Popular U.S. dating site, OkCupid.com lets online daters pay $4.95 (£3) to hide anyone who classes themselves ‘curvy’, ‘skinny’, ‘thin’, ‘jacked’ or ‘used up’ among other body types.

‘While it will probably be common knowledge to many internet dating aficionados, OkCupid’s premium search options are eyebrow-raising in an era of tolerance and political correctness,’ writes Kermalmag.com journalist James Cook, who spotted the function.

OkCupid also allows its ‘A-list members’ – who pay a monthly subscription fee of between $4.49 and $9.95 – to filter people by both looks and figure.

You can select people in a drop-down menu who have body types such as ‘thin’, ‘skinny’, ‘overweight and ‘curvy’.

You can also filter people based on their attractiveness rating, as ranked by other users.

An anonymous OkCupid user added: ‘I’ve been using OkCupid for just over a year now, and it’s pretty disconcerting to think men have the ability to filter me out by my body type.

However, the function is still placing a lot of trust in people’s accurate description of themselves. I myself have been lucky that every guy I’ve met from the site has looked their pictures, but others I know have had some horrible surprises when they meet in person.’

‘Ultimately, what freaks me out the most is the kind of person that would pay to exercise that degree of control over their results. To me, that suggests that the weird and wonderful world of online dating might not be for you.’

Rowan Pelling added: ‘OkCupid is clearly the Abercrombie & Fitch of dating sites, allowing curvy types to be screened out of supposed A-List members searches.

‘All I can say is that you’re pretty dumb and Z-list if you allow screening so prejudiced that some brainless body-fascist can screen out all plus-size suitors: goodbye Marilyn Monroe, Sophie Dahl, Lena Dunham, Gerard Depardieu, James Corden, Seth Rogen.’

OKCupid.com lets you pay to filter out fat ugly people | Mail Online