So You Don't Like Her Profile Picture: A Reflection on the Role of Beauty in Online Dating

Most men want wives who are beautiful.

This is a natural human tendency, though generally, physical attractiveness is more important to men than to women when it comes to evaluating a potential spouse.

The female face and form along with what I can only call the female “aura” (every man will know what I mean by this, though it is difficult to put into words) is one of the most beautiful things God created. We men are enchanted by it. In its best form, this enchantment draws us out of ourselves, leaving us breathless in the wonder of the Creator’s power and beauty as we contemplate the mysterious yet somehow familiar magic of a beautiful face. In its best form, this enchantment compels us to appreciate this excellence and see through it some glimpse of the high, the noble, even the spiritual.

A woman’s beauty speaks to us of things both ancient and timeless.

Perhaps we are reminded in our bones of that first meeting between man and woman in the Garden, when nature was whole and innocent and beauty as yet untarnished, and Adam found, at last, in a moment of happy bewilderment, a helper like unto himself. Or we are stirred by the fairy-tale archetype of the lovely princess, priceless, rare, as good as she is beautiful. Or we see in a beautiful woman a glimpse of what the saints in Heaven will forever look like, radiant in their vision of God.

I would propose that this enchantment draws much of its power, in the final analysis, not only from the pleasure of looking on something appealing, but from the deeper connection between beauty and goodness and order, which the human heart longs for.

According to St. Thomas, beauty revolves around three conditions: integrity (the right and complete arrangement of parts), clarity (a discernible meaning or pattern), and composition (the spirit of the object and its overall order and harmony). So there is a philosophical or even moral dimension to the experience of beauty that we don’t want to lightly dismiss. Beauty is closely tied to order, to how things should be, which in turn is a fair description of goodness itself. I will return to this idea in due time.

Of course, there are ways that this enchantment with feminine beauty becomes perverted as well.

Lust is primary among them, and it is a symptom of the depravity of our culture that it is almost impossible in mainstream thought and entertainment to distinguish a woman’s beauty from sexuality—mere animal pleasure. Men have been culturally trained (and due to original sin, it takes little prompting) to transform their natural appreciation for female beauty into objectification and selfish desire for physical gratification. Yet even if we avoid the overt trap of lust, however, there is the danger of beauty-worship, or valuing physical beauty above all else, which can be destructive in itself.

Indeed, though I am by no means trivializing nor dismissing the importance of men’s love for physical beauty (after all, I have this love too, and I married a beautiful woman!), it is important to remember that, in the end, physical beauty is only one kind of beauty, and by far the most unstable and transient that a woman can possess. Yet it remains a fact that romantic interest generally begins with physical attraction.

In the case of online dating, this translates to reviewing a woman’s profile pictures and rating her physical beauty. Suppose, then, that you see a woman’s profile online, and you are not immediately struck with her appearance in her photos. Do you click away immediately? Here are a couple of things to consider before making that decision.

1. The photos probably don’t do her justice.

A photograph is a moment frozen in time. It does not provide full context, dimension, or the revolutionizing factor of motion. It does not give complete perspective on what a person truly looks like. There is a beauty attached to living, breathing, moving beings that cannot be replicated in a single, static image.

A picture of a cat, for instance, can never be as impressive or beautiful as watching the ripple of the feline’s muscles as it leaps onto a fencepost. Based on a picture alone, you have no idea of how a woman carries herself, how she speaks, her facial expressions, her grace, her unique tics—all of which contribute greatly to the overall physical attractiveness of a person. One or two or even three photos do not begin to capture what this woman’s physical presence is really like.

Moreover, it’s been scientifically shown that most people are more attractive in-person than in photographs. Research from the University of Kansas found that meeting people in real life versus just seeing their photo can make a big difference in their perceived attractiveness.

In the study, students were asked to rank 10 pictures in terms of how attractive the person photographed was. Then they met in real life one of the people from the photos. After talking with them for a while, the students were then asked to rank all 10 photos again. This time, they ranked all the photos the same except the photo of the person they had met in-person. That photo was ranked much higher in attractiveness the second time around.

Of course, this may not be true in every case, but it does tell us something about the limitations of photos in truly representing a person’s beauty, especially because they fail to capture elements of personality that come through only in in-person interaction.

