Waitress Michelle Thomas spends her spare time curating other people’s stories. After a disastrous encounter with a Tinder date, she finds herself with an unbelievable tale of her own.
Michelle recently hit it off with a Tinder match. They met in a pub, shared a few drinks, moved onto dinner, and the conversation flowed. He even kissed her goodnight, so she didn’t expect what happened the next day. The unnamed fellow dropped a needlessly long letter that detailed his criticisms with Michelle’s body. You can read the full letter on Michelle’s blog, but here are the most brutal excerpts:
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 bullsh*t you… I f*cking 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….
The guy goes on forever. He even tosses an “I would marry you like a shot if you were a slip of a girl” into the mix. Michelle admits the letter made her burst into tears, which was quite inconvenient since she received it in the bathroom during another date. This cruel letter didn’t simply write her off. This guy went out of his way to poke at her deepest insecurity. After a few days, Michelle decided to write her own letter, but she did so publicly:
[A]fter 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.
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 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*ck no.
Michelle asked the man to never contact her again. She published the letter in an effort to make him consider his words more carefully in the future (and in front of his own 13-year-old daughter). Michelle’s Instagram account reveals the truth — in addition to being a jerk, this guy is also completely blind.
(Via Michelle Thomas’ Blog, Michelle Thomas on Instagram and The Independent)