Dear Men … we want to date the real you … warts and all.

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I am not the first person to complain about misrepresentation via online dating.

Sure, it sucks when someone says they’re 5’10 and end up being 5’4″.

Sure, it sucks when you meet a person and they’ve somehow dramatically put on fifty pounds in one day.

But, as I was swiping left and right looking for a date I remembered how personal ads used to work.

One would write up a short description about oneself, something like:

SWF, 30, pixie cut, 5’7″, fit, loves to read, write, drink beer. Looking for someone who doesn’t ski, who can handle dry humor and knows how to drive a stick.

That gives some info, but there’s absolutely no indication of what my face looks like or what I actually mean when I say that I’m “fit.”

You can’t tell if I’m a hipster or a sorority girl, a mom, a meth head, a stripper or a saint.

Then, once the ad goes live via news print, like on actual paper, who knows how long one would have to wait to hear a reply.

Today, it’s instantaneous.

Plus, we now have access to all sorts of information—even Tinder gives more info than the old personal ad format did.

Pictures can indeed say 1000 words, that’s why I always swipe left on certain ones.

For example, I don’t like “fish” pics. To me they indicate that the person doesn’t really care about life, as in, the life of other creatures on the planet; the person thinks that by offering the pic, he’s proving his ability to provide, in a very subconscious caveman sort of way; and that basically, he’s a basic bro.

Or, what my friend has recently termed, “the domestic dick.”

But that’s just my opinion; there are plenty of people out there who like those pics as there are people who don’t—and that’s the beauty of online dating in our current time period.

There’s been a lot of talk about online dating offering too many options; we search and search thinking that there will be something better out there if we just keep looking.

Is that really a bad thing? If we’re wanting something more, if we’re wanting something specific, what’s the harm in that?

Because we can make decisions faster one way or another doesn’t mean we’ve stopped giving people chances; we’re just more adept at knowing what we don’t want.

We’re disappointed in real life when the person doesn’t measure up to expectations because we feel deceived, if we had known they were short or fat or republican when we didn’t want a short fat republican we could have saved both parties the time.

It’s not that women don’t like short guys (or fat guys, or bald guys etc), it’s that we don’t like being lied to—and the false representation on dating profiles is exactly that.

One of the best tips that I ever heard about online dating was from the founder of OK Cupid, who said to “accentuate the weird thing about you,” whether it’s your big nose or your strange ears, whether it’s your peculiar obsession with mac & cheese or desire to hang upside down from the ceiling every evening before bed.

Whatever it is, someone out there will love it and that’s the person you want to be with, not the person who was tricked into going out with you on the pretense that you were tall, dark, and handsomely rich.

I don’t know if there’s really “someone for everyone,” but there are a ton of people on the earth so it’s very likely.

We must embrace who we really are because it’s the only way we’ll find someone we truly want to be with and vice versa.

So if you’re short, be short. If you’re fat, be fat.

If you’re funny, be fucking funny already.

We want the real—you only have a moment to shine so why not make the most of it by showing who you really are?

Warts and all, as they say.

[image: via Pixabay]