Your profile photo can make or break your chances at online romance. MarketWatch's Quentin Fottrell has tips on popular mistakes to avoid. Photo: Tinder

GIRL meets boy, they like each other, they go out on a date.

They have a few drinks, he buys her dinner, they stroll home, arm in arm, cuddling. They kiss. All in all, it’s a great evening — except for one problem: the girl, according to the boy, is too fat. And although he just “adores” her, and would “marry her in a shot if she was a slip of a girl”, at the end of the day, and despite her “personality” she’s just ... not skinny enough.

Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, it’s not. It happened to 30-year-old British woman Michelle Thomas, who, after a pleasant Tinder date, received the following message:

Hey Michelle, sorry been super busy at work today hun.

Thanks for a wonderful evening last night. I really enjoyed your company and actually adore you. You’re cheeky and funny and just the sort of girl I would love to go out with if only my body and mind would let me. But I fear it won’t.

I’m not going to bulls — t you ... I f — king adore you Michelle and I think you’re the prettiest looking girl I’ve ever met. But my mind gets turned on by someone slimmer.

Shallow? It’s not meant to be. It’s the same reaction you get when you read a great author or see an amazing image, or listen to a piece of music you love, it has that instant reaction in you that makes you crave more.

So whilst I am hugely turned on by your mind, your face, your personality (and God ... I really, really am), I can’t say the same about your figure. So I can sit there and flirt and have the most incredibly fun evening, but I have this awful feeling that when we got undressed my body would let me down. I don’t want that to happen baby. I don’t want to be lying there next to you, and you asking me why I’m not hard.

There are certain triggers that fire my imagination into life and your wit and intelligence are the beginning of that process which would inevitably end up in the bedroom. With just one result ...

I’m so disappointed in myself Michelle because I’ve genuinely not felt this way about anyone in ages, but I’m trying to be honest with you without sounding like a total knobhead.

We could be amazing friends, we could flirt and joke and adore each other and ... f — k me ... I would marry you like a shot if you were a slip of a girl because what you have in that mind of yours is utterly unique, and I really really love it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to avoid bigger pain in the future by telling you now so we don’t have to go through that embarrassment. I’m a man ... With all the red hot lusts of a man and all the failings of a man and I’m sure of my own body and its needs. Please try and forgive me. I adore you xx

At first, she was shattered.

“When I first received the message I was devastated,” Ms Thomas told News Corp Australia.

“I was on another first date at the time (I’m single, why not, right?). My date went to the loo, so I took out my phone and started checking my texts. By the time he returned I was in floods of tears. Not a great look on a first date!”

Having been in a relationship for six years until about four months ago, Ms Thomas was out of practice with dating — and had never tried online.

But instead of giving up, Ms Thomas decided to fight back by penning the following response on her blog:

Dear Man I Met On Tinder.

“I was on another date when I received your message. He returned from the loo to find me in a flood of tears. He was lovely, but baffled, and hasn’t been in touch since, funnily enough.

You don’t have to fancy me. We all have a good friend who we look at ruefully and think “you’re lovely, but you just don’t tickle my pickle”. We wish we were attracted to them, but our bodies and our brains don’t work like that. And that’s fine.

What isn’t fine is the fact that, after a few hours in my company, you took the time to write this utterly uncalled-for message. It’s nothing short of sadistic. Your tone is saccharine and condescending, but the forensic detail in which you express your disgust at my body is truly grotesque.

The only possible objective for writing it is to wound me.

And I’m ashamed to say, for a few moments, it worked. You stirred a dormant fear that every woman who was ever a teenage girl has — that it doesn’t matter how funny you are, how clever, how kind, how passionate, how loyal, how determined or adventurous or vibrant — if you’re a stone overweight, no one will ever find you desirable.

I like the way I look. I don’t look like Charlize Theron, and that’s fine — I look like me, and I like myself (I’m sure I’d like Charlize Theron, too if I ever met her. I hear good things).

