back home after only one episode. Repeating the same pattern, it's later revealed that in her short stay in Japan, Robin once again turned to the reassurance of the traditional by starting a relationship with a man there too.

Throughout the rest of Season Four it's increasingly apparent that there's much more to Robin than just the independent, professional attitude her dad foisted on her. In “Woooo!” Robin admits to being just like one of the sad, lonely, and confused career women that she and Lily befriend. In “Shelter Island” Robin confesses her wish to have Ted there as a fallback so she won't have to end up single and alone for the rest of her life. In “The Front Porch” she takes it a step farther by making a “forty pact” with Ted to marry each other when she turns forty if they haven't found anyone else. Three episodes later in “Mosbius Designs,” Robin's openly disappointed with herself when she realizes she was settling for a guy simply because he was physically there in her apartment.

What it all adds up to is that Robin is one very adrift woman because complete self-reliant feminism doesn't appeal to her any more than a cookie-cutter housewife lifestyle, but she still believes those are the only two options open to her.

Catching Feelings

Around this same time period, Robin begins to earnestly fall in love with Barney very much against her will. The connection between their characters is evident as far back as Season One, particularly in “Zip, Zip, Zip” where it's first demonstrated that Barney truly sees Robin as she is and likes her exactly that way. “How Lily Stole Christmas” and the aforementioned “We're Not from Here,” where Barney is the only one who can bring Robin out of her identity crisis, further strengthen their bond. Their special connection is on full display throughout all of Season Three, ultimately leading up to “Sandcastles in the Sand.” In that key episode, Robin acknowledges that she misses the freedom to simply follow her heart and so she does just that, finally giving in to her attraction to Barney. It's the first sign of a chink in her emotional armor and what will become a shift in her priorities.

Not only is “Sandcastles” the episode that officially begins their romance, it also highlights what becomes an ongoing theme of the show, that Barney loves Robin for exactly who she is without compromise. Unlike the rest of the people in her life who are pushing or pulling her one way or the other, Barney tells Robin she doesn't have to conform to any standard and should just be herself, reiterating the non-essentialist moral of Robin's story.

That theme continues in Season Four episodes like “Do I Know You” and “The Possimpible.” The attachment between Robin and Barney continues to intensify, and more importantly Barney establishes a pattern of repeatedly encouraging Robin's career pursuits whereas Ted and the others generally regard that aspect of her personality as the enemy.

Non-essentialist feminism is wrapped up within all aspects of the Robin and Barney love story. Barney always embraces all parts of Robin, including those that don't fit any specific, preexisting standard of traditional femininity, making their romance unique to any of her other love interests. He doesn't care or object to the fact that she was raised as a boy, she smokes cigars, she drinks scotch, she has a free attitude towards sex, she never wants kids, and she still struggles profoundly with anything openly emotional. Rather than encouraging her to change, Barney loves and accepts all the varying
parts of who Robin is, but sadly that's something she still has to learn to do herself.

Maybe I Want the Trouble

When Robin eventually does enter into a relationship with Barney, neither one of them's ready. There are too many personal demons they each need to work out privately. Nevertheless, the relationship forever changes them both and marks a major shift (salute) in her thinking. When Robin was first introduced she was a hardcore feminist who suppressed her inner longings for a relationship and love because she felt embarrassed and ashamed of them. She outwardly reveled in her single status. There was always casual sex to be had if she wanted it and if she got lonely she could repeatedly date a guy, though she was fondest of taking the three-week relationship exit.

Robin discovered over time that the free-thinking feminist lifestyle didn't completely suit her, but it's only through falling in love with Barney that she realizes once and for all that she wants and even needs that sort of love and connection in her life and she begins to openly embrace her conventional desires.

After their breakup, Robin tries to return to that independent woman whose career was her all-encompassing desire, but it doesn't work. Her career alone no longer fulfills her. She wants love and a meaningful, traditional relationship. “Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slap” reveals early hints of this when Barney debunks Robin's aloof, untouchable, fiercely independent facade by telling her he knows she secretly dreams of marriage and a classic church wedding with a little white dress and a husband who will love and care for her. Robin's extreme reaction shows that his statement touches a definite nerve.

As Season Five progresses, now that those traditional longings have been fully unleashed in Robin, she can no longer manage to keep them tamped down. Months later, in “Of Course,” she's still jealous and hurting, crying her eyes out over Barney, yearning for that love she had with him. At this point Robin truly jumps ship and progressively crosses over to the opposite side, becoming a woman who absolutely does
not
want to be single and is determined to land the “proper” guy.

This shift in Robin starts to aggressively take hold when she throws herself into a relationship with the first suitable
man who comes along, Don. After that doesn't work out, she repeatedly struggles with the notion of being alone throughout all of Season Six. In “False Positive” she bemoans her continued single status but states that it's too painful for her to even think about. She tries her old standby of turning to her career for comfort, but she's still lonely and conflicted. Four episodes later, in “Desperation Day,” Barney is able to easily see through Robin's claims that her career alone is enough.

Then in “Doppelgangers” and later in “The Stinson Missile Crisis,” Robin makes the definitive leap from feminism to tradition by actually choosing a relationship over her career, something she has never before done. In both instances she turns down a prominent job opportunity in order to stay close to a man she wants to be involved with. In doing so Robin is fairly openly demonstrating that her career by itself cannot sustain her and isn't even her number one priority anymore.

By Season Seven's “Mystery vs. History” and “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns” Robin seems like a different woman. Six years after the original “Slutty Pumpkin,” Robin has gone from a complete inability to be part of a pair and utter revulsion at the idea of couples sharing food and wearing matching costumes to doing just that with Barney, frequently referring to the two of them as ‘we' and ‘us'. These episodes make Robin's shift from the feminist to the traditional path complete.

What's That Saying? Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right?

In late Season Five through Season Seven, Robin may have switched paths but she's more conflicted than ever before because she continues to see it as an all or nothing decision. Since self-reliant Path B didn't make her happy, she goes overboard into Lily's extremist version of traditional Path A at the expense of not only her feminist side but of what her heart truly wants. While actively seeking out love and marriage, Robin repeats the mistake of seeing things in black and white and now goes too far to the other end of the spectrum. The result is equally destructive to her life, translating into an all-out identity crisis.

Where she was once assured and self-confident, Robin now doubts virtually everything about herself. In “Big Days,”
“Unfinished,” and “Subway Wars” she sees rejection by a man as a negative reflection on herself. Further still, in “Baby Talk,” she believes Ted when he tells her that her independent nature and self-sufficiency are directly at odds with any hope of ever finding love and so instead she needs to become a stereotypically weak, needy, dependent woman if she ever wants to make a relationship work.