[ewomack]

Now okay, I've had a problem with this very issue since I started shaving. Due to multiple heinous experiences with telling women "you look nice" or "you have a beautiful profile" or even "you shouldn't put yourself down, you're very intelligent" I have ceased complimenting women at work, at parties, or at random social collisions. What happens is that either: 1) the complimented woman thinks I'm coming on to her and almost instantaneously stops talking to me, or 2) the complimented woman thinks I'm coming on to her and instantaneously starts hitting on me. Very very very few experiences have ended in a "thank you" and a resumption of normal intractions. 95% of the time my compliments resulted in a perfectly inocuous relationship becoming a turgid soap opera. I should add that when I complimented these women I was not: 1) drooling while staring at their chests, 2) scanning them up and down with bulging wolf eyes, 3) whispering softly in their ears so that my compliments sensuously tickled their cochleas, 4) naked in a "come and get me babe" pose. Unfortunate, yes. Socially necessary, yes to that too.