When Marge becomes Homer, Homer becomes Marge!

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Hey! To all of the social media active users (which are basically every one of us in this generation), have you ever seen this picture when you browse through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or other social media platform that you use?

It is one of the memes online called – Gender Bender Simpsons, which is what it looks like when all of the characters gender-swap to the opposite genders. And this is what we are doing today! This time, we are only going to swap the gender of Homer and Marge.

Homer

In the original character setting of Homer, he is a lazy dad who is always immature, stupid, selfish, simple-minded and with lots of anger.

(Think of how many times he chokes Bart…)

I feel like most of the time, Lisa is even more mature than he is. However, from time to time, the side of him caring and loving his children will appear (but most of the time he is just like how I described above). As we know, he works in the nuclear plant of Springfield and is either always sleeping or making mistakes in the factory. When he is mad or sad, he will go to Moe’s to seek for some getaways through alcohols.

What will happen if he turns into a female and becomes the mother in the family? In terms of HER personality, the audience will think that she should be more loving with her family; and the act of choking Bart will not be acceptable by the audience anymore. As for making mistakes in the nuclear plant, the audience will anticipate her to be more careful(as if this is one of the characteristics of women, or at least how most of the media demonstrates how women should be), instead of being clumsy all the time. While regularly going to Moe’s alone to talk with the bartender, this does not seem like something a woman would do, since it would be considered more dangerous for women.

Marge

What about Marge? She has been portrayed as a kind-hearted housewife who always protects and defends for her children, especially when Homer is being a psychopath. She puts her family first, even before herself. For instance, from the episode of The Class Struggle in Springfield, she feels guilty when she was thinking of buying a suit from a thrift shop.

What if we turn her role and make her the father in the family? HIS loving and caring will be seen as too excessive that it makes him “feminine”. The fact that he is being a jobless man who does all the housework will probably make the role more revolutionary. Since we still have the stereotype that mother should be the one who is in charge of all these matters, when a man is taking the role, it makes people feel surprised and unordinary about the situation.

Why do we have those feelings and thoughts when we swap their genders? Sometimes it feels abnormal as they do something that is totally acceptable and common when they are in their original gender. It is the stereotype that we possess for different genders. We have the image of how specific gender should act. When we do gender-swapping, we can realize how our media has imposed these ideas to the audience, especially in the show like The Simpson, which is set as an Ideal nuclear family structure.