One of my New Year’s resolutions (and likely one of my lifelong policies now) is the following:
I will not comment, positively or negatively, about physical appearance of any person save my wife and children in an effort to reduce the focus on physical appearance in our culture overall.
I’ve been adhering to this policy since the beginning of the year, and I’m here to report that it is not difficult to follow.
It’s fairly simple, in fact.
Other than a handful of times that I have wanted to point out the oddity of a person’s appearance to a friend or family member, the elimination of comments related to physical appearance has been blessedly easy.
And in those cases when I have wanted to point out the oddity of someone’s appearance, I reminded myself, “Who am I do judge how that person presents him or herself? People can be whoever they want to be. I left middle school behind a long time ago.”
One of the more amusing aspects of this policy is how I am occasionally required to generate a compliment that isn’t related to physical appearance when a simple comment on physical appearance would do just fine.
Though I haven’t been forced to research possible alternative compliments yet, I have always loved this list and offer it here as an alternative to the standard comment on clothing, hair, or shoes, which in my experience are the most common (and frankly least meaningful) compliments offered in the world today.
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How many of the compliments listed above are any better than complimenting someone’s appearance? Saying, "I bet you’re amazing at chess," is a compliment to how smart they are. Intelligence depends to a food extent on genetics, which lies outside their control. Likewise with physical strength. Or even personality. These things can be altered on an individual basis, but unless you know that the person has worked hard to change their abilities, you may just be complimenting their genetic luck. Maybe we should refrain from most compliments?
I’m not sure if I would want to refrain entirely from compliments. Positive feedback can be very helpful, so perhaps compliments more aligned with actual behavior would be best.
Although I acknowledge that you are correct that many of the compliments on the list are at least in part related to innate traits to which we have little control, my desire is to decrease the emphasis that our culture has on physical appearance. If I tell a person that "I bet you’re amazing at chess," this may be targeting intelligence, but effective chess play also requires study, practice, and determination. This is an acknowledgement that you look like the kind of person who would have all of that in addition to natural born talent.
But even if it was simply intelligence that I was complimenting, a redirected focus on brains over beauty would be fine with me.
For the record, I try like hell to never tell me students or children that they are "smart." Research has shown that this can be detrimental to genuinely smart kids. Instead, I try to compliment behavior whenever possible, and though it’s taken some time, I’m pretty consistent now in this regard.
My 2 teens HATE being told they’re smart! My daughter told me, "Mom, we’re with kids all day long who we know are smarter than us. You are obviously clueless when you say stuff like that."
I switched it up to, "You are absolutely capable of the effort and diligence it takes to do well in your studies."
Either they haven’t figured out a comeback, or it’s’ the right response. It’s been years since I first put it out there, so I think I got ’em… :^)
There’s actually a lot of research on the damaging effects of telling kids that they are smart. Your children are correct! Your second response is outstanding. Focus on a behavior and not on a predetermined condition that they don’t feel any control over.