Badly phrased answers award. Ideal would be as equals, but I don't think I would care about social status if I loved her, whether she was a hick or royalty.
I guess my point was there are romance plots in films where they don't belong because of women and they lead to sex scenes because of perverted directors, probably. Maybe I'm a prude but I think a fade to black instead of a sex scene would suffice in 100% of the cases.
It's not for no reason. It's so that women would have some reason to watch movies clearly not made for them. It's very jarring how hamfistedly romance plotlines are shoehorned into older movies because of this.