Sometimes compliments weigh heavy on your mind
by Beth Teitell

Wednesday, April 18, 2001

Was it a compliment - or an insult?

A friend - who, give or take a few pounds around the waist, is the same size she's been for years - was picking up clothes at the dry cleaner's.

``Have you lost a lot of weight?'' the clerk asked.

Ah, noooo.

``He obviously remembered me as being really fat,'' she said.

``I make a heavy impact on people,'' she said. ``I present big. When they think of me, they think `She's chubby,' and then when they see me and I'm not obese, they think I've lost weight. In a way I guess it's good.''

If you think about it, most compliments are actually thinly veiled insults to the past. If something is good enough to be noted today, that must mean that it is better, however slightly, than it was yesterday.

``My husband is scared to say anything - even positive - when I get my hair cut,'' a friend told me. ``If he says he Likes it, I'm like, `So it didn't look good before?' ''

Like a trial lawyer trying to craft a objection-proof question, after more than a decade of marriage the poor guy has finally hit on the right way to note a new hair style: ``The hairdo you had before looked so good I couldn't have imagined that anything could be better, until I see how you look now.''

(Still, he can't win: ``Great,'' my friend responded the first time he used the method, ``I'll never be able to blowdry it like this again.'')

Unfortunately, her co-workers aren't so diplomatic. After a weekend trip to Boston, she walked into work on Monday morning and a woman said, ``You lost weight in Boston.''

``I still had my coat on,'' she said. ``Do I normally look so big that even my face looks fat? Or was I so big before that you could tell even when I had a coat on? Maybe I don't have a handle on my size.''

Even as machines and computers make our lives easier, the growing plastic surgery market is making things harder, complimentwise.

A friend recently got Botox injections. She suffered through the painful procedure to improve her appearance - but woe to anyone who noticed.

``I thought you looked better,'' a guest told her over Easter, after hearing about the Botox. ``Now I know why. What an improvement!''

Gee, thanks.

So how do you give a compliment?

``The first rule,'' a flattery specialist recommended, ``is that you never get too specific - and never stare. If a woman's had her eyes done, you don't look right at where her crow's feet used to be and say, `You look so much better without the wrinkles.'

``Instead you pretend you're not sure what's different, since in this fantasy world nothing was wrong before. The key is to keep the statement general, like, `You look fantastic!' ''

I agree with her philosophy, but when it comes to a compliment, I'll take what I can get.

If I put on glasses and someone says, ``You look smart,'' I don't ask questions. If I wear blush and a colleague remarks that I have ``nice color,'' I try not to focus on the pallid months that preceded the one vibrant day.

If someone says, ``That was a good column yesterday,'' I try not to think about what that says about the rest of my oeuvre. It's best that way.