what happens when women accept compliments

If someone gives me a compliment about my new shoes or bag, I jump for joy. “Yes, they are BEAUTIFUL, right! And bought on sale and it was the last pair, what luck!” Then follows a cheerful little chat with not too much depth and then we each go our separate ways. Nothing wrong with that. But if someone, especially a man, gives me a compliment about ME instead of my belongings, I turn red, start to stammer, and in total awkwardness have no idea what to say.

I am very bad with compliments. Compliments about appearance, body, work – any compliment that relates to a positive appreciation of a skill or physical trait of mine. To put it in a Van Dale-like way. I just freeze up, tense up. I can’t find my words anymore and try to let the awkward moment pass as quickly as possible. “Uh yeah, by the way, do you want another glass of wine?”

I just freeze up, tense up. I can’t find my words anymore and try to let the awkward moment pass as quickly as possible.

Jet handles it better. She always accepts the compliment, tries to return it (“you are so beautiful Jet” “oh how sweet, I think you are really nice too.” Something like that) but at least doesn’t reject or contradict it. Anyway, a social experiment was recently conducted by Claire Boniface, a 20-year-old student. She calls the experiment “agreeing with boys when they compliment you” and that pretty much covers it: what happens when you not only accept a compliment but also confirm it. “You are beautiful.” “Yeah, I know, thank you.”

She didn’t do this experiment in real life, but via Tinder. “Often when I get messages on that site simply complimenting me I just ignore them because the compliments are never sincere and I see no reason to respond, so I thought I would try out a simple response of “yes” and see what would happen.” And then conversations like this come up:

Boy: “Je ogen zijn prachtig”
Claire: “aw ik weet het aha dank je!! zo zijn de jouwe.”
Boy: “bitch wat bedoel je met “ik weet het” je bent niet zo geweldig.”
Claire: “didn’t realise being confident in myself was such a sin.”

The spelling mistakes are taken over as is, in case you think my English is going completely wrong. The thing is, it’s okay to compliment someone but that person shouldn’t confirm the compliment. Because then you are arrogant and conceited. Isn’t that strange? It feels very unnatural to confirm a compliment, especially for a compliment clutz like me, but still, the fact that you have to play dumb is also weird. Actually.

So I still haven’t figured it out. Confirming is not the way to go but denying isn’t either. If you give me a compliment soon and I mumble something back, know that I really appreciate it, but that I secretly am still a 16-year-old teenager who doesn’t know what to say back.