Hey Cinder,
Totally cool thread idea!!!
The people who've known me here for a long time know that while I do consider myself a romantic at heart, I'm very much "anti-media" romance. I hate most romance movies, books, etc., because I find them too unrealistic.
This is just my own personal opinion, but I do think women have to be careful with these kinds of stories because of how far removed from reality they really are. I personally feel that they feed into a culture of dissatisfaction--"Why can't I find some handsome guy who's going to sweep me off my feet, adore me forever, and buy me everything I could want?" are dangerous ideas to regularly feed into your heart and mind.
The problem is that the line between fantasy and expectations are so easy to become blurred.
Let's talk realness for a minute here. The man who regularly watches porn starts to get "ideas"--"Why can't my wife look like that, or why can't I find someone who looks like that?" "Why can't I find a woman to service my every whim like the ones in these movies do?" "Why won't my wife have sex with me in 83 different positions and scenarios like the women in these films are so willing to do?" And it just feeds a constant cycle of growing unrealistic expectations, dissatisfaction, depression, and the fantasy that someone who fits these ideas really does exist (and can be found.)
It's the same thing for women. Movies like "50 Shades of Grey" (which I'm doubting many men chose to go see) feed into this idea that some rich, amazingly good-looking guy is going to somehow find plain Jane you, be completely smitten, and court you in his own private helicopter.
(NO, I didn't see the movie--the previews were more than enough for me.) And so, we spend our lives demanding that some poor guy try to meet all these expectations... watch him "fail"... then loudly complain that "there are no good men out there."
Unfortunately, I also think the Christian culture has a way of exacerbating unrealistic expectations as well: "I'm a child of the King, and He wants ONLY THE BEST for me!!"
Human as we are, we have a tendency to then translate this as, "Because I serve a perfect God who wants THE VERY BEST for me, He is going to send me someone PERFECT, just like Him."
We all know this isn't how life really works. But, due to the way we often misconstrue the things we take in, all too often, this is what we expect... and then wonder why everything comes crashing down around us.