Ladies, Do You Compliment One Another?

I was out and about running errands yesterday and as I waited in line, I noticed the woman in front of me had on some fabulous heels. I ooh’d and ahh’d in my mind before tapping her on the shoulder and relaying to her that I liked her heels. Her reply? An eyeroll and a suck teeth head nod. What’s up with that? Is it now against the law to compliment one another? And what happened to graciousness and saying thank you when given a compliment?

I posed this question to Twitter on my personal feed, and I got a plethora of answers from a lot of my followers. Most of us agreed that when you compliment a woman, it gets misconstrued or taken out of context. But my Twitter friend Malenga said it best:

“I think gracefully accepting compliments is becoming a lost art. For girls/women, especially. I think there’s a lot that women aren’t teaching girls anymore. Hence the desire girls seem to have to be “hard” or “bad.” Whatever happened to classy and elegant? Graceful?

Malenga certainly hit the nail right on the head when she mentioned that girls are not being taught to be gracious and to say thank you. When we were young, most of us were taught good manners and etiquette and we better had used it or our heads would be on a platter. Now that it seems that being gracious is not a priority to many, the result is a society of people who do know how to co-exist in a world where manners still do matter.

Could this be because as parents, some of us have dropped the ball, or does it go further than that? Are our daughters so much on the defense because of a lack of a father figure that they lash out by bring aggressive and rude? Has it made our little girls “harder” individuals because they cannot believe that someone would dare give them a compliment? Is it a sign of low self esteem?

I have so many questions and not nearly enough answers. With my six year old daughter, I constantly remind her to say thank you and please and be gracious. She is my little girl, who will one day be a grown woman, and I want her to act accordingly. When she doesn’t use good manners, I am quick to remind her of her faux pas and correct it before it becomes a bad habit. If I don’t take the initiative with her, who will?

So, I am posing this question again to you, my readers. Ladies, do you compliment other women? And if so, what’s been the response? What is your response when another woman compliments you? I am anxious to hear your answers.