2. Your awareness of a woman’s beauty can grow with time.

Even if a woman does not meet the overly strict mainstream definitions of beauty, she likely does possess some physical beauty that is all her own. The great agricultural and cultural writer Wendell Berry, in his essay, “The Body and the Earth,” has this to say on the question of inherent human physical beauty (it is worth quoting at length):

What [young people today] are made to feel forcibly, and to measure themselves by, is the exclusive desirability of a certain physical model. Girls are taught to want to be leggy, slender, large-breasted, curly-haired, unimposingly beautiful. Boys are instructed to be "athletic" in build, tall but not too tall, broad-shouldered, deepchested, narrow-hipped, square-jawed, straight-nosed, not bald, unimposingly handsome. Both sexes should look what passes for "sexy" in a bathing suit. Neither, above all, should look old. 

Though many people, in health, are beautiful, very few resemble these models. The result is widespread suffering that does immeasurable damage both to individual persons and to the society as a whole. . . .Woe to the man who is short or skinny or bald. Woe to the man with a big nose. Woe, above all, to the woman with small breasts or a muscular body or strong features; Homer and Solomon might have thought her beautiful, but she will see her own beauty only by a difficult rebellion. (My emphasis.)

Wendell Berry, “The Body and the Earth”

The point to highlight here is that often our notions of beauty are too constrained by what we see on TV or magazine covers. Our ancestors, like Homer and Solomon, had a wider, more holistic, and more real understanding and appreciation for beauty in all its various forms than we do.

But I am not suggesting that men take a deep dive into philosophy or the injustice of current cultural standards of beauty. I am suggesting only that beauty is broad and diverse (in the true sense of the word, not the politically weaponized sense).

Furthermore, it’s been scientifically shown that spending more time with someone helps us to appreciate them more and find them more desirable. In other words, attraction can actually grow with time. Scientists from Hamilton College in New York conducted a study where they tested how people’s responses to faces changed with more exposure.

A group of 22 single people were shown pictures of 112 faces and asked to rate their attractiveness. The photos continued to scroll so that some faces were shown multiple times. The result was that the more times the participants saw a given face, the higher they rated its attractiveness. Their brains were scanned at the same time, and they did in fact show more brain activity associated with excitement when they saw the same faces repeatedly.

In another study, published in Psychological Science, researchers compared the relative attractiveness of men and women in couples who had started dating shortly after meeting compared with those who started dating after being around each other for some time. They found that couples who spent more time together before dating were more likely to have different levels of attractiveness, indicating that their relationship was not based on immediate physical attraction.

Lead researcher Lucy Hunt of the University of Texas explained the conclusion to be drawn from this: “Our results indicate that perceptions of beauty in a romantic partner might change with time, as individuals get to know one another better before they start dating.” Over time, other factors may outshine more obvious characteristics like physical attractiveness. “Or perhaps another person might actually become more attractive in the eyes of the beholder by virtue of these other factors,” she said.

The conclusion, then, is not to panic if you do not find a date or someone’s profile picture immediately and overwhelmingly attractive. Their physical attractiveness in your eyes can, at least in some cases, actually grow with time.

3. Physical beauty isn’t the only—or even the most important—factor to consider.

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned how beauty is intimately tied up with order and harmony. For one thing, beauty often indicates health—that is, order in the body. But it also has ties to deeper spiritual concepts of harmony, goodness, and ultimately God Himself—our love for beauty is ultimately a longing for Him. 

But in addition to order in the body, there are other more critical areas of the human person in which beauty and harmony can be found. We are speaking, of course, of a person’s mind, personality, soul. If a person has virtue—that is, order in the soul—they have a truer and deeper attractiveness than anything on the physical level. And a woman with average looks but great beauty in her soul and a temperament that fits with yours will make you a far better wife than a woman with external attractiveness but vice and selfishness on the inside. 

In fact, a woman with less physical beauty at her disposal may in fact have a much richer and deeper character not just in spite of her appearance but because of it. Like it or not, beautiful people have an easier time in many areas of life (including dating). They have higher self-esteem, make friends more easily, and are more popular. Less attractive people in some cases are more likely to have developed greater emotional maturity, patience, intelligence, humor, compassion, and many other virtues as a result of their “disadvantage.”

Lastly, the hard truth is that physical beauty fades.

It may become less interesting to us with time. And it will certainly diminish with time. Age, sickness, even childbearing, will eventually take their toll on physical beauty. It is transient. Women—like us—are mortal beings. To dust they will return.

True, her physical beauty that may so enchant us early on partakes of an immortal beauty—the beauty of God (which is probably what touches us so deeply to begin with). But that immortal beauty is far more profoundly and permanently reflected in the virtuous soul than in the body anyway. So why not go right to the source? Why not focus first and foremost on that beauty which will last—nay, not only last, but actually increase with time, as your wife grows in sanctity through the trials of life, even as her physical beauty declines? 

There are many wonderful women out there whom you might be tempted to pass by at first glance, but remember that love—and sometimes even attraction—doesn’t always come at first sight.