The psychology of a profile picture, aka TELL ME I'M PRETTY

No.

Everyone knows that you're not going to have any success on a dating site without a profile photo.  But what exactly makes up the "perfect" profile photo?

I have tried many, MANY photos and it honestly blows my mind at what gets the most responses.  For my new 2012 profile I took what I thought was one of the better pics I'd taken in my lifetime, did some enhancing (not of my boobs, I have SOME dignity left.), and thought damn, I didn't even look this good on prom night circa 2004.  It's gonna be rainin' men on me!

Also no.

Sadly, no.  Maybe TWO dudes a day were looking at my profile.  TWO?!  This was far less than my raging narcissism could handle so I changed it up.  I put in a new year's eve photo where I am wearing a particularly fetching dress.  I thought it would zero in on my face that was ever so coyly tipped toward the camera and voila, the boys would come running.

Well, unfortunately the dating site compressed my entire (very tall) body into one tiny thumbnail and I resembled....heck I can't even think of a metaphor to explain what I resembled because I was essentially shapeless.  And wouldn't you know it, I got 38 views in AN HOUR.

This lends itself to my wholly unscientific opinion that men want what they can't have.  I mean, they couldn't even SEE me and I was seeing more profile action than Whitney Houston has seen drug dealers.

Yet the photos men choose boggle my mind and again just illustrates the differences between the sexes.  Lots of blurry shots, iphone mirror shots, and, my particular favorite (or lack thereof, as I'm too afraid to click on his profile) is a guy who's dressed as Hellboy, with horns and all.  The only acceptable reason for choosing that picture is because you're in witness protection and I don't think the FBI (or whoever runs that program) would let you sign up for online dating.

OKCupid has posted a much more scientific study of the phenomenon of the profile picture, if you're interested.  I may stick with my anonymous blob picture because compared to that mess all of my additional pictures make me look like Cindy Crawford.

You know, men and women are a lot alike in certain situations. Like when they’re both on fire – they’re exactly alike,
LL