If your dating-profile photo doesn’t look anything like you — or it’s somebody else’s — time to take a new pic: Dating Diaries

Most of the dates in the Toronto Star’s popular column Dating Diaries feature people who met online, which means that the pictures that go with a dating profile are usually part of the story. Daters often mention a great smile or kind eyes, or some other detail of a photo that revealed something to them — good or bad — about their prospective date.

So it’s surprising how often people use dating-profile photos that don’t look anything like them — or photos of someone else entirely. Across the hundreds of dates that have been featured in the column, this quirk of dating life comes up more than you’d think.

Very often, a dater will use a photo that was obviously (well, “obviously” once the date gets underway) taken years before. After “Carrie” went on a date with “Luke,” she wrote, “I noticed right away that he looked much older in person.” When “Lily” went out with “Bobby,” he told her that she “looked just like” her photos of her, which were “very current, taken within the last couple of months.” Bobby, however, looked older than he was in his photo of her. Our dater “Kerri” wrote that she was shocked by “Ted’s” appearance of him, and that “He looked nothing like his pic of him” and was “significantly older than me.”

This might seem like an odd choice for a dater, since the point of using dating apps and sites is to eventually meet someone in person. (Some daters have the unfortunate experience of messaging back and forth with people online, only to realize that they never had any intention of meeting in real life.)

Sometimes, misrepresentative photos don’t seem to affect the date much, or at all. When “Rick” described his date of him with “Alan,” he wrote “He looked different IRL than I thought he would,” but “he was just as hot as I expected him to be.” They never saw each other after their date because, as Rick says, “it was just sex and that was all I really needed.” Even though “Catherine” found that “Maxwell” was “definitely shorter than he looked in his pictures” and ultimately found him to be rude, disrespectful and even “nasty,” she wrote that “he still had the nice, sweet smile” that she’d liked when they “met” online.

A misrepresentative photo can sometimes work in a date’s favour. Many Dating Diarists also report that their date looked “even better” than their photos. “Tanya” said of “Grady,” when she saw him at the coffee shop where they met, that “he was better looking in real life,” and that “he used a really bad picture for his profile of him.”

Some daters even go rogue and use someone else’s photo, which takes “misrepresentation” to a whole new level. In “Vanessa’s” account of her date de ella with “Don,” she wrote that “he looked more like he was in his 20s than his late 40s, it was very awkward. He looked nothing at all like his picture of him — in fact, he was a different person altogether. It turned out that Don was 27 and admitted to Vanessa that he was trying to attract older women. He also admitted that “he actually lived with his mom by him.”

Using an old or otherwise unrepresentative photo isn’t always a nefarious choice, meant to dupe potential dates into meeting someone they’re led to believe is younger or more attractive in some way. Many daters, particularly older daters or daters re-entering the dating pool after the end of a relationship, may not have more recent photos of themselves, or may not think that they look different from their pics.

It can be difficult to see ourselves clearly, especially in the context of dating and relationships. An easy way to avoid causing the surprise that many Dating Diarists report experiencing on a first date? Use a new pic! Take a clear selfie (good lighting and a simple background helps) or ask a friend to take a picture of you.