\u201cOh wow, you were bigger the last time we met,” an acquaintance once told me when we met for the first time in a while. \u201cWhat, fatter?\u201d I asked him, in slight disbelief. \u201cOh, women!\u201d he said, looking around for confirmation. \u201cYou can\u2019t even compliment them, they\u2019re so frail they get insulted straight away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many women are used to these kinds of compliments, and these ‘benevolent’ remarks often extend to themes beyond a women’s weight: What, so gorgeous but no husband and kids?<\/em> You\u2019re pretty hot for your age<\/em> (a compliment that is often paid to me, strangely, by men my own age). You know quite a lot about politics, for a woman.<\/em> This last one is a compliment I often hear even after I\u2019ve mentioned several times that I have a degree in political science. And then there\u2019s my all-time favourite: You\u2019re pretty okay for a feminist<\/em>. And so on, in the same fashion.<\/p>\n In a world suffering from war, hunger, and global warming, one might think: is there really nothing better to do than to grumble about compliments? After all, the person clearly meant well, it just ended up sounding wrong. But just because this sort of well-meaning sexism is widespread and its initial impulse benign, this doesn\u2019t mean that its negative effects are any less real. This is because, ultimately, we are socialised through compliments. Through them, it is signaled to us what is right and wrong, and we are given our values and norms. Compliments are an instrument of soft power.<\/p>\n In the examples above, a certain required standard for women emerges: be slim, pretty, and multiply. The first two, being slim and beautiful, are the means to achieve the third, namely multiplication. Not even mentioning here that getting older is a thing to be ashamed of, and that the same standards don\u2019t apply for men. By the way, sexist compliments certainly aren\u2019t limited to men; women often pay them just as enthusiastically. Given that women are confronted with these sexist double standards from early on, it is very difficult not to take them to heart and internalise the sexism.<\/p>\n So what can we do better? How can we pay empowering compliments? Because there isn\u2019t actually anything wrong with positive feedback. One very elementary option is to praise people for their actions and achievements. In other words, not to talk about what they are, but what they do\u2014something that is perfectly common for men, no less.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s still a great craving to compliment someone for their looks, then it’s entirely possible to do so without having to resort to sexism. For example, by concentrating on something more unique, like someone\u2019s cool frizzy hair, great chin, or nice smile lines. If someone still seems incredibly hot, then that can also be said\u2014without any other additions. And if you\u2019re adding \u201cfor a woman,\u201d it is relatively safe to assume that things are heading in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cOh wow, you were bigger the last time we met,” an acquaintance once told me when we met for the first time in a while. \u201cWhat, fatter?\u201d I asked him, in slight disbelief. \u201cOh, women!\u201d he said, looking around for confirmation. \u201cYou can\u2019t even compliment them, they\u2019re so frail they get insulted straight away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[393],"tags":[855],"class_list":["post-21813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sexism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21813"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21868,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813\/revisions\/21868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What\u2019s the problem?<\/h2>\n
Empowering compliments<\/h2>\n