A thousand words, huh?

So, on Monday morning, I got dressed knowing it would be the day to have a friend at work take my picture for my e-Harmony online profile.  I bought a new sweater over the weekend, put on some nice jeans and my awesome wood heel wedges (but of course) and off I went.  I didn’t need this picture to say a thousand words… I just needed it to say three: good, thin and date-able (cute would also be a totally acceptable fourth word).

The morning was non-eventful and I spent my entire lunch making sure I didn’t spill anything on my sweater (which would have caused me to abort the whole mission).  Then, finally, in the early afternoon, my friend was ready, so I put on some lipgloss, and out we went on to the balcony that overlooks the Bay Bridge.  And when I say “we,” I mean me, my friend and one really fancy camera.   This camera, no joke, has magical powers, because she routinely takes pictures of people and they ALWAYS turn out nice (which could be the magical powers of the camera or the magical powers of Photoshop, but who cares, as long as the picture turns out good). 

We took lots of pictures… against the brick wall, with the bridge in the background, with the city view in the background, in the sun, in the shade – we basically covered about every square inch of this balcony and I’m just really glad that there wasn’t a meeting going on in the conference room that overlooks it.  When were done, she downloaded the potential “good/thin/date-able” pics and I got to see what I was working with.  As me and a few other friends perused the pics, we eliminated the ones that looked “like a mugshot” (definitely not date-able), the ones that had ghastly shadows over my face (definitely not good) and anything that didn’t look acceptably thin-ish. There was even one lovely picture with my eyes closed because you absolutely can’t take a series of pics without at least one of those. 

And, so, after all that… I picked three good shots.  Two close up and one full-body, because according to my friend, “they don’t care about what you look like, they just want to see your ass.”  I got home and uploaded the pics to my profile.  Then, I plunked down my $134.85 for my 3-month membership and I eagerly went back to the “My Matches” page to actually see the pictures of my computer-generated matches.

Turns out “My Matches” were a completely mixed bag.  I clicked through, one by one, and here are some of the “thousand words” that their pictures were saying…

·         “I think I’m really hot” (this guy was standing in front of a mirror in a bike tank top and shorts, taking his own picture).

·         “I think that women will be totally turned on by a completely inappropriate picture” (this guy was holding a large phallic-shaped object in front of himself in a very suggestive way – ewwww).

·         “I think this dirty bandana on my head will make me look very stylish” (um, no...) (eye roll)

·         “I think a group picture is perfect to post because women will have no problem knowing which one is me” (um, no, actually, I have no idea which one is you).

·         “I think I will look more date-able if I post pictures of me with women” (yeah, date-able to the women in the pictures)

·         “I think women will find me very adventurous if I include pictures of me skydiving and scuba diving” (adventurous yes, but I can’t really tell what you look like).

But I have to say that my favorite pictures (OK, maybe not favorite, but at least they made me laugh), were the “I have this old picture of me and my ex, and I’ll just crop her out of it and nobody will notice” pictures.  OK, first of all, you can TOTALLY tell that there should be more than just one person in that picture, and second, when you can see someone’s hair or arm, it’s a dead giveaway. 

Anyway, I do have to report that there were some cuties in my mix.  I even got my nerve up to send a few “ice breakers” out.  BTW, an ice breaker is where you can send one of several pre-selected (although somewhat canned) messages to someone like “I just wanted to say hi” or “Your profile made me smile.”  Who knows if I’ll hear back, but at least I’m giving it a try, huh?

So there you have it, my profile is complete, including a few pictures.  Let’s hope those pictures, albeit worth a thousand words apiece, can help me find happiness and love.  Here’s to finding happily ever after… for the bargain price of $134.85.