Michelle went on a Tinder date. Days later she received a letter.

Wow.

“I’m not going to bull***t you… I f***ing adore you Michelle and I think you’re the prettiest looking girl I’ve ever met. But my mind gets turned on my someone slimmer.”

This is part of the lengthy letter Michelle Thomas received from a man she’d been on a date with.

The pair met on Tinder. They went on a date, had a few drinks and some dinner, “strolled arm in arm”, kissed at a train station and went home.

“A fairly standard pleasant evening,” as Michelle described it on her blog.

Then the next day, Michelle received a letter from her date.

He thanks her for a wonderful evening. Told her he adored her. And then proceeded to tell her that her body wasn’t attractive enough to him.

“I’m not going to bull***t you… I f***ing adore you Michelle and I think you’re the prettiest looking girl I’ve ever met. But my mind gets turned on my someone slimmer,” he wrote.

Related content: Amy Schumer: “I have a belly. And I have cellulite. And I still deserve love.” 

“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.”

Douchebag? Ya ha. Keep reading.

“I’m so disappointed in myself Michelle because I’ve genuinely not felt this way about anyone in ages, but I’m trying to be honest with you without sounding like a total knobhead.”

The aformentioned knobhead then offered to be Michelle’s friend.

“I would marry you like a shot if you were a slip of a girl because what you have in that mind of yours is utterly unique, and I really really love it.”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to avoid bigger pain in the future by telling you now so we don’t have to go through that embarrassment. I’m a man… With all the red hot lusts of a man and all the failings of a man and I’m sure of my own body and its needs.”

After receiving the letter, Michelle was in a “flood of tears”.

But she decided not to let the letter defeat her.

She decided to publish a response – and now it’s going viral.

“You don’t have to fancy me. We all have a good friend who we look at ruefully and think ‘you’re lovely, but you just don’t tickle my pickle’. We wish we were attracted to them, but our bodies and our brains don’t work like that. And that’s fine,” Michelle wrote.

“What isn’t fine is the fact that, after 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.”

Michelle exlpained that she was hurt by the man’s comments – but only for a few moments.

“I like the way I look. I don’t look like Charlize Theron, and that’s fine – I look like me, and I like myself (I’m sure I’d like Charlize Theron, too if I ever met her. I hear good things).”

“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?” she wrote.

Post continues after gallery:

Michelle said she had showed the letter to friends who were understandably outraged.

“What truly concerns me, the real reason I’m responding so publicly, is the fact that you have a 13 year old daughter. A talented illustrator, who collects Manga comics and wants to visit Japan as soon as possible,” she wrote.

“I want you to encourage your daughter to love, enjoy, and care for her body. It belongs to her and only her. Praise her intellect, and her creativity. Push her to push herself and to be fearless. Give her the tools to develop a bomb-proof sense of self-esteem so that if (I’ll be kind. I’ll say “if”.) the time comes that a small, unhappy man attempts to corrode it, she can respond as I do now.”

And then she signed the letter off with the best good by of all.

“Simon. Kiss. My. Exquisitely. Unmarriagable. Arse.”

Well put, Michelle. High fives all round.

Since sending her letter, Michelle has received an incredible outpouring of support.

“So many women have contacted me to say ‘me too’,” Michelle told Mamamia.

“Many men have contacted me, voicing their concerns about how to ensure their teenage daughters have confidence and self-belief to overcome bullying, and in particular ‘negging’ which is far more insidious.”

She hopes by sharing her experience she can encourage others to do the same.

“The main thing [the experience has] proven to me is how much we desperately need to have a frank and honest conversation about our bodies, about our weight, about how our insecurities can be and are exploited by individuals and corporations,” she said.

Michelle has offered for people to contact her if they wish to share their own experiences of body shame. You can follow her on Twitter @onepoundstories, or email her on [email protected].

Are you on Tinder? What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you online dating?

Related content:

‘I have a body part that I hate. And it’s a part nobody talks about.’

Meet the beauty blogger who dared to post photos of herself WITHOUT MAKEUP.

Rosie’s top 20 ways you’re screwing up being a woman.

Bodies come in all sizes. And so do eating disorders.