Outer Values

I have a problem: I get too many compliments – and without exception, they come from women. You think that sounds terribly coy? But it’s true. There was the colleague who, from a safe distance, admitted she liked my full beard. And another who praised me for having a nice smile. Some women comment on my outfits weekly, and just recently, while waiting in the canteen queue, a woman in her mid-thirties I didn’t even know said: “You’re quite a handsome man.” Just like that, with the same casualness someone might say, “The bus is about to leave.” She then turned back to her vegetarian curry. I mumbled, “Uh… thanks,” because what else could I have said?

My embarrassed awkwardness already revealed the whole problem. Just imagine it had been the other way around – me giving the unsolicited compliment. Overstep! Harassment! In the workplace, the rules of courtesy have shifted – especially since MeToo, sexism debates and political correctness. Remarks about appearances are taboo for men, business coaches