We have all heard the stereotypes associated with women and compliments. If we ignore them, we are stuck up and rude. If we disagree with them, we are either fishing for more or possibly just being stuck up and rude again. This seems like a bit of a lose-lose situation.
Like many similar issues, women have been having an even harder time negotiating this predicament in the age of the internet and social media. Many women with public profiles and a strong social media presence have experienced these kind of attacks when they can’t ‘take a compliment’ online.
But it gets worse. What about when we do accept compliments, and show we are confident and proud of whichever personal attribute is being flattered? Apparently, that is not acceptable either.
Eighteen-year-old Gweneth Bateman decided to conduct an experiment to figure out whether accepting compliments is the best way to avoid these kinds of attacks as women. As it turns out, it’s not.
Bateman had been receiving a lot ofcriticism on social media for not replying to flattery.
“If a guy messages me I usually don’t reply because most of the time they are complete strangers to me,” she told BuzzFeed News. “When they don’t get a reply out of me it usually ends up with them calling me ‘rude’ or a ‘b-tch’.
So she decided instead of ignoring the men complimenting her, she would agree with them. Here’s what happened:
When their compliments were met with confidence, their authors immediately retracted them, calling her vain and even ugly.
“For many men, beauty, coolness, [and] desirability are gifts they alone can bestow upon women. They get baffled, even aggressive when you show you’ve known you possess those things all along.
“The response to the tweet has been mostly negative,” she said. “I think this is because when faced with information that they dislike, people feel the need to lash out.”
She said some men think “women should base their self worth off of the compliment that they feed to them, thus believing that women owe them a response.”
Bateman has asked other women to participate in her social experiment, and many have received the same response. Why are women attacked for accepting compliments with confidence, and attacked when we accept them with humility? Are we damned if we do and damned if we don’t?
