Love At First Swipe? The Risks of Tinder Judging
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Lots of girls make Tinder choices based on a guy’s fashion or home style…but beware, ladies! Looks can be deceiving.
My 32-year old friend Mara, a nonprofit executive, recently went on a date with a guy she matched with on Tinder. “He was cute,” she told me, “and he was wearing a Beyonce T-shirt, and I love Beyonce.” Did that make her worry he might be gay? To the contrary. “I thought the shirt said that he was a strong-lady-loving hipster,” she told me.
So she went out with him for drinks. He was cute and straight, alright–and also a total jerk. “He told me he hoped he got home early enough to connect with his coke dealer,” she said. “He took a call from his mom and then talked about how she smothers him. He said his sister was doing probation for drugs but should really be in prison. And he talked shit about our mutual friend.” She stayed for one more drink because he was “so entertaining.” But that was the end of that.
Mara’s not the only woman this has happened to in our image-driven Age of Tinder, Hinge, Meld (for black professionals) and even old-fashion sites like OKCupid. Of course, once upon a time (and even still now, occasionally), the first impression we got of someone–in a bar or at a party, say–was superficial, about looks and style. But in short order, voice, body language and interpersonal skills filled in the picture.
These days, when you’re Tinder-swiping, and especially as folks increasingly forego profile text and let pictures do all the talking, the only thing you’ve got to go on is the pic of that good-looking guy with on-trend hair and clothes beaming confidently in a variety of high-end vacation locales…or that total schlump with the blurry bathroom pic, overgelled hair, iPhone concealing half their face and baggy “ironic"Beverly Hills 90210 Tshirt that’s probably hiding a dadbod. The first-impression power of the so-called Tinder “primary photo” can be strong enough to make ladies swipe right on a photogenic future douchebag, or left on digitally mediocre future boyfriend or husband material.
And the quandary is especially tough for self-professed fashion and design snobs. "Khakis and trainers [sneakers] together are an absolute no for me,“ says Kirra Cheers, 27, an Australian photographer living in New York who recently did a project where she photographed a series of her Tinder dates. "When I first arrived in the U.S., all I saw were guys in khakis, trainers and checked shirts. I really don’t like guys wearing oversize untucked dress shirts, either. And hair that’s the traditional short in the back and on the sides is kind of boring for me, too."
For Brooklyn-based author Elizabeth Cline, the dealbreaker is sunglasses. "I reject men based on them,” she says. “If I see wraparound Oakleys, that’s not going to be someone who likes documentaries and cold brew and world travel.” For her, it has to be “Ray-Bans or a certain kind of aviators or maybe a round John Lennon–style in yellow or mustard. Sunglasses are a specific language,” she says.
And don’t even get certain women started on background imagery, which can be as make-or-break as hair and clothes. Erica Buddington, 26, a New York educator who also writes a dating column for the blog Madame Noire, says she looks for culture markers like shelves loaded with good books, Basquiat prints, globes and maps. “I also like guys whose places are very military-style, neatly folded, extra white and clean,” she says. But God forbid she sees piles of clothes and pizza boxes lying around. “I’m OCD so I just can’t do that."
Such snap judgments might sound finicky, but according to Julie Spira, an online dating expert, they’re understandable. "You have a split second before you swipe right or left to make a decision, so anything that could be a turn-off in a primary photo will result in women swiping left,” she says. “I’m baffled by men that will use a gorilla in their primary photo. Sure, there’s a license on Tinder to be goofy and stupid,” she says, but it shouldn’t go in the first shot women see.“
So what do they want to see? Of course, women’s tastes differ, so it’s not as easy as saying they want to see clean-cut preppy guys, indie hipster guys, regular bro-y guys or super-fashionable Zoolander guys. An inordinate amount of women I talked to for this story said that a guy who’s pulled together in J. Crew can’t go wrong.
"I don’t know know any girl who wouldn’t love to see her boyfriend or husband with a closetful of J. Crew,” says Megan Collins, who advises men what to wear on her blog Style Girlfriend, where she has tackled this Tinder taste issue before. “You can dress it up or down. A pair of chinos or dark-rinse jeans with an oxford cotton button-down always flatters you.” (Her other can’t-go-wrong shopping sources for guys include Bonobos and East Dane and, for shoes, Clarks and Johnston & Murphy.
Another huge plus point? A dog. “I don’t think I’ve had a girlfriend swipe left on a guy holding an adorable puppy,” says Collins. (Adorable nieces and nephews can work the same way…just make sure they’re not in the primary photo.) Also a plus for those who are comfortable rocking it? A well-tailored contemporary suit, in a photo that was perhaps taken at a wedding or other dress-up event.
So what do most women consider Tinder turn-offs? The bathroom shirtless selfie–or endless selfies, for that matter. “It suggests narcissistic qualities that I find really unattractive,” says Cheers. Recently, she said, she was matched with a male style blogger. “All his photos were of just him. His hairstyle alone had to be an hourlong process in the morning."
Women also seem to hate it when men wear baseball caps that conceal if they’re bald, baggy clothes that look frumpy but also withhold a good read on physique–if you’ve got a nice body, wear fitted clothes to subtly suggest it, says Spira–and lack of a full-body group shot that gives some indication as to a man’s height. They also don’t like pics of guys with other women, unless the woman is clearly his mom or sister.
When it comes to backgrounds, picky ladies hate selfies taken in cars. "That’s a big thing out here,” says Jaz, 35, a writer who just moved to L.A. from New York. “You can’t even see the car, just the backseat and headrest, which looks dumb!” They also hate dimly lit home-interior shots that reveal cheap furniture. “If your whole house is Ikea, take a picture outside,” says Spira.
On the flip side, showing off a little interior luxury doesn’t hurt. “If I can see your oak desk or your bed nicely made up with good sheets that look like they’re a 600 thread count, or your modern metal kitchen counter that looks like the Apple store in Palo Alto, that makes me think, ‘Oh, he cares about stuff like that,’” says Sasha Muradali, who writes the Little Pink Blog in New York.
But just remember, all is not always as it meets the eye. Buddington learned as much when she sniffed at pics of a good-looking guy because he seemed to be just hanging around his ‘hood–in the bodega, shirtless on the basketball court, sitting on a police car. “I didn’t want to make a judgment, but I was like, 'Oh, you’re home all day?” she laughs. “He wrote back very eloquently, 'You ladies never give us a chance.’ So I apologized and we hung out that same day. It turned out he was a cop, a detective, and we dated for six months."
Then again, sometimes the reality does match the picture–and the results can be heartbreaking. Muradali remembers how nice that finance VP looked in his picture. They started dating. The problem wasn’t that he was some kind of James Spader douchebag or Patrick Bateman American Psycho. "He turned out to be just as nice, smart, handsome and intelligent as he looked,” she says.
Which made it all the more painful when he dumped her after several weeks. “One day we were sitting on his couch watching TV,” she recalls, “and one topic led to another and he finally said he felt that we weren’t something he thought he wanted. I cried and he hugged and kissed me and said he wanted to stay friends. It was a really nice way to break up with someone."
Muradali pauses. "Either that or a really shitty way, because he was being so nice about it!"
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