Dear Mr. MacFarlane:
As, apparently, a member of your target demographic, I feel qualified to respond to your column.
First, I want you to ask yourself a question - seriously reflect on it: What, exactly, do you hope to accomplish by complimenting strangers? Because I can't imagine it achieving anything except making the lady in question uncomfortable. You claim you want to say something nice, but you do seem to be aware that it will likely make the subject of your attentions uncomfortable. So why do you still want to say it? Instead of saying something nice, why not do something nice and not make her uncomfortable? What is it that compels you to completely disregard the fact that you do not think she would appreciate your compliment, and instead barrel away on the cocky presumption that she should appreciate your compliment because...because you think she should? I'm not sure why. Seriously, why, in any social interaction, would you so callously disregard your best guess at how the interlocutor would respond, and why would you persist in labelling a statement that you anticipate would make her uncomfortable as "nice"?
Speaking as a member of your target demographic, when I am beautiful (which I sometimes am and sometimes am not), I know that I'm beautiful. I am perfectly aware of it. And when I am not beautiful, I am also perfectly aware of it. Telling me I'm beautiful will not make me feel any better about myself under any circumstances. If I am beautiful at the time, it will not give me any new information but might make me feel uncomfortable. If I am not beautiful at the time, I will know you're bullshitting me, and I will also feel like strange old men read me as someone so pathetic and desperate that she'd be grateful for any compliment. This, in turn, will make me feel uncomfortable and insecure, and I will raise my shields even higher so as to avoid coming across as an easy target.
Compliments on my appearance are only worth anything to me when they come from people who see me regularly and are familiar with my range of appearance. My base appearance is something over which I have no influence, so compliments on it are meaningless. However, I can influence my appearance with clothing and cosmetic and hairdressing choices, so a compliment from someone who sees me regularly on a specific aspect of my appearance is appreciated, because then I know what I'm doing right. The opinions of strangers who have never seen me before simply do not make me feel good, under any circumstances.
So how can you be "nice" to a strange young woman? The single best thing you can do is respect my reality. You seem to be aware of it, because you are aware that your attempt to compliment could be taken the wrong way, so now respect it. You know that I get unwanted attention, you know that you're most likely not my first choice of person I want attention from, you know that I have the burden of not leading anyone on and there are a significant number of men who are extremely easily led on, so simply respect and understand that that's where I'm coming from. Backing off at the first sign that your attentions are unwanted or that you're making me uncomfortable is an excellent way to show goodwill. If you don't back off, you leave me no choice but to assume your motives are impure. And don't sit there saying "But I'm just trying to be nice!" You are, by your own admission, old enough to be my father, you are a columnist for a major national newspaper, so you are obviously worldly enough to know that a common tactic of cads and predators is to try to make their target feel guilty for not obeying her instincts. As the initiator of an unnecessary and likely unwanted social interaction, the onus is upon you to make it clear to your interlocutor that your intentions are pure, and you don't do that by trying to guilt her into accepting unwanted and uncomfortable attention. Even Miss Manners will attest to the fact that it is rude to try to force anything upon anyone when they have attempted to gracefully opt out.
Let me give you some examples of middle-aged men with whom I came into contact involutariliy, but who I still thought were nice. Perhaps you can see the common thread:
- The guy who came into my apartment to replace my kitchen floor. He moved the stove for me (building management had told me that I was responsible for moving it, but I'm not strong enough) and told me that it was no problem, even though that wasn't part of his job and I'm sure his union would have encouraged him to refuse. Then he went about replacing my floor in a perfectly businesslike manner, allowing me to go about my morning routine without interruption. He put the stove back, made sure the floor was perfectly clean, and left my apartment in a timely manner. He was perfectly polite but never once acted the slightest bit entitled to my attention. He never once gave my body or any part of the apartment except the floor that he was fixing an assessing glance. I felt comfortable enough with him in the apartment that I would have changed clothes behind a closed bedroom door if necessary (albeit standing next to the door so that my body would have prevented it from opening.)
- The backup superintendant, who had to come to my apartment on an urgent basis because of a leaking pipe. Again, he went straight down to business, explained things to me, never once looked at me anywhere but in my eyes or at my apartment anywhere but the toilet (which he was fixing), accepted my inexperience with plumbing as a reasonable basis for my possibly calling him for a non-emergency but didn't use it as a tool to make me feel stupid (in fact, he treated me like my actions were laudable when we found that the leak was in fact something that could have developed into an emergency). I felt comfortable around him that when we needed to move two packages of feminine hygiene products to access the toilet tank, it didn't make me feel awkward or embarrassed at all.
- My supervisor at my previous job. It was clear to me that he was well aware that I was an attractive female university student in an otherwise all-male office and that this made the office's dynamics different than if it had been gender-balanced or all male, but he handled the situation admirably. There were a couple of instances where I had to be treated differently because of my realities (in one case, I didn't want to do a resnet installation in the private residence room of a (male, extremely tall, extremely strong, no sense of personal space) student who creeped me out, and in other cases there was some equipment that I simply could not lift, but all the guys could) but he didn't make a big deal of it, he just assigned me to different work and in no way used it as an excuse to question my overall competence. He was perhaps a touch too chivalrous at times, but he made up for that by recognizing that I had been in the office longer and knew How Things Are Done, and I returned this respect by giving him the information he needed to make decisions, but deferring to him for the actual decisions.
In none of these cases did any of these gentlemen ever comment on my appearance, and there has never been a situation in my life where a strange man has commented on my appearance and it made me think that he's nice.
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