Becky has a couple of posts up about the feeling she gets when men oogle her. First:

On the friend flipside, even though it doesn’t bother me nearly as much, I would still honestly prefer to receive a compliment for my eyes, smile or wit. Perhaps these are my insecurities coming into play, but it’s almost as if they’re saying “while I like your breasts, the rest of you isn’t good enough” because these aren’t people that want to date me. The irony is that these are mostly just balls of fat, so it’s interesting that oftentimes men want large breasts with a tiny body (surgical help not included, of course).

It’s a long story worth sharing in its entirety at some point, but once upon a time I was involved with a girl named Brady that was physically stunning. She was everything I was attracted to at the time down to a T (though my tastes changed after… and maybe because… of her). Anyway, she would fly off the handle just about any time I complimented her appearence. I mean, she would just lose it. One day we finally got to talking about it, and she explained that she hated it because she put very little effort in to her appearance and she hated that the one thing that guys appreciated most about her was the one thing that she had absolutely nothing to do with.

Looking back, it is perhaps the only thing the girl ever said that actually made logical sense. And that’s gotta be at least part of what is offputting about compliments about breasts. It also makes sense that Becky would prefer compliments about smile and wit, which are strengths that are cultivated. Even the eyes get a pass because they are often marked as the windows to the soul.

As far as I go, I have unusually dark blue eyes that various women have complimented in the past. It didn’t mean much to me when they did compliment them for the same reason that breast compliments meant little to the Brady because she didn’t really cultivate her appearance so much as simply inherited it. But I will always appreciate those that did compliment my eyes because it was one of the two physical strengths that I realized I had when it came to women (the other being my height, which is major points with tall ladies such as my wife). I made a point to look women in the eyes and I think that even if they didn’t care about my eyes’ color, it gave me an appearance of confidence.

There are other physical compliments that I guess could be considered valuable. For instance I have an expressive face, which would be on par with Becky’s smile as far as compliment acceptability rationale is concerned. Beyond that, there isn’t that much to compliment (note: I am just considering above the waste assessments here!), so I suppose that I take whatever I can get, but if it’s not something that I created or cultivated, my reaction will have more to do with who is complimenting rather than what the compliment is.