Everything you know about online-dating photos is wrong

By: Lesley Ciarula Taylor, Staff Reporter
TheStar.com

 

Everything you ever believed about successful online dating photos is wrong, an online dating site reports.

Smiling into the camera, keeping your shirt on or even making sure your face is visible are not the best way to get results, a survey of 7,000 pictures posted to the online site OKCupid.com found.

For men, the "Internet cliché" ab shot works wonders; for women, cleavage counts, no matter how old you are – up to about 30ish.

"We discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong," site organizers said in the OKtrends blog (blog.okcupid.com).

"Whether you show your face really doesn’t affect your messages at all. We didn’t believe it. But the facts were stubborn: Your face doesn’t necessarily matter. In fact, not showing your face can be a positive, as long as you substitute in something unusual, sexy or mysterious."

But not a pet, if you’re female. A woman holding a dog or cat drops rapidly in responses. It’s even worse than posing with a drink. The reverse is true for men: Posing with an animal is just as good as showing off your abs.

The site measured popularity by how many responses a person got from a posting, using people who were averagely attractive: top- and bottom-end looks were struck off the survey.

Some other myth-busting findings:

For women, smiling is not better. Flirting directly into the camera is. Flirting away from the camera is the worst possible pose. Even online, eye contact matters for women.

For men, the best shot of your face is not smiling and looking away from the camera. Flirting away from the camera is also the worst possible pose.

Women get fabulous response from “the universally maligned MySpace Shot,” the survey reported – the one where you hold your cellphone above your head, look coy and shoot. This, they said, “is the single most effective photo type for women; better, in fact, that straight-up boob pics.”

Men with good abs get the best results when they take their shirts off, but the effect plummets the older they get: great at 19, less so by 31. If you’re ab-less, the survey found, don’t dress up. That gets the worst response.

Unlike men, women don’t suffer a sharp decline in response with a cleavage shot as they age. "A 32-year-old woman showing her body gets only one less message a month than the equivalent 18-year-old; an older woman not showing off gets four messages less."

Finally, "doing something interesting" in the picture, such as playing a guitar, scores much higher than just looking at the camera sexily, the survey found.