You may think are all my profile pictures are “FGASs” (That’s Fat Girl Angle Shots — pictures from angles that slim and flatter the girl. Because men only ever use candid, brutally-lit, unfiltered pics).

But I think they’re a fair representation. And I’m pretty upfront about who I am: I describe myself as a woman who loves pizza, and include links to my Instagram page, where I have the #everybodysready bikini shots I took on my 30th birthday. I like to think I come across as a confident, happy woman. But could this be the very reason you have targeted me? Did you see me and think: “She has far too high an opinion of herself, she needs bringing down a peg or two”? I have to ask — we all know the internet is a dangerous place to be a woman with opinions (I discovered this first hand when I ventured a response to those obnoxious bloody adverts).

I showed your message to friends who expressed shock, horror, embarrassment on your behalf, and a desire to cause you actual physical harm.

One male friend told me I have a lovely bottom “if unmarriageable”. I laughed with them. Then I cried in my Slimming World group. That’s right! Slimming World! You see, I already KNOW that I’m overweight. I can tell you exactly how overweight I am — 20 pounds. I’ve already lost 15, and I’ve a stone and a half to go. I’m happy with that. I will get rid of it, safely and healthily. Does that mean that I can’t love and enjoy my body now? F** no.*

I’ll never see or hear from you again (you may feel the need to respond to this blog. Please don’t. There’s nothing you can say that will make me think that you’re not a disgrace to your gender).

What truly concerns me, the real reason I’m responding so publicly, is the fact that you have a 13 year old daughter. A talented illustrator, who collects Manga comics and wants to visit Japan as soon as possible.

I want you to encourage your daughter to love, enjoy, and care for her body. It belongs to her and only her. Praise her intellect, and her creativity. Push her to push herself and to be fearless. Give her the tools to develop a bombproof sense of self-esteem so that if (I’ll be kind. I’ll say “if”.) the time comes that a small, unhappy man attempts to corrode it, she can respond as I do now.

Simon.

Kiss.

My.

Exquisitely.

Unmarriageable.

Arse.

P.S. “Slip of a girl”? CHRIST ALIVE, that’s creepy.

P.P.S. You’re not 5’11

Since the blog entry, the letter has gone viral, and Ms Thomas has clearly touched a lot of hearts.

“Just read your blog. All I can say is what a twat!!! I’m certain you have spoken up for a lot of ladies who have been treated the same out there. Thank you. I hope your blog has given women the confidence to stand up for their selves too xxx,” one user wrote.

Another said: “You’re a beaut. Never let a man make you think otherwise”, while a third thought that Ms Thomas was “a gorgeous role model”.

And what does Ms Thomas think about the response?

“[It’s been] overwhelmingly positive. So many women have contacted me to say “me too”,” Ms Thomas told News Corp Australia.

“Many men have contacted me, voicing their concerns about how to ensure their teenage daughters have confidence and self-belief to overcome bullying, and in particular “negging” which is far more insidious.

“One of my good friends is a teacher at a boys’ school, and told me he’s sent the blog to his class full of 15-year-old charges.”

And what about her date? Has she had any contact with him since?

“I emailed him the blog on the night I published it,” Ms Thomas said.

“He wanted to talk about it, but I refused. He asked me to remove it. I refused. I asked him never to contact me again. He has honoured that.”

However, despite the hurtful words, Ms Thomas said she has no intention of revealing who the man is — least of all to his teenage daughter.

“There’s no reason why his daughter should ever know what her father said.

“There are only two people in the world who know who his is — him and me — and it’s going to stay that way,” she told News Corp Australia.

“I chatted to him online for a week, then spent a few hours in his company — from what I can gather he’s an attentive and loving father.

“But I do hope that thinking about the way he wants his daughter to perceive and value herself will positively influence the way he treats any future New Mummies.”

Twitter: @CE_Zielinski

caroline.zielinski@news.com.au