WHEN WOMEN TAKE COMPLIMENTS

When someone pays me a compliment about my new shoes or bag I’m totally excited. “Yes aren’t they GREAT!?! I bought them in the sale and it was the last pair, I was so lucky!” Followed by a happy, totally superficial chat before we go our separate ways. Everything’s fine. But if someone, particularly a man, pays me a compliment about me instead of my stuff, my face turns all red, I start to stammer and I’m so uncomfortable I don’t know what to say.

I’m very bad with compliments. Compliments about the way I look, my body, my work – every compliment that has to do with a positive assessment of one of my skills or appearance, to quote a dictionary. I just freeze completely. I can’t find words and so I try to leave the uncomfortable moment behind as quick as I can. “Eh yeah, would you like another glass of wine?”

Jet has a better way to deal with it. She accepts the compliment, tries to return it (“You are so beautiful, Jet” “Why that’s sweet, I think you are lovely too,” something like that) and she certainly does not refuse or contradict it. Claire Boniface, a twenty year old student, recently did a social experiment. She calls it “agreeing with boys when they compliment you” and that pretty much covers what happens when you don’t only accept but also confirm a compliment “You are so beautiful.” “Yes I know, thank you.”

She didn’t do the experiment in real life but used 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.” What happened was conversations like these:

Boy: “Ur eyes are gorgous”
Claire: “aw I know aha thank you!! so are yours.”
Boy: “bitch what do u mean “I know” ur not that amazing.”
Claire: “didn’t realise being confident in myself was such a sin.”

Please note that the typos were copied truthfully so don’t start to worry about my English. So the thing is, it’s okay to compliment someone but that person is not allowed to confirm the compliment. Because that makes you arrogant and snotty. Isn’t that weird? It feels very unnatural to confirm a compliment, particularly for a compliment fudger like me, but still the fact that you have to act as if it isn’t true makes it weird. Doesn’t it?

So I still haven’t figured it out. Confirming a compliment is not the way to go, nor is denial. So if you were to pay me a compliment in the near future and I just prattle in response, please know that I am really touched but am secretly still a 16 year old who doesn’t know what to say.