Here’s the thing. If the girl is attracted to you, she’s flattered. If not, then she’s skeeved. The comment itself, and who you said it to has no weight here.
You were not 25 wearing black leather, with scads of piercings and tattoos. Thus, she wasn’t attracted to you. I assume you weren’t driving a Lamborgini?
Thus, you skeeved her. But since you didn’t do it on purpose, you get a pass.
DAMMIT! That wink was posted to Lamia! You weren’t supposed to read it!
Well… not 25. But the leather, piercings, tats and Lamborgini pick-up truck… that’s a fairly accurate portrait. Oh, and the dog was wearing his diamond-encrusted metal spike collar as well.
I’m assuming you are male. Even if you’re not, this is by no means a universal experience.
Don’t mind him, that seems to be a popular notion for him. I’ve seen it repeated in a LOT of these threads.
Missed edit. I don’t necessarily mean from him specifically as I’m pretty bad with names. I meant that anytime there’s a thread like this there’s always those who have to remind us that if the guy is HOT the girl thinks he’s less creepy. It’s usually said with the right amount of sneering that comes across as “how dare these uppity women have standards of attraction!?!”
I think you might be projecting just a tiny bit here.
Not really sure what the objection to the truism is. Yes, you may be able to find a few women who are skeeved by compliments from men they find attractive (??), or flattered by compliments from men they aren’t attracted to in the least, but isn’t what DrDeth said far more likely? And why does it need to be twisted into some kind of smear against women? It’s just a natural reaction.
Well, it’s been explained a lot when this is said so what’s one more, right? Also, you’re already labeling it a truism so that’s totally not buying into it completely or anything.
A stranger who feels free enough to comment on your face or body out of the blue is already starting with his foot in a hole, so to speak. Of course there are women who still find this flattering. Probably quite a few, but there are women who think their man being jealous is flattering, so there you go. The fact is that they’re still thinking it’s fine for them to outright let a woman know they approve of her physically. How often do you let a good looking man know that you think he’s good looking? Guys in these threads often tell us (and I don’t doubt the OP) that they weren’t looking to hook up so why not tell a guy “You’re pretty good looking” or “You look like you work out a lot!”
The point is that there’s always some guy who cruises into these threads with that ol crap line “if he is rich or good looking then it’s a-ok hurrdy durr!” All they forget to add is how nice guys like them don’t stand a chance.
You call it a natural reaction and a truism, I disagree. I guess if it were so widely believed we wouldn’t have these threads pop up a few times a month where people want us to judge an interaction we didn’t witness. After all, then they could just look around and say “I don’t have a Lamborghini nor do I look like Jon Hamm (or whatever hottie you like) so I’m about to lay a creepy complement on this total stranger. This will be great!”
Everybody needs a hobby.
Apparently it’s another case where the world of my own experience doesn’t at all resemble that of the Typical Female Doper, the latter being a dark and perilous place overrun with mashers, creepers, frotteurs, rapists, and awkward guys who just want to ask you out on a date lurking behind every blade of grass. I do sympathize, because that world sure sounds like a real shithole.
Seriously get over yourself. I realize you’re probably just looking to find something to exaggerate or lay one of your patented lamo jokes down about, but it’s a swing and a miss here.
I never insinuated anything about masher and rapists and people lurking anywhere although I can see why it would help your schtick to pretend I did. Instead of addressing anything I said you just want to pretend I’m playing the victim.
Strangers feeling okay with commenting on your looks, face or body are rude and if you want to take the side that they aren’t, then have at it. For you to take what I said and twist it to OMG O NOES level says a lot more than about your intention here than it does mine. Have fun!
I hope you don’t think that I normally would have said anything directly to her. I wouldn’t, unless for some odd reason she had asked my opinion of her looks, in which case I would have said something along the lines of “you’re very pretty” and driven away in a more advanced state of confusion than is normally the case for me…
ETA: I will say that I probably should keep my internal dialogue more, well, internal… but when you live alone you sometimes fall into the habit of talking to the dog, or the coffee pot, or the sofa.
Sorry - you’re a really loud winker. 
(That sounds dangerously close to something dirty.)
No, I didn’t think that. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear.
Nothing wrong with talking to the dog, I talk to my cat. The problem is if you think they’re talking back!
Nothin’ wrong with Zoidberg talking back to me, either. It’s not like that would make me the Son of Sam or anything…
It isn’t like you asked her to get a motel room or something. Any woman who’s bothered by being called cute has her skeeve-o-meter set at way too sensitive.
It really doesn’t matter if you said it to her or to your dog. Sometimes the “old” guys saying stuff about us were saying it to their friends, but where we could hear them, and our reaction was pretty much the same.
And fyi, you would almost certainly have been fine to have told her she had a really nice smile or pretty hair. That kind of comment is different from commenting of various body parts or general attractiveness because it doesn’t carry the same subtext of sexual attraction, so it typically doesn’t skeeve people out. It’s much easier to be flattered by a compliment when you’re sure it’s not the run-up to a proposition, ya know? Just in case you find yourself in a similar situation in the future.
“… and that, kids, is how I ended up handcuffed to a hospital bed with a broken arm and a Frosty rammed up my ass!”
How can you tell a compliment like “pretty hair” or “nice eyes” is or isn’t a run up to a proposition? Yeah, I guess the chances are bit LOWER than something obvious like “what are you doing tonight?” or “would you like to go out on a date sometime” or “meet me behind the dumpsters after closing tonight”. But it seems to me pretty much any compliment about looks or cuteness or stuff like that has about the same stranger danger of being a run up.