About five years ago when my online dating activity was at its peak, and I spent at least as much time checking OKCupid as I did checking Facebook, I didn’t have a profile photo. Nothing.

I had previously had a profile furnished not just with a picture of my face but a couple of online dating photo ‘action shots’, by which I mean ‘pictures of me in a pub drinking’ and one awkwardly posed ‘full body’ shot. Because having just one photo meant I got messages from people asking for more. They kept asking, though, and eventually I got rid of all the photos – roughly around the time I started this blog.

When you don’t have a profile photo, most of the messages you get will be from people demanding one.

“What do u look like?”

“I won’t date u without a pic.”

“How do I know you’re not a man tho lol.”

They will explain to you, in patronising terms, that you will get far more responses with a photo. Like they think you simply forgot, and you’ll slap your forehead and go “Of COURSE! Thank you kind stranger for telling me what OKCupid tries to tell me every FUCKING TIME I log in!”

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Guys guys guys guys guys you’ll never guess what, right? Real women have curves.

They do, you know. They have curves and faces and they are three-dimensional.

According to some magazines, they also have a ‘pre-sex ritual.’ 

Real women. REAL women. It is very important that you know this, for some reason. VERY IMPORTANT INDEED. For you must be able to identify the Real Women from the Women Who We Have Decided For Some Reason Are Not Real.

Real women shave their bikini lines, and simultaneously do not shave their bikini lines, like Schroedinger’s muff.

Real women eat brownies and are also ‘gluten-free’ and they shop in the sales and they laugh at crap telly.

Reel women like fish.

Real women have lipstick smears on their teeth and are half-cut on Christmas brandy that they found in the back of their Mum’s cupboard when they were visiting home for Christmas.

Real women don’t care if they have boyfriends.

Real women are married and will have children because that is the law.

Real women are composed entirely of dust, electrified into motion in a vaguely corporeal shape.

Real women hide their tentacles from strangers, for modesty.

Réal women like football.

Real women fly, but only at heights below 1000 feet, and only if they feel like it and they aren’t busy watching Bargain Hunt.

Real women prefer Cadbury’s Roses to crappy Nestle Quality Street and we will fight you for the caramel barrels.

Real women are solid at room temperature, but liquefy at 38 degrees centigrade, which is why we have separate saunas at the gym.

Real women – the ones who have curves – can tell you the exact equation of any given curve should you wish to reproduce it on a graph.

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Are you interested in sex? Do you enjoy the fact that humans have sex in different ways, with a number of different people, in a variety of interesting positions? If someone tells you about a cool new sex game or a fetish that’s new to you, is your first reaction to go ‘ooh, wow! That sounds interesting please tell me more’?

You might want to be a sex writer.

If any of the above things have made you recoil slightly, a frown of disgust on your face, or made you feel like you should hammer out a comment about how some people are just ‘sick’, ‘creepy’ or ‘gross’? Then I cannot stress this enough, but please:

do not become a sex writer. 

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