Compliment delivery a complicated art

One evening a while ago I was enjoying some TV with my friend Jeff and his wife Lindsay. Out came the ladies with the numbered suitcases on “Deal or No Deal”. “Those girls are so beautiful,” Lindsay noticed.

“Sure, they’re pretty, but you could’ve been one of those girls. You were hot,” Jeff answered. She was six months pregnant at the time, and at that moment quiet enough for me to hear her eyelids close. I nearly burst out in giggles, but I opted instead to silently fix my gaze on the thirty painted, pixilated ladies on their huge plasmoid HD. Jeff’s intentions were pure. He meant to sensitively praise his wife’s beauty after he somehow intuitively sensed that she was comparing herself to the TV models. Using the past tense acknowledged that this was not required of her in her present state. How sweet is that?

Guys get frustrated with this irrational and often reckless habit of comparison. Why can’t women find practical role models and standards, and then let it go? Take me for example. When Lebron James scored 29 consecutive points to beat the Pistons in game five of the Eastern Conference Finals, I went out to see if I could hit 15 baskets in a row. Unfortunately, there was no hoop in the driveway, so we will never find out who is better between Lebron and me. And I am perfectly satisfied to leave this mystery unresolved.

Still, compliment delivery is a complicated art. Recently I heard report of a discussion among friends about a girl’s new hairdo.

“It doesn’t look so mommish today as it did yesterday.” Some guy said. “I mean it looks good, it’s kind of motherly... but not in a bad way, kind of like a hot mom.” She didn’t appreciate that. No doubt they were just pointing out that, being so young and still childless, she wasn’t a real hot mom yet; she just faked it with a hot mom’s hairdo.

A few pointers can aid the oblivious in giving a compliment. When complimenting a woman’s eyes using a simile, remember to use classy but not common comparisons. For example, instead of “gosh, your pretty eyes are the color of root beer,” say that her eyes are the “hue and effervescence of champagne,” even if they’re green. When it comes to similes, it’s vivid and dramatic effect, not accuracy that women appreciate. But be careful. No woman wants to hear that her thighs are awesome like hungry panthers or that her ear lobes feel kind of like dried mangos. Even if you add, “If you knew how much I love mangos you would know what a compliment that is. You can ask my friends. I love chewing on those things. I used to be like addicted to them,” it’s never as good as “you are as splendid as a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.”

The exchange of compliments has many elaborate but unwritten cultural rules. In fact a compliment can be an insult! Many people have an emotional style that some psychology experts call assive-progressive. When one such person hates another’s sweater, she won’t say that the sweater is kind of ugly, she’ll say, “Well, isn’t that a colorful sweater!” with vindictive cheerfulness in her cheeks.

Guy-to-guy compliments also present unique challenges. Beware the pitfalls of adjectives, men, and limit them to two (cool and nice) or simply phrase the compliment as a question. This is enough to verify that you have noticed something new. Try “Cool shirt,” “Nice shoes, man,” or “Got a haircut, huh?” This is about as elaborate as the gold standard of homophobic sensitivity allows.

When I was a junior in high school I had a life-threatening crush on a princess. She had an adorable nose and sandy hair that curled just above her shoulders, which were brown and freckled from playing tennis. I sat behind her highness in English class. I don’t remember much about Beowulf, but if the Danes had shoulders as lovely as hers, there is no way Grendel the monster would have torn them from their bone-lappings.

One full week of strategy went into every 17 seconds of my interaction with the princess. Lying in bed, I prepared a series of conversation topics to have in queue for the one weekly moment when I was in my seat before she sat down and had to face in my direction for a few seconds. The topic list I was prepared to discuss included the tires on her 1995 Nissan Altima, her dog which I learned from eavesdropping was a brown chow named Chocolate, and the art and science of dermatology. She seemed tired when I brought up dogs, and I forgot all about the tires and I was self-conscious about zits that day, so I decided to compliment her.

It had to be subtle enough not to be creepy, but grand enough to make her fall in love with me. I felt the compliment swell in my trachea as it rose up to my lips. I trembled at the future, at the joyful ramifications, at the chain reaction of love my compliment was about to spark. What spontaneous and awesome compliment would I give?

“Cool shirt,” I said.

The princess and I never hooked up.