The Importance Of Hooking Up In The Media

This project discusses a scene in the film Friends with Benefits. In this particular scene, Jamie (Mila Kunis) and Dylan (Justin Timberlake) decide to stop looking for serious relationships and take an interest in engaging in hooking up instead. Hooking up can be defined as “a casual sexual encounter outside of a romantic or committed relationship” (Herdt & Polen-Petit, 2014, p. 83). Jamie and Dylan negotiate the logistics of their relationships and end up taking an oath to have a purely sexual and unromantic relationship. The portrayal of their sexual relationship is inaccurate and unrealistic because it downplays the physical and emotional consequences hookup relationships can have, does not show the negative impacts hooking up can have on future relationships, and disregards the importance of pair bonding between …show more content…
The American Academy of Pediatrics takes this claim further by arguing that young individuals who are exposed to media containing hooking up behaviors and attitudes are more likely to view hooking up as ideal. This can lead young individuals into taking part in sexual activities similar to the popular portrayals (as cited in Strasburger, 2010). In a study conducted by Kunkel et al. (2005), it was found that 20% of sexual relationships portrayed on television involved characters who knew each other but were not in a relationship, and 15% of characters on television have sexual relations after meeting each other for the first time (as cited in Garcia, 2012). This scene from Friends with Benefits is a suitable example to validate Kunkel et al.’s (2005) findings. Despite hardly knowing each other, the characters Jamie and Dylan believe that it is perfectly acceptable to pursue sexual relations with no strings attached. Hooking up has become more acceptable and normalized in today’s society, as illustrated in the Friends with Benefits