…That’s what some guy said to me when I was on the way home one day, around when I just moved to NYC. I think I responded by ignoring him and continuing on my way. Maybe I rolled my eyes. When I got home, I tweeted irritably about it on my vanilla Twitter account. One of my male friends from college responded thusly:
“At least he wasn’t being sketchy! And he was paying you a compliment!”
Let’s pick apart the above three things, shall we? – The dude’s comment, my reaction, and my friend’s comment.
- At least he wasn’t being sketchy!
Granted, my friend was right, the dude wasn’t. He didn’t do anything inappropriate. He called me “beautiful”, instead of something lewd and crude. I guess it was a relief that I didn’t have to deal with any of that. However, I think it’s an immense pity that I’m expected to feel good about not having been treated shittily. Honestly, I do often expect irritating behavior from men, and I’m refreshingly relieved when I can have a decent conversation with a random stranger without him attempting to hit on me or making me feel uncomfortable in some way. It sucks that decency is the exception, and not the rule. It sucks that I have to deal with shitty behavior, and it sucks for men to be perceived as horny skeezeballs.
- Don’t look so sad
First of all, where the hell do you get off telling me how I should look? I don’t even know you! Why don’t you mind your own business?
Second – we were talking about this in the masculinity class I took. A girl in the class was talking about how she was stressed out and working really hard and a bunch of her male friends who saw her told her to look more cheery. She was irritated by that because, well, she was stressed out and working, so had the corresponding facial expression, and didn’t see why she had to smile when clearly she wasn’t in a very good mood. As a counterpoint to that, one of the guys in the class added that he was once having a very good day, so was walking around smiling. His guy friends reacted by accusingly asking “What are you smiling about?” So basically, women are expected to be expressive, pleasant, cheerful, etc, and men are expected to be emotionless, stoic, etc. Clearly, this is stupid and repressive for both parties because women can be stoic or grumpy and men can be happy or sad.
I don’t smile a lot. When I’m walking somewhere, I’m usually thinking about things and so tend to look down and appear very serious. People often interpret it as upset or sad, but really it’s just contemplation.
- Beautiful = compliment
And this is probably the most problematic thing of all.
Okay, yes, being called beautiful is a compliment. When I send pictures of myself to L, and he calls me beautiful, I smile and feel myself fill with self-conscious pleasure. It makes me both feel good about myself and how I look, and about him enjoying and being pleased by how I look.
However, again, the stranger thing comes into play. I care about what L says because I love him and he’s a very important person to me. But when it comes to strangers calling me that, depending on the time and context I can feel anything from flattered to indifferent to annoyed. In this case, it was more annoyed, because I felt like he was using “beautiful” in the same way people use “cutie”, “sweetheart”, etc. As terms of endearment. From a lover? Sure, though I’ve never dated anyone who did the whole pet-name thing. From a stranger? They’re assuming a familiarity that doesn’t exist, and it comes off as condescending. It makes me feel small and petty, which I do not like. I only want people I know to call me those things. If I even let them in the first place. If I don’t know you well? Call me by my name, if you know my name. If you don’t know my name, then just don’t call me anything at all.
Another layer: – and this is something I’ve talked about before. Calling me “beautiful” automatically puts my appearance first. It puts beauty ahead of intellect, personality, and, yes, humanity. Over time I’ve noticed that most of the ways I can up my confidence and get noticed are based on looks. For a woman, being powerful is about being a bombshell, being gorgeous. I’ve often wanted to feel powerful in other realms, by accomplishing something amazing or by having very intelligent comments to make. And, granted, I’ve done that and it was appreciated by some when I did. But that doesn’t always happen. I remember having grown an immense amount as a person over my senior year, and yet upon catching up with a friend I had made during freshman year, but had become distant from, some of the only comments he could make were that I used to be so much slimmer and that I used to dress a lot better.
So, yes, being called beautiful is a compliment. But, then, it isn’t always.
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11 Responses to “Don’t look so sad, beautiful.”
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As a guy who’s made a career out of staying stupid stuff at the wrong time, I have a lot of empathy with the points you make in today’s post. I’ve been beat up on a lot of blogs until I’m finally starting to realize how comments like this make women feel. So I’m not going to defend this guy except to say that his intent, though perhaps clueless, was not malicious. If I’m in a good mood I try to share it, if i see a person around me who seems to be down, I’ll try and lift their spirits. In the “stranger on the street” scenario it’s a bit different but my guess is that this guy was in a good mood, feeling confident or bold enough to say something (which may have been a big deal to him), and was just trying to spread the love, as they say.
I’m not a smiler myself. My wife asks me “What’s wrong?” and I sincerely answer, “Nothing” so i know how annoying it is when people tell me to cheer up, though I’ve gotten over being annoyed because they are just trying to be nice. Those who know me have stopped trying.
But, when I do smile, and I do this a lot at the gym, I get all sorts of stares. But screw them, when I’m in good mood i smile, when I’m not, I don’t. Enough said.
And as to the “Beautiful” comment, well, we say that because its our only opening. We haven’t read your resume so it’s hard to say, “Don’t look so sad, person who’s overcome great personal struggles this year and is admirable for your volunteer work!” It’s a cop out, the easy way, but sometimes we are at a loss for words. At least he didn’t call you “honey.”
