It dawned on me last night that I have, in fact, done the online dating thing before.
Well, sort of.
The year was (wait…let me get out my calculator…) 1999 and AOL was THEE thing. I spent countless evenings listening to that funky dial tone as it tried to connect a shy, overweight sixteen year old to the information super highway. It was on that highway that I met Nate, a nineteen year old guy that I–in my hormonal, teenage way–”fell for” instantly.
We talked for weeks. Flirty emails back and forth. Then late night phone calls. And if you can remember from that era, you didn’t exchange photos right away–you actually had to describe yourself using–gasp!–just words. So, when he asked me how much I weighed, I (surprise, surprise) lied my a$$ off.
And I mean LIED. Like, a thirty pound lie.
When we did exchange photos, I (of course) sent him a very flattering photo of me (good angle, dark lighting, with most of my body cropped out). He, in turn, sent me a photo that matched how he described himself: 6’5″ and a bodybuilder. Nice. Very nice.
So, you can imagine his horror when I showed up for our first meeting. The look on his face said it all: “Who the he!! are you?”
But we “hung out” for about half an hour (during which I realized that the size of his ego was proportional to the size of his biceps). And, needless to say, it was over after that.
Although I know that my weight wasn’t the main reason why Nate and I didn’t work out, the fact that I wasn’t honest about who I was was a contributing factor. Apparently, honesty is crucial when it comes to online dating. And that includes what photos you use in your online dating profile.
Leslie Oren devotes an entire chapter of her book Fine, I’ll Go Online to photos. There is apparently an art to choosing the right ones. She lists what you should NOT do, including: post pictures of yourself with all your beautiful friends, post pictures of yourself that are more than two years old, and post pictures of yourself 20 lbs thinner. It’s the “20 lbs. thinner” part that’s quite difficult to follow. I mean, who doesn’t want to show themselves in a thinner light?
But, like Oren states (and like I found out the hard way), you don’t want to shock the guy. If he’s expecting a size 8 and you show up a size 14, he’s gonna notice. And he’s gonna feel duped.
So, I’ve realized that, before I start this online dating thing, I need to lose 20 (OK, 30) lbs. and then have a photoshoot. Anyone know a good photographer?
