Nothing Suits Me like a Suit: Performing Masculinity in How I Met Your Mother

Abstract

This article uses How I Met Your Mother (2005–14) as a case study to explore a new emphasis within postfeminist media texts on exposing the constructed and conflicted nature of masculinity. This article examines the central male characters as examples of dominant, residual and emergent formations of masculine identity. It examines how performance, narrative and production design produce these highly differentiated versions of masculinity. It explores the show's comparative presentation of two versions of single masculinity, and examines what application the residual cultural formations of ‘bachelor’ and ‘spinster’ might have in understanding gendered representations of singleness.