Marriages and Families - No Cinderella Story

In the two videos, the mate selection practices were dramatically different. They both viewed the coming together of relationships and the image of sex in very different ways. To begin, in “No Cinderella Story” the teens and young adults all thought that love and sex would be like a fairytale, but they suddenly realized that those fairytale rules did not apply to them and that love is no longer a focus, sex is. Sex is the main focus of mate selections in Staten Island compared to the force of mate selections in Kyrgyzstan. In “No Cinderella Story,” many of the teens had said that waiting for sex until you’re older is unrealistic; kids keep engaging at a younger and younger age. I feel that this view has a lot to do with the media and how sex is being portrayed. Sex is being made to look like if you’re really young, engaging in sex isn’t a bad thing and it can do no harm. I also noticed in the video that a lot of the teens were showing a lot of skin, giving a more sex appeal to their image. I think that the media has had a role on appearance in young teens as well, showing that the more skin you display, the “sexier” you’ll look and feel, attracting more partners. This image of sex and the power it has on choosing mates is something that isn’t even considered in “The Kidnapped Bride.” Their image was focused more on being covered up and not showing off a bunch of skin; the attraction of mates is very diverse between these two videos.

Also in “No Cinderella Story” most of the teens and young adults were not concerned with romance in any way. Throughout the video, some boys had said that they didn’t want a commitment and friends with benefits was the way to go, and seemed to be the way they selected their mates. The term “friends with benefits” meant being able to have sex with a person whenever they desired, without having any commitment to that person. In their society, sex was a thing that every teen and young adult drew attention to. Since there was “nothing else to do” sex was their fallback; “it’s ok to hook up with different people.” One of the girls in the video had said that 75% of the time, the girl feels more and wants more from the guy, but she won’t say anything. I think that this prospective can relate to the Evolutionary Perspective; females want a male to commit, someone to protect them, provide for them, and stay with them, whereas men want access to more and more females, not just one. So when it came to selecting a mate, the men followed the evolutionary perspective, focusing largely on physical intimacy and less on attachment and feelings, unlike in “The Kidnapped Bride,” where the men wanted to be with one girl, and marry quickly, drifting away from the evolutionary perspective. In both videos though, the term ‘romance’ seemed to be out of the picture. The emphasis appeared to be on just having someone and not really loving them in a passionate, intimate way. Also, feelings were mostly dominated by the men, and the women didn’t have a say about their own feelings in both videos, which is not going to lead to very healthy relationships, as research as shown, because relationships are more stable and more satisfying if both parties have the ability to communicate and understand each other’s behaviors, relating to the social learning theory.