Are you hot enough for a dating app?

The life-changing beauty algorithms we're all being judged and matched by...

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Who is the fairest of them all? That’s up to the algorithms…

As the new year dawns, I - like many others - feel obliged to sign up to dating apps with the promise of a shiny new year offering romantic hope for the singles out there. But this year, even the mere thought of rejoining them fills me with apathy; it just seems like we’ve collectively hit a wall with dating apps (and tech in general), yearning for those IRL connections of yesteryear. Or maybe just conversation that extends past the awful salutation - ‘hey, how are you?’ to a complete stranger you have little interest or knowledge of yet, followed by trying to drag a two-way conversation out of people. Honestly it’s EXHAUSTING.

I think I’m extra reluctant to rejoin them because of my feelings about the technology itself. In theory dating apps should increase our chances of matching with people we wouldn’t ordinarily meet, but I know that's not what’s happening. How? I’ve experienced it first-hand in a sort of accidental experiment.

A few years ago, a (white) friend and I both joined Hinge at the same time. We’re a similar age, similar jobs and we even did our profiles together and put in relatively similar answers. The next day we compared our matches; she’d received maybe 30 matches in her first day on the app, I’d had two, who were, without wanting to disparage them, totally unsuitable (one proudly wielding a fish as his sole (LOL) picture. The other was at least 20 years older than his reported 38.)

I felt so discouraged; her matches seemed to be much more attractive, successful and abundant. And in the moment, you can’t help but reflect that back on yourself with the inwards-looking question ‘is it me?’ And my personal default is to berate my appearance. But this difference in suitors couldn’t even be attributed to a vast difference in our looks, I think most people would say we’re relatively similar on the attractiveness scales. The difference, I now realise, was that I was likely given a lower algorithmic rating. Why would the app do that? My race and my dark skin tone are seen as less attractive by the app’s algorithms, and on top of that - as an added kicker - Hinge also allows users to disregard entire races, so some people might have ruled me out entirely. There are reports that Tinder’s algorithms give every user a ‘hot number’ rating on joining, as a way to classify and match people - based on appearance and certain markers.

But the fact remains that dating apps as a whole suggest they pair people up they think will get along, which is wild when the first marker they use to match people is appearance - and within that, it’s race. US data found that Black women and Asian men (which I believe refers to East Asian men) receive the least amount of matches. I’d imagine this would mirror UK stats too, with South Asian’s, the UK biggest minority group, at the bottom alongside our Black and East Asian friends (and other minority groups.) Perhaps this just points to the inherent racism and colonised beauty standards in the West defining peoples choices. But even before we even take that into account, the algorithms categorise us via a hierarchy of skin colour; studies repeatedly show that image recognition algorithms perform better for people with lighter skin tones than darker ones.

Photo by Good Faces Agency on Unsplash

Having dark skin like mine might render you a 4/10, whilst a lighter skin tone with the same facial features could rank as a 6. Though some might say we all have a sort of ‘beauty currency’ when it comes to our appearance, with the prevalence of digital dating this number has become more important than ever before. Back when people would meet IRL at a bar or over a desk at work, sure your appearance might catch someone’s attention initially. But after that your demeanour, charm and overall personality would kick in to (hopefully) back you up to seal the deal and win their affections. Hell, even your scent and pheromones might have an impact on your attractiveness. But none of that is possible to detect with a dating app. We are just pictures on a screen, a small blurb, some cold generic questions. However we feel about our appearance, whatever value we put on our looks, on a dating app that currency, number and value is being determined for us.

That ‘experiment’ was a few years ago, but I actually signed up to Hinge again recently, hoping its algorithms had become more sophisticated and inclusive. Sadly I experienced the same thing; lacklustre dates who didn’t feel like a match for me, both in appearance, career and lifestyle. My immediate thought was that those algorithms and their racial beauty bias were still putting women/people of colour at an immediate disadvantage. It doesn’t end with dating apps either; so many platforms, from social media through to the HR software that scans people's CVs for potential employment has been shown to have a racist bias - but despite the widespread acknowledgement of this (including research work from MIT) frankly, it seems like so little has been done to remedy it.

