Free dating apps for plus size ladies

If you are a plus size or fat person, you know how difficult it is to date. Tinder is notorious for its users fat shaming, and this video shows how people react to their real-life dates being bigger than what they expected. Not great.

It was that video that inspired WooPlus, an app exclusively for the plus size dating community. There are several websites dedicated to plus size or fat dating, but most cater to feederism and especially the fetishization of fat people. However, this app is different.

As a plus size person, the only issue I've had with dating is falling for the absolute wrong people, but that's an entirely different post and possible therapy session. However, I was told by society that I would never find love because of my size and that I was not deserving of love because of my body, a concept that many fat or plus size people are familiar with.

I downloaded the app and gave it a try. I started off with a very closed mind; I expected this to be yet another fat fetish dating site. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Cofounder Michelle Li says it's no mistake the model is similar to Tinder. "It's a tried and true method, so we went with what works."

Despite the swipe model, there are several differences. First, you can only like a few people a day, unless you invite friends to join the app, an obvious attempt at getting more users.

Second, if you don't interact with the user within 48 hours of you both mutually liking each other, the "like" disappears and you lose your opportunity to talk to them, a feature that prevents endless "likes" with no contact. This is a great idea, because it's easy for us to "like" people, but starting a conversation, now that's scary.

The above features are strategic ploys to get more users interacting with the app on a more consistent basis. The company tells Mashable there are over 25,000 users with 2,000 new signups every day. Sixty-one percent of users are male, 39 percent are women, and while the app is targeted toward women, Li points to this as proof that there are men who like "all different body types."

While impressive, considering the app launched in October 2015, the user base still isn't huge. Tinder reported 50 million users with 12 million users joining every day as of 2014, and OkCupid reported having 12 million users in 2014.

Perhaps because WooPlus's user base is comparatively small, there aren't enough people to make it awful — yet.

Rather than a "fetish fest," I found people were genuinely looking for relationships, people to just chat with, friendships or hookups — so pretty much the norm for dating apps.

The photo stream section allows for a familiar social media interaction with its users, almost like an Instagram feed, where people can post pictures of themselves and chat with other users from all over the world. While people can post back and forth publicly on the photos, unless you pay real money to send the user a "gift" (cartoon flowers or chocolates), you cannot privately message them. This has led to a lot of people posting their