So why the stereotype of men - especially young men - as oversexed dogs? According to Smiler, media messages have a huge influence: all those songs, all those men we assume are both successful and promiscuous, he posits, are driving pressure on men to get their numbers up whether or not it's a real reflection of what they want from sex and relationships. But we must also consider to what extent media representations are inaccurate. Just because someone says they have loads of sex partners doesn't make it true, in the same way that singers going on about the "money piling up" aren't often found in the Rich List. It's a front, a kind of social success of equivalent of the women who like to appear sexually available but in fact are not, or at least, not to the vast majority of their audience.