Perhaps it's because I run in circles that are more, eh, socially awkward than others (read: nerds), but I thought this article had a lot of interesting things to say about wish fulfillment, and why even films are NOT obvious wish fulfillment (like the indie darling "500 Days of Summer") may be damaging to a guy's evolving sense of reality and how to get girls.
Sample quote:
"All Tom does is want. And, in this movie, wanting is enough. All Tom needs to do is pine away in his apartment, listening to Magnetic Fields and sketching I.M. Pei knockoffs and wishing that he had a girl as perfect as Summer. And then he gets her! Bam! Through no effort of his own. He just stares at her, slack-jawed, until she falls for him.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, this is not realistic. Nor is it unrealistic in an encouraging way. The moral of (500) Days of Summer is that all you have to do is want a girl and she’ll be yours. Maybe not forever, but for long enough to be memorable. You don’t have to be smart, or compassionate, or a good provider, or a reliable partner, or drop dead sexy. You just need to wish really, really hard."
[url=http://www.overthinkingit.com/2010/03/03/weak-male-characters]Why Weak Male Characters Are Bad For Women | Overthinking It[/url]