You can’t just go to the dance (in this case, the dating site Plenty of Fish), grab a girl, and flail around, arms and legs all akimbo. There are rules and as the new guy, I had to learn them pretty quickly. I joined the site and was bombarded with a thousand profile questions. I wanted none of it, but answer you must. If you want to know how i answered, my profile here mirrors my profile there.
After I joined, I had to enter some photos of myself. Once you insert a picture, you’re really putting yourself out there for everyone to see. This made me very nervous, because I knew despite what everyone says, it’s your looks that hook ’em or sink you. Despite this foreknowledge, I basically picked any 4 pics out of my album on the phone. I think my only criteria when I picked them was that they be fairly clear. Oh, and one of them showed me hiking-it was taken in the fall, I had a beard and and wore a tweed bucket-style hat. I thought it made me look like a health-conscious hiker. I was told later by a very nice woman who helped me revamp my profile, that it, in fact, made me look like a lost hermit. In one of the other pics, I was probably 15 pounds lighter then my present weight and clean-shaven. I looked gaunt and sickly, but I thought I was giving my viewers a variety of my possible looks. Instead I was asked repeatedly if my pictures were even of the same person. My lady friend demanded I get rid of them. I don’t know why I’m helping you enhance your profile, she said, it’s just more competition.
What I learned eventually was that height is extremely important. In fact, I’ve heard 5’11” is the magic height you don’t want to fall below. As I’ve heard, many men enhance their height. I could never understand this because your ultimate goal is to meet the woman. She’s going to realize you’re a member of the lollipop guild. You don’t have to blare it, but probably better not to hide the pertinent facts. As luck would have it, I am 6′ tall. I have been asked many times if i am really that tall. I am. I have flaws aplenty, but not in this one area.
Weight or body type. This category is fraught, fraught I say, with unseen hazards. If it was a map from the old days, it would be the area saying, Here be monsters. Sail here at your own risk. I had a friend once tell me he knocked on the door of a woman’s house. A woman he had texted and chatted up for a couple of weeks before going for a date. She had “average body” as her chosen body type and swore she had a terrific body. The woman who answered the door was enormous. This was not weight that could be explained with a week of overeating. My friend, understandably confused, tried very hard to peek around the woman to see if his date might be behind her. Ultimately, we are going to meet and the jig will be up.
So here are the PoF choices on body type: thin, athletic, average, a few extra pounds, big &tall/bbw. I put myself down as average. This seemed like the safe choice. In my profile, I added that I thought I was fairly fit, but not to expect washboard abs. The body type choices leave a lot of room for interpretation and from what I’ve seen, many women (and I’m sure men) take poetic license. Often times, women will ask me for a recent pic. I take one on the spot and send it. Like me, hate me. Here I am.
We all present the person we want others to see, maybe it’s the person we see in our mind’s eye. Maybe it’s the person we might be given two weeks notice or it’s the person we were six months ago. It’s rarely a perfect reflection and I guess that’s okay. I take it all with a grain of salt. I read one woman’s profile and she said, “If you show up looking nothing like your picture, you’re paying for the drinks until you do.” I like that attitude. I may not emulate it, but I like it.
To be continued>
The Last First Kiss 