Compliments and Objectification

Sigh…when are we ever gonna learn that there’s no such thing as a “one size fits all” rule for everyone? When are we ever gonna learn to make room and allowances for different realities without trying to enforce our reality on others, as if it were the only truth? When are we gonna learn that things might indeed be different for different people, for people of different groups…and even different people of the same group?

I ask this because of a discussion about objectification that happened on a particular online forum that I’m a member of. 

I’m pretty sure I understand about objectification, but when I suggested that what many people, many young people, many earnest young people are calling objectification might be what we old people used to call “paying someone a compliment”, you would’ve thought I’d invited Hitler to a bar mitzvah. And what these people are calling “objectification” is noticing or commenting on any aspect of a person’s body or appearance.

When I mentioned that a female library patron’s comment that I was much better-looking in real life than I was in the caricatures on the library’s posters made my day…no, I take that back…made my week, I got a huge frowny face from one of those people who thought it was not only inappropriate for the woman to say, but wrong for me to enjoy the compliment.

Like I said, I understand about objectification, but is every incident of noticing something about a person’s body or appearance really objectification? Are you really gonna tell me that “You have beautiful eyes” is in the same league as “Nice ass”? Because if so, then two things are true.

The first is that I’ve been “objectified” since I was five years old. That’s right, women have been coming up to me for almost 60 years to comment on my beautiful eyes. And over the years, I’ve learned to accept it with good grace, and even enjoy it.

The second is that we’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, objectification of women is a problem, but saying that an innocent compliment like “You have a nice smile” is on the slippery slope to “Nice tits, toots” seems just a little ridiculous to me.

But here’s where an important difference lies…an important difference that many of those earnest young people don’t want to admit to: there may be a difference in the way that men and women perceive compliments…or “people paying attention to their bodies.”

Most guys I know enjoy getting compliments from women…it’s the kind of attention that we don’t get enough of. On the other hand, many women don’t enjoy getting compliments from men because it’s the kind of attention that they get too much of, and too much of the wrong kind of.

I remember all too well noticing that a female friend of mine had eyes as strikingly blue as mine are strikingly hazel, and the reaction she had when I told her how beautiful her eyes were. You would’ve thought she had caught me staring down her cleavage (which I wasn’t, I was really looking at her eyes), and the rest of our time together that day was really awkward for both of us.

But when I suggested in this forum that there may be a difference in how we each see compliments, and that we need to take that into account before we try to impose a “one size fits all” rule about “objectification”, the torches and pitchforks came out from those who insisted that their reality was the only valid one, and that those of us who enjoyed getting compliments were just encouraging guys to objectify women.

To be sure, the objectification of women is a problem, but so is a ham-fisted rule that tries to make any compliments to anyone a form of objectification.

Especially when it’s different for some of us.