A Picture Says a Little Too Much

I've been an active member of eharmony for about a couple weeks now, and despite my judgmental nature, I'm trying to be open-minded about it.

I do read through each person's profile, because as I mentioned in my last post on online dating, you can tell a lot about a person by what he writes and doesn't write. I like the profiles where the guys write funny and original stuff, especially because so many of the other profiles sound exactly the same. I swear, at least fifty of the matches so far have listed their grandparents as the people who influenced them most. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and it's nice if they really do have good relationships with their grandparents. BUT I often hear some people say how they never hear from their grandkids. So I have to wonder if the guys who claim their grandparents influenced them most used to be the same types of undergrads who used the "sick grandparent" excuse every time their professors chided them for missing class or every time a paper was due in order to get out of turning it in on time. But I digress.

Anyway, I have to admit that the guys' pictures are important, too. If a guy doesn't have his picture up yet, or even worse, has a "request picture" caption on it, then I'm not going to respond if he tries to communicate with me. (Yes, I know that some people can set up a profile without putting up a picture, especially if they haven't paid yet. But I'm talking about guys who are already paying members.) Looks aren't everything, but they do matter to some extent. On the other hand, I've met guys who I thought were attractive at first but then turned into Mr. Hyde after their real (awful) personalities began to emerge. And there are other guys who became even more attractive the more time I spent with them, because they were so nice and so much fun to be around.

(Side note: You might call me a hypocrite because I don't have a picture of my face up on this blog. But there's a DIFFERENCE between not putting my picture on a blog and not putting one up on a dating site, so PBBBBBPTHHH!!!)

Either way, no matter what a guy looks like in his picture, I've been noticing a pattern in the types of pictures that guys put up. On eharmony you can include captions under each of your photos to indicate when and where the picture was taken. But I think that there's a difference between what the picture looks like, what the caption says, what he wants me to think, and what I think he's actually saying.

Here are a few examples:

Guy cradling a baby in his arms:
Guy's caption: Me with my nephew.
What he wants me to think: Look at how good I am with children! I will be a great father someday.
What he could actually be saying: I have no idea who this kid is. I just picked him up because I didn't have a puppy available.

Guy with his arms around two girls who are either hugging him/kissing him on the cheek:
Guy's caption:  Me with my friends, don't worry!
What he could actually be saying: Look how desirable and popular I am. The ladies can't get enough of me.
What I want to say to him: At least crop your ex-girlfriend/female harem out of the picture before you post it.

Guy holding up a glass of champagne in a toast with several of his other guy friends:
Guy's caption: Me and the guys at a friend's wedding.
What he could actually be saying: Look how good I look in a tux! And look how many friends I have!
What I want to say to him: Hmmm, your friends are really cute. Are they on this site too? If we ever meet in person, could you, like, introduce me to one of them?

Guy with his shirt off, flexing his muscles:
Guy's caption: Guess the workouts have been paying off!
What he could actually be saying: Look at my big muscles!
What I want to say to him: Nice. (Or, put your shirt back on! I've suddenly lost the will to see anything!)

Guy posing at the top of a mountain/jumping out of a plane/riding a motorcycle:
Guy's caption: I've always been adventurous.
What he could actually be saying: I'm posing in front of a cardboard cutout.
What I want to say to him: Maybe next time you should take your sunglasses off/not have the picture taken from fifty feet away (it's called a zoom lens, people)/not have the helmet completely cover your face, because I can't see what you look like. (Interestingly enough, a lot of the outdoorsy/adventurous pictures are taken from far away, so in many of the pictures the guy provides, it's hard to see what he actually looks like.)

Guy's driver's license photo (it actually had the words "Driver's license" printed on it)
Guy's caption: (None)
What he could actually be saying: I think that a picture where I'm frowning and look like I'm posing for a mug shot will be very attractive to women.
What I want to say to him: You have GOT to be kidding me.

But on the other hand, the pictures of myself that I have up so far aren't as great as I'd like them to be. But that's for another post. And right now I'm doing the "Guided Communication" thing with one guy, so who knows what could happen...although if I end up with no dates at all, I'll have embarrassed myself in front of a whole blogosphere of people. But then again I publicly embarrass myself on a regular basis, so it's not like it's anything out of the ordinary.