Woman Upset When Dating Match Demands She Remove Filter on Photo and Send Photo of Her Teeth

Photo byAndrea Piacquadio

A woman took to Mumsnet, a British parenting website, to ask for advice about a man she recently met online. She'd been talking to him for a week and a half and he seemed quite keen on her. They set up a date to meet and that's when he suddenly started acting weird.

He asked her to send him a photo of herself without a filter. Worse, he asked for a photo of her teeth.

She canceled the date but then wondered if she was being over-the-top sensitive. His request made her feel very embarrassed.

Most of the respondents to her post declared that absolutely not; she was not being too sensitive. They even advised that she block him.

And yet, the over-filtering of photos does present an issue in today's dating. How can you judge whether you should meet a person or not if you can't even tell what they really look like?

According to a study carried out by Plenty of Fish, a dating website, 70% of singles consider face filters to be deceptive. Fifty-two percent believe filters should be banned from dating apps altogether.

One in four singles feels that using a face filter suggests that someone is pretending to be someone they're not. Twenty-three percent believe filters make a person seem insecure. One in three singles has passed up messaging someone on a dating app because their photos were too heavily filtered.

According to board-certified clinical psychologist and author Dr. Cortney S. Warren:

Singles today are craving greater transparency in dating, with the large majority of singles wanting honest, straight-forward information both from potential partners, as well as in their own self-presentation.

Researchers also found that a man's fixation on a woman's face is not necessarily a bad thing. Studies uncovered that men who only want a short-term relationship are more interested in checking out a woman’s body. On the contrary, men who want long-term love are interested in what a woman's face looks like.

“The face is a signifier of emotion and character,” Roy F. Baumeister, the author of the book, Is There Anything Good About Men?, told The New York Times. He claims that men who want a long-term relationship are also looking for emotional intimacy. As such, they look to a woman's face to determine whether she's capable of deep emotions.

And the teeth thing? As weird as it may sound, teeth are an indicator of many things about a person. The quality of your teeth shows a lot about your age and your health. It's not strange that this man should want to see a photo of this woman's teeth.

And yet, there are red flags in his request. He only requested an unfiltered photo and a photo of her teeth as a result of sharing her photo with his friend. His friend was the one who demanded she send a filterless photo that showed her teeth. That's creepy!

This woman shared in her post, "What that says to me is that he has a total disregard for boundaries, my privacy, and decency in general."

I think that's true. She's better off not meeting him. He acted in a sketchy way and she's right to block him and move on.

What's your opinion on filtered photos and dating? Have you ever asked a potential date to send you an unfiltered photo before meeting them?