How to take the Dream Selfy

Dream selfy. How to win the dating game with the right mug shot. Part 1. Tips for women.

Taking a good selfy is quickly morfing from a passing fad into a core life skill. Whether you want to post an update on facebook or create a profile on a new service, the bar of acceptability just keeps on rising. The dream selfy has become an art form and nowhere is it more important than for internet dating.

In recognition of this, dating-experts have commissioned me to create some dos and don’ts for women when they are looking to create their dream selfy and post it onto their dating profile. The research was tough. First download the Tinder app, then spend a happy afternoon swiping through the offerings within a five mile radius of Earls Court - first impressions only – then record my thoughts.

Tinder feels pretty superficial when you first open it up, but you quickly realise the hollowness of this thought. In this new era the mug shot has to say everything. If you want to get involved then you need to accept this and not be coy. When men look at you online, they are going to swipe left or right based principally on what your main profile picture is telling them, so put your best foot forward. Here’s my very personalised list of dos and don’t’s for creating the dream selfy :

Dream selfy ‘dos’:

• Challenge the camera (a bit). Show your no shrinking violet and look directly at the lens.
• Do stuff that boys like. Three highlights from the afternoon include woman at the bookies, woman playing pool, woman watching football.
• Have a drink in you hand. This looks like fun.
• Look a little bit irreverent. A particularly good example was a girl pointing right into the camera with a straight arm and extended finger and a smile on her face.
• Find the picture from your collection that really tells a story you want to project about yourself. Pictures that don’t say anything are not going to get any attention.

Dream selfy ‘don’ts’:

• Look too cute. Sure everybody likes a cute girl, but don’t look wet.
• Show off your sexy body. This just looks cheap – though tempting.
• Use pictures with someone else in them. This looks like you can’t face it out alone and is confusing.
• Look too inanimate. Nobody wants an immobile doll for a girlfriend.
• Put dogs or children in your pic. If these things are important to you, you can bring it up later. Don’t put him off right from the start.
• Look too vampish. ‘Take me now’ poses are going to scare off a lot of the men.

Over the course of the afternoon it started to crystallize in my mind what it was I was looking for in my dream selfy. In a word, it was coolness. Coolness in being with it enough to get the picture right, cool as in looking relaxed and easy going, and cool as in not too boring or executive. Ladies in the sparkly dresses cradling the glass of champagne in an exclusive bar or club - of which there were many - got no likes from me. Similarly it seems especially important within the context of tinder not to look too sexualised. Tinder is scary in the way that it puts you in instant intimate contact with total strangers and a friendly rather than fleshy picture is surely going to get more hits. The pictures I found myself liking were the ones where the girls looked fun, active and assertive, but most of all where they looked assured and comfortable with the selfy medium itself. Simply put, they knew how to take the dream selfy.

Image courtesy of alexisdc/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net