So, ladies, tell me. Don't you guys like compliments? There is huge evidence that men do. You can tell a man anything as long as it's complimentary. You can say, with a straight face, "You're a combination of Albert Schweitzer and A R Rahman," and he will take a quick look at you to see if you're taking the piss, a very quick look, and then he will accept the compliment at face value.

He will even accept this kind of compliment when he is your boss. He will accept this kind of compliment even when he is conducting a performance assessment and you are either up for a raise or a promotion or both. He will also believe it. Women are at the other end of the spectrum.

Let us not even go near those dreadful ones about weight and looks. Say, "You're looking good today," to a woman and you're cooked in less time than it takes a microwave to melt an ice-cream. The innocuous-sounding remark has been scanned and has come out as: "You look like a dog; today however is an exception upon which I needed to comment." Say, "You've lost weight," and you're in another mess. Use the analogy and figure it out. I don't need to draw you a diagram.
Let us assume you compliment a woman on her performance at a board meeting.

"That was a brilliant presentation," you say.
"No!" says the woman.
This surprises you in its flatness but you still try.
"Why do you say that? I thought it went well."
"The colour combinations on the third slide were all wrong."
This one is difficult but you try to point out that this does not matter. You get a withering look of contempt and perhaps a quote from the 20th-century architect Mies van der Rohe to the effect that the Divinity has taken up residence in the details.
You try another tack. This is because you are deeply attracted as you almost always are.
"I think you handled the questions with panache," you say.
"I don't think panache was what was needed," she returns.

You sniff at these negations. If she were a man, you'd have been hitting him by now. But she is not a man so you sniff at these remarks to see if they are meant to put you down. Have you dripped some saliva on the superfine textile covering that shapely shoulder? Has the line of your trousers been disrupted? Is smoke issuing from your ears? It doesn't seem like it. It seems like... she is putting herself down.

At this point, you might want to say something reassuring about not setting too high a standard; you might want to give her the potted version of the little lecture you devised for your father ('The Perils of Perfectionism') before handing him your report card; you might even be tempted to put your arm around her shoulder.

Desist.
This is not the time. This is not the place. Leave her alone. The point will come when she will spiral down to such a dreadful place that she will probably have to lift out of there or simply dump herself into a swimming pool full of lanolin and soften to death. Men never visit this place. There is a self-protecting gene, which kicks in along with that rush of testosterone inaugurated by the Y gene.

If a man makes a mistake, he makes sure that he is not responsible. It wasn't me who made that booboo in the presentation, I got the figures from my juniors; those aliens from 'The X-Files' put them there; Bill Gates is to blame, he incorporated a bug in this programme that...

That means any compliment, even after a disastrous presentation, will be scanned very quickly-is s/he taking the piss? - And then passed and accepted. It's called an ego and it is a very handy thing to have.

So don't women get egos? No, they get reality principles. There is no use telling a woman she looks like Kajol if she does not. If there is a passing resemblance, she might be mildly entertained at being told that but she can only be told that there is a passing resemblance.

Wonder why this happens?
Of course, I have an explanation. Several, if you want. Women are suspicious of compliments because centuries of men have used them to manipulate women; they are suspicious of compliments because they have not been raised on the same diet of 'raja-beta' adulation that men have; they are... Just plain suspicious.

Look Out for 'How To: Accept Compliments Gracefully', In A Coming Issue!