Barney: representation of a gender

When you look at How I Met Your Mother and pay attention to the gender point of view, the character of Barney is perfect to analyze.

He is the perfect representation of the ambiguity of masculinity nowadays. 

On one hand, he is the typical men: dominant, powerful and sexually successful. He has a great financial situation due a job, we don’t really what he does in the company but he’s well paid and it seems that he is in charge of important decisions. For example, in one episode he was the project manager for the creation of the new building of the Goliath National Bank and he makes the decision to pick his friend (Ted) project. What also his dominant and powerful position, is that he has a man who will do what he wants. For example he has a man for his costumes and he even has a man to find a men. The presentation of Barney can’t be relevant without the sexual part. All is life turns around women. And he is really good at having sex with women. He is so good that he reached the huge number of 200 women with whom he had sex. And because all this is a game for him, to make it harder, he tries different techniques. In one episode he shows to his friends a book in which all he’s techniques are described. And because real men have to reach goals, he challenges his self all the time, to have sex with one different woman every night during an entire week for example.

And on an other hand, he also is the representation of the “new man”. He takes care of him a lot: he always wear suits, he gets manicure, massages ... And in the most recent seasons, be begin to see a Barney who show his feelings. He felt in love with Robin, thing that would never have happened before. Now even if makes jokes about his feelings, to still be “strong as a real man”, he opens his mind to his friends  and become more vulnerable to the life and he starts to be a “real person” instead of the patriarchal vision of the man taking of his family.