Romantic Comedies can be Romantic Pornography

An interesting take from an Evangelical Protestant website. In my opinion, the article hits the nail on the head on how men need to be men and how the expectation of women can warp men into something they aren't.
A snip:

When you’ve seen one romantic comedy you’ve of course seen them all. There is some level of confusion involving a wonderful woman and an idiotic man. He doesn’t know how romantic he really is until the wonderful woman shows him the way and reveals his fabulous, sensitive, romantic side that was aching to get out all along we find. He so wants to talk about his feelings, just like her best girlfriends! Who knew? Romantic man finally realizes he cannot live without said woman, and pursues her in an ever-so-sensitive if bumbling way. There seems to typically be a fountain involved at some point.

If it’s all not quite “magic,” it sure is fantasy.

That’s where the pornography comes in. Just as sexual pornography twists an understanding for men about real women’s bodies and sexual appetites, so romantic pornography twists the perception for women about real men and how they “ought” to behave toward women, which tends to amount to, well, behaving like a woman. I have a dear friend who once didn’t like a fellow I was dating. Among other shortcomings, he didn’t arrange spa treatments for me, she explained. Seriously. No more chick flicks for that girl.
Continue Reading.

There certainly is a danger in the over-romanticism of masculinity. A man is not wired like a woman. So, to expect a man to act, think, love, feel, or perceive things as a woman does is to fail to accept who a man truly is.

Are there are a lot of guys who could be more romantic in their relationships. Yes. But, to try and make every man into Mr. Darcy and every date into a romantic comedy is to fail to love the men God has put in women's lives for who they are - without trying to change them or compare them to the romantic ideal of what a woman thinks a man should be.