Photo by Flure Bunny on Unsplash

I’ve written about pretty privilege, and tech here before, and in my book, UGLY - but practically, it feels like hacking the algorithms to try to rank higher is the only real life solution. So I deleted the app again and re-signed up, firstly ticking my ethnicity as South Asian, to see the selection of men the app thought would be a good match for me. These were mostly South Asian - which is fine, I date all ethnicities - but the issue was that I had nothing in common with them. These men posed next to their flashy cars, some had very little on their profiles, some were dripping in brand logos (a personal ick that is my issue entirely). Despite not ticking any preferences for ethnicity, I believe the algorithm had matched me with people with the same skin tone. So I did some digging and Match - the parent company of Tinder, OkCupid, and Hinge - even outlined in their patent document that their algorithms largely matched people who looked like each other, based on hair colour, eye colour and yes, ethnicity. Essentially, their matching strategy is ‘these people look similar, we will match them.’ If I wanted an arranged marriage, I’d have let my parents set me up with somebody by now.

As a test I changed my own ethnicity to ‘white’, just to see if it altered my matches in any way. These matches now included all races, though noticeably more white men than before. And yes, I did ponder if this could be jarring to the men who ticked the ‘whites only’ box, expecting a myriad of pale-skinned beauties, only to be confronted with a dark skinned Indian goth in the mix, but I’m not sure I care, just like the app developers don’t when they seem to disadvantage people of colour from finding their partners either. I don’t have an issue being matched with my own ethnicity or any others, my issue is that race and attractiveness - both complex and tangled topics - are being used as a primary marker for matching people on dating apps. So should you change your ethnicity to white to have a more varied pool of dating options - that my friends is up to you. And it goes without saying; we shouldn’t have to do this, but here we are.

I tried to hack the system another way. Western pop culture dictates that blonde hair has the highest beauty premium, and though this is a manufactured maxim - the studies trying to explain this as an intrinsic human preference are weak - it seems a pervasive one.

I wondered if changing my hair colour would push me higher up the algorithms of the app and my research led me to the work of Professor Apryl Williams, Assistant Professor of Communication and Digital Studies at the University of Michigan. Apryl explains how she and her husband matched on a dating app in a feature for Time; “He was always seeing women with blonde hair on Tinder and he’s not really into blondes…Luckily for us, the algorithms’ tendency to stack blonde women in his swipe deck worked out in our favor because I’m a black woman who, at the time, had blonde hair.” I do have a streak of blonde in my black hair which looks pretty bright and bold in some pictures, so I made one of those my profile picture to bump me up a bit further. But if I was going all in, maybe I’d wear a blonde wig and see how my matches fared - I’ll leave that experimentation choice with you. And leave you with the inspo below - a sort of gingery/blonde which is the best I can do with my awful photo editing skills.

Me, but (SCARY) algorithm hot…

There could be one last tactic to try, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. A lot of this - even as an experiment - goes against what I believe in, but of course, there’s the option to lighten your skin and eyes, which could also give you a higher rating, and push you further up the algorithms (I tried this for a lol, above.) But then you obviously run further into the territory of misrepresenting yourself as an entirely different person.

The mess of bias within tech is honestly so depressing if you think about how much of an impact it has on our entire lives. Honestly I loathe that I have to write this, and include anything about ‘hacking’ a system rigged against us. On top of the (often invisible) intersectional oppression people of colour deal with in society, having to try and beat an algorithm feels both exhausting and unfair. But how do you fight the beauty value put upon our appearance and attractiveness - especially when it’s the result of centuries of beauty standards decided by white supremacy, and just blatant racism - all hidden within invisible algorithms, in a sunny, cheery dating app?

So, for now, I’m stuck trying to hack an algorithm that feels insurmountable, with an invisible ‘hotness’ score marking my every swipe. To say I feel defeated is an understatement.

As always I’d love to know your thoughts and experiences with this!

Much IRL love…

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