Do I really have to talk about this?

I'm afraid I do.

I don't usually get into other pieces of my life here, but it's all twisted up in body stuff, so I will. I'm single and heterosexual. I do the online dating thing. I don't particularly like it, but I don't really have other places to meet men, so it's what I do. One of the horrifying things about online dating is that you can see right there in black and white that many, many men are very specific about what you need to look like to date them. Mostly, they don't want you to be fat. Some of them want to date someone between 5" and 6" but not over 130 pounds. Do they know what 130 pounds would look like on a 6" woman. Well, obviously not, since she'd be dead. Anyway, they're not all like that and while it does hurt my feelings sometimes, I am also aware that (at every size I've been) I am like most people in the world: some people will find me attractive and some people won't. Frankly, I have no interest in dating someone who doesn't find me attractive.

Only this weird things is happening where my body is changing and I look different and I had this online profile with a picture of me (a picture I like -- wind is blowing my hair in my face and I am laughing at something my little sister is telling me and I look like myself) and it no longer represents what I look like. So I changed the picture. I posted the one I mentioned awhile back. It's a nice picture. I am laughing at my nephew. I look like myself. And I suppose I look more accurately like myself now.

A few days ago, someone wrote to me, asked if I wanted to chat, said he'd like to know more about me. I'm usually wary when they don't say anything more specific than that, but I looked at his profile and he actually sounded like someone I'd like -- we had some interests in common, he sounded like a grown-up, he sounded kind -- so I said hello, mentioned that we had the same favorite book and said, "Ask me anything." He responded by asking me out to coffee. Sure. I'm all about a face-to-face meeting. I believe you learn very little by corresponding with someone you haven't met. So we made a plan to meet tomorrow morning and he asked if I'd send him another picture, "...just to be on the safe side." I assumed he wanted to be sure he recognized me. But then I had this dilemma: I don't have another recent picture. I have a handful of pictures I've used before -- the one that shows me laughing at my sister and two or three others -- but in all of them I am somewhere between 25 and 50 pounds heavier than I am now. I look different. And apparently the way in which I look different is a big deal to a lot of men. Ugh. I am at the same time vain, wanting to send a picture of me right now, not just thinner but fitter, happier, more at ease in my skin -- I think all of those things make a difference --and I am resentful that it makes a difference. I like those older pictures. I think I look good in them. Why should I not send a picture in which I look good? In any case, I didn't have the option of another new picture, so I sent an older one. In it, I'm about 25 pounds heavier than I am now, which is about 18 pounds heavier than I was in the picture he's already seen. I refused to mention the change in my size, but I did say that I didn't have another recent picture and that this one was a few years old.

I got an email from him ten minutes later: "I've changed my mind, sorry. Good luck."

I feel so icky about the whole thing. I mean, he's being horribly rude. No one has ever done that to me before in years and years of online dating. And I find it odd that anyone could take a picture so seriously -- I've done this enough to know that people just look different in person. I never know if I'm attracted to someone until I meet him. Part of me, even though I now hate this man and would never want to date him, is still insulted and kind of hurt. I don't like to think of myself as so unattractive that I'm not worth an hour in a coffee shop. I don't like to think that someone would find me attractive now or sometime in the future when I'm thinner than I am now, but would be repelled by a photo of me taken 25 pounds ago. I absorb that. I feel shame. I hate that I can still feel that.