[quote=NicMM]
CA Renter, you nailed it. That’s what I wanted to express but hard to put the words together for. I am a woman of an intellectual type. The way that my parents raised me up was to focus my skills and capabilities and ignore my appearance. I used to feel embarrassed when receiving compliments on my look and used to not give compliments to the looks of my girl friends. That gave me a disadvantage on building relationships with my friends. As I grew older, I started to understand the beautiful look of a person actually IS a reflection of some internal quality of her (especially for an adult). It requires lots of knowledge and lots of work and persistency to achieve and maintain that, same as to be proficiency to any skill.
Therefore, a sincere praise to the look of a friend is as important as a sincere praise of her work, skills, quality… etc. It is a way to show support.
Now I give lots of compliment and do lots of Facebook Likes to my friends, and receive lots back as well. Those small things make my days happier.
NicMM[/quote]
Seems to me that took a lot of contorting to make it sound like superficial compliments aren’t really superficial.
Your comment that “That gave me a disadvantage on building relationships with my friends” says a lot to me. People like friends that make them feel good. And, in our society, apparently, if you’re not complimenting your women friends on their looks, you’re not making them feel good. In general.
Which is what I’m taking away from this thread so far. Our society really is very superficial; it really does value appearance (especially women’s) vastly.
I suppose it’s human nature. It’s probably been this way in most or all societies throughout history. I guess I’m a bit foolish for having, for all these years, thought we’d advanced past that. I mean, we grew up hearing that what’s inside a woman is more important than her superficial appearance. But I guess for most people it didn’t sink in. Either that or our natural programming encourages superficiality, and our artificial programming isn’t enough to overcome that.
