(NSFW) Do you feel that the media in association with adult entertainment encourages unrealistic expectations for both men and women?

All fantasy based industries are unrealistic, pornography, Hollywood, it’s all based on unreality and for undiscriminating types, easy to buy into the illusions, however they show up.

You are asking two separate questions. One is about Don Jon (and movies/entertainment generally) and the other is about pornography in general (without regard to movies). I will try and answer both:

1) Movies such as Don Jon (although are many more—remember Showgirls?): I agree with @coloma – movies (and for that matter, books) are pure escapism and fantasy. By their nature, entertainment (broadly defined) exaggerates and expands reality. They’re artificial depictions of a director’s view of reality – and by their nature, they aren’t reality. Most sentient people realize that. Someone who compares him/herself to a movie depiction of an artificial situation isn’t thinking right. Yes, some people may, but I hope, not too many.

2) Pornography in general: Again, there will be some minority of people who cannot distinguish reality from pornography. BY guess, however, is that most pornography aficionados are viewing porn for entertainment, escape, and erotic stimulation. They aren’t seeing porn because they have set as their personal goal to have a long schlong or to bed 20 women (or men) in a single night. (of course, there are always exceptions)

So in both cases, rational people realize that there is a difference between what is on the screen and their own personal lives.

In a word, yes.

@marinelife why do feel this way?

Media as a whole has been proven to cause unrealistic ideals and body dissatisfaction among male and females.

Simply by advertising a specific product or showing a stereotypical model can cause people to question their apperance.

It’s all about psychological priming.

I feel it is a double edge sword yes some of us are able to distinguish between fantasy and reality however, does the definition of a woman consists of a female with long hair and dresses feminine? same goes for a male does it consists of a male who physically cut and is driven by masculine hormones?

I know individuals who are judged by their appearance, based on the whole “sex sells” phenomenon.

I don’t see media, or adult entertainment, encouraging unrealistic expectations. They portray unrealistic situations in many instances, but I don’t see how that would cause a consumer of this type of entertainment to all of the sudden believe that they should expect to ever be in the same situation, with the same results, that they see portrayed. I mean, in non-adult entertainment, would you have expectations based on characters in a sitcom? How is a sitcom or drama any different than adult entertainment? I don’t buy the premise.

@zander101

1. Physical body types of the people pictured are unrealistically thin or muscled. Not to mention tanned with white teeth and perfect hair.

2. Settings shown are unrealistically wealthy.

3. Relationships shown are shown either without flaws or hopelessly disfunctional.

@marinelife would you also add in, the way a specific gender is supposed to dress?

American media does promote unrealistic expectations. @zander101 hit the nail on the head. If people knew how long those people spend in hair and make-up to look like that (or how much air brushing is done on photos) they would feel a lot better about themselves.

I would just add that American media also makes people over a certain age invisible. If you watch British TV, you will find a lot more people over age 40 doing more interesting things than playing second fiddle to the teen-aged stars.

Also annoying – men are rarely paired with women who are their actual ages and in Hollywood movies, most parents have their kids in their early twenties (and are wildly successful) unlike most successful people I know today.

BTW, yes, this is a pet peeve of mine.

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. Porn has little to do with janky expectations in relationships. The regular media and books do quite well on their own. In more movies than I can name in the end the hero/heroine ends up with the person of their heart. When there is a couple together they hardly have fights, especially not real world drag out fights. The worse infighting I can remember between spouses in a movie was Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and that was over-the-top; I guess the idea they were trying to put a ”hit” on each other had something to do with it. Media says that somehow when the hero/heroine overcomes, they will get the apple of their eye; Peter Parker gets MJ, Keanu Reeves character gets Sandra Bullock in Speed, and Trinity in the Matrix, etc. etc. Break ups are never really break ups because more times than not, somehow by the end of the movie, events have occurred to show them they should take the other back or that they needed or should be in the relationship because they seen something they had not seen previously.

With porn, at least when I actively viewed it, it was never real, the situations are such that made it unlikely to ”just happen” in normal life, it was all about the fantasy.

Of course. Film sex is rarely like any real sex except when people are trying to imitate it. There’s also a massive focus on physical appearance, and film protrayals tend to be industry-manufactured and competing with each other for body image ideals, with staffs of make-up artists and hair stylists and lighting experts and body doubles and film editors and Photoshoppers (probably even CGI by now) etc.

It’s not just polished but it’s extremely superficial and generally misses most of what’s going on in relationships and sexuality. I suppose that’s somewhat realistic in that many people also are that way, but the people create what happens in a film, and if they don’t get it, then that’s an extra level of unawareness compared to the unawareness in actual people.