It’s a lovely feeling when someone notices and compliments us, whether it’s for our sense of dress, our beauty, our smarts, our innovation or our world view. Sometimes, however, being complimented can be a double-edged sword, or even backhanded, leaving a rather bitter taste.

Culture Warrior Issues a Compliment

A young man, known as Culture Warrior, asked a question on Yahoo! Answers as to why some women dislike being complimented. He wrote:

‘So yesterday my friend and I were driving to another friend’s house when we saw this hottie walking down the sidewalk. We rolled down our windows, I leaned on the horn and yelled "wassup sexy! You wanna ride with us" etc. Just the normal stuff trying to make conversation. But she flicked us off and wouldn't say anything else.

Why have feminists conditioned women to view compliments as insults? Also, do you think it just could have been that she was on her period?’

Sometimes Being Complimented is an Insult

His question got me thinking about the number of compliments leveled at women where a man will think he is giving something pleasant, when in fact the person receiving it looks upon it as an insult. That the man felt compelled to address her as ‘sexy’ while leaning on his horn and subsequently inviting her for a ride in his car, implied that he saw her as little more than a street walker.

There is more to feminism, but an aspect of it does address the unequivocal right men feel they have to look at women as mere objects of attraction or affection. Culture Warrior feels that feminism has influenced women to view compliments as insults; but his follow up question as to the attractive girl being on her period being an explanation for her lack of blindly following two strangers, makes implausible any response a sane woman would want to give.

My Lips, Your Hips, and Kim Kardashian

 I am woman with full lips. Angelina Jolie’s own might have the supple, sexy effect of bee stings, but mine are usually the first thing anyone looking at me will notice for the first time. It’s taken a while, but I love my lips. However, I am aware that lips, like a J-Lo bum or Kim Kardashian sexy siren figure, or even Anna Nicole Smith’s breasts, have sexual overtones; and any stranger who looks at my lips only makes me feel uncomfortable.

A man I have never met who pronounces, on seeing me, that he finds my lips sexy, makes me feel as though he is asking to kiss me, or worse still, have sex with me. I feel cheap. So you can imagine my anger and indignation when, after I rolled down my car window, a strange man, without giving a greeting first, commented, ‘You have such hot lips.’

‘Fuck you,’ I called out, and drove off.

Junk in the Trunk is Not a Compliment

I am not the only woman to be privy to such treatment. My sister has had a man call out from a slow moving car, ‘Upakile maan!’, the literal meaning being ‘you’re packed’, as in she has a lovely buxom figure – which she carries proudly. It sits on the same shelf as the phrase ‘junk in the trunk’ which is also a compliment thrown around denoting women who have big round buttocks, and yet I fail to see how someone calling my stuff ‘junk’ can be a compliment.

Movies, especially ones shot around great cosmopolitan cities like New York, often show a group of construction workers whistling and shouting across the street at beautiful women. The debate as to whether women dress for themselves or for the people who will look at them has raged for so long.

Some women will turn and smile at the workers, acknowledging the compliment if it’s an all rounder such as ‘you’re beautiful’ or ‘you look very nice today’. But most women have no problem with ignoring or even flashing a birdie if a construction worker insists, ‘you have nice legs. I’d love to see them wrapped around me.’

Honestly, Compliments Can be Lovely, but Not Always

The truth is we all love compliments. In fact we blossom when we’re complimented and told how we look beautiful, how our scent is lovely, how the cake we baked last week was delicious or the project we completed after a week’s work got the approval of the board. Being complimented lifts barriers and quite often breaks the ice, especially amongst strangers; but gross abrupt referral to body parts with jocular sexual overtones is another story.

Quite simply, those overtures should be left to significant others or close friends to give. Maria Denosa, a single mother of a three year old boy agrees.

‘If my boyfriend or lover refers to me as sexy or tells me he loves the sensuality of my hips or my scent turns him on, that gives me a thrill, but it’s horrifying when some stranger who sees me across the street feels he has the same right to do so. I find it even more disrespectful when they do it in the presence of my son.’

Compliments Can Cross a Line

Jacqui Lewis, a young woman who has a high-flying job in the financial services sector and is also recently single, finds it annoying that more often than not her looks are all for which she is noticed.

‘Granted, there is the whole ideology of first impressions and I get that, but it’s frustrating when I feel like I am dressing for myself and a stranger will refer to the rise of butt, my legs, my “pert” breasts, my lips. I have nothing against being told I am beautiful,’ she says as we talk while she rushes on lunchtime errands.

A Compliment is a Beginning, Not a Means to an End

She does look sexy in her charcoal suit and white shirt, her red toe nails peeping from grey heels, and I tell her so. She smiles and pushes her long blonde tresses from her fresh face saying, ‘thank you. I feel no threat from you and I can take it, but a compliment should be a beginning, not a means to an end.’

She crosses her legs as we stand chatting and two teenage boys pay her more than just a cursory glance, one even daring to blow a kiss at her, which she ignores. ‘It’s frustrating that we can be in a queue, any queue as a group of people for a few minutes and no one will say a friendly word to anyone else, but you feel that me walking past you gives you the right to not bother finding out my name but referring to me as a hottie or sexy. I lose respect for you; and with the rape stats in this country, yes, it’s threatening too.’