Fake selfies and shidduch profiles
As a volunteer shadchan on one of the better-known Jewish dating sites, I can guarantee you that this pic would pull in a lot of attention and get yeses from boys -- even those who claim their priorities are Torah, chesed, etc.
The problem is this girl not only doesn't exist but is the fantasy projection of a an underaged girl achieved via some makeup and an awful lot of digital filtering on a selfie.
I just wrote a blog post for a client about Dove's latest video for its Self-Esteem project.
While I was writing, I was also thinking about all those single girls who are skipped over all the time because they are "not pretty enough." Like the girl in the video, they may be perfectly lovely, natural-looking girls. But that doesn't catch the eye of the boys or the shadchanim looking for them who have come to expect that artificial perfection achieved only through massive amounts of makeup, cosmetics, hair extensions, waxing, and possibly surgery to show such plumped up lips in real life.
The motivation for the video, Dove explains is this:
By age 13, 80% of girls distort the way they look online.* Let’s change that.
Social media is a big part of young people’s lives -- but retouching apps and the pressure to post the ‘perfect selfie’ are hurting their self-esteem and confidence. Have the selfie talk with a girl you love to reverse the damage and celebrate real beauty. The Dove Self-Esteem Project can show you how.
You can download the kit for yourself to read about the issues at play that make young girls feel they have to show themselves to the world this way. But it won't touch on the problem of dating sites that subject girls to constant rounds of rejection because they don't look like the fantasy people have been programmed to expect through the artifice of the commercials, ads, and influencers pretending to be authentic.
. Even models don't truly look like that without professional stylists at work. Yet, any normal, truly attractive girl is made to feel like dirt if she can't pull off that look in a picture that will be 90% of the determination on whether or not she is considered worthy of a man's time. The other 10% is combination of location and the match to one's label for education, religion and socio-economic standards. Really, the girls in the vineyard who could not claim beauty today would be left behind, regardless of their other sterling qualities or family name. (see http://kallahmagazine.blogspot.com/2015/07/this-years-thoughts-on-tu-bav.html)
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