I don’t want any of this to come across as sarcastic, I know this person though, because he’s just like me, a guy trying to be nice, to spread the joy, who’s not quite clued in on the nuances of communication, and enjoys saying “Hi” to strangers around him. Plus, if he was over 70, he’s probably my dad. He’s says the strangest stuff to strangers and will flirt with any woman over 18 years old. He is a hoot, and totally harmless.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment, I appreciate it.
I can’t accurately say what his intentions were, because I have no way of knowing. He could have just wanted to be friendly, maybe he was trying to come on to me, I don’t know. I didn’t think he was being malicious, though. I didn’t feel threatened or uncomfortable at all, just vaguely annoyed. However, intentions aside, people’s actions have effects, and that’s what his comment’s effect on me was.
A few disclaimers: I’m not speaking on anyone else’s behalf except for my own. I’m sure this “works” for some people, but it just doesn’t work for me. I can be pretty distrustful and suspicious of people. I’m also kinky and queer, and this whole model of men calling girls beautiful to try and get their attention? Just doesn’t quite gel with me for those reasons.
I’m not blaming the guy. Not blaming anyone, really. People often act the way they do because they’re just doing what everyone else is doing. But, then, why is *this* what most men are doing? I can’t help but question the status quo.
As for “beautiful” being the only opening, I can understand that. I can understand that looks are, well, right there for you to see, and so would be the easiest thing to compliment someone on when you know nothing about them. However, I wonder if the same goes for men, if they get called handsome or attractive because it’s the most obvious opening.
I mean, why not get into a conversation with me? Make some kind of generic remark or ask me a question? Or, hell, even just say hello or good morning? I’ve had people smile at me and greet me and I quite like that. I just don’t understand why you have to pull my attractiveness into the picture immediately. With my current boyfriend (L) and my last boyfriend (J), I don’t think sexual attraction was even explicitly addressed until after we had already hung out and had several involved conversations and gotten to know each other as people.
Also, it’s not just men that do the paying-compliments behavior. Women and non-binaries do it too. I believe this is the nature of the social game and how it is played. With the coming of non-physical forms of social communication, like Ddials when I was a kid and Twitter these days, it is possible to form emotional and intellectual bonds before physical ones and people can compliment me on those non-physical aspects first, which is neat.
However, be prepared to be assaulted with compliments on physicality when you first meet. Hee!
PS – Physical attraction for me is so strongly tied into my intellectual attraction to them that, although I’ve had the whole “OMG you are so sexy” thoughts about someone very quickly, it’s almost always because they’ve demonstrated some form of intellectual prowess that makes me want to get into their pants.
I noticed that this post was painfully binary but was at pains to figure out how to not make it so. I guess I am mostly addressing behavior between hetero cispeople, though.
“Physical attraction for me is so strongly tied into my intellectual attraction to them that, although I’ve had the whole “OMG you are so sexy” thoughts about someone very quickly, it’s almost always because they’ve demonstrated some form of intellectual prowess that makes me want to get into their pants.”
*Yes*, I feel like this about people too! Intellect can be so hott.
Indeed.
I like fucking smart people. There’s something to do before and after the sex. Sometimes, the before and after are The Good Bits. Hee! But only sometimes.
When a stranger or someone that I’m not well-acquainted tells me I’m beautiful, I see it as a compliment… because how I look is the ONLY information that someone could have about me. Yes, it is superficial, but I’m ok with that superficial assessment, especially in cases where I’m aware that the other person is trying to get their foot in the door to understanding me better. It’s not my preferred way of people to evaluate me, but I can understand that at the beginning of any interactions with another person, it may be the only way for them to pay me a compliment.
Someone who pays me nothing but compliments on my appearance will not grow high in my book of people that I would want to really get to know/hang out with. I do find it an acceptable foot in the door, but once you’ve done that, show me that there’s more interesting substance underneath and that there’s shared interests or something like that.
right. like i said, i definitely have moods where being complimented on my appearance would be flattering to me, and that can be nice. also, yes, appearance is the most obvious thing. but i think i’m basically questioning why someone would choose complimenting me as their opening as opposed to something more neutral like saying hello or saying something generic and smalltalky to try and get into a conversation with me instead.
Perhaps this is a case of how forward someone is and how much they generally value physical compliments? I’m shy/repressed so I wouldn’t open or do something like that, but I can imagine someone with bigger balls than me opening with a bolder statement.
I have nothing to add to this except to say that this is perfect and I know exactly how you feel.
Britni TheVadgeWig´s last [type] ..Pushy
Hmmmmm…
Using your logic, we can’t say “Have a nice day” because that would be telling someone what to do. That’s a pretty hard line to take.
I get that “Don’t look so sad” is different, but still, it seems you are taking a pretty firm stance here.
In the end, there is often a world between what is intended and what is heard, and in that spirit, I’m sorry you were offended.
thanks for the comment.
i am taking a firm stance, yeah. i acknowledge that the person’s intentions might have been good; he may well just have been acting friendly or whatever. however, the reason why “don’t be sad” is different from “have a nice day” is that i’ve never heard of guys saying that to other guys, and it speaks to what i mentioned discussing in class, that women are much more likely to be expected to be happy & perky all the time as opposed to stoic and/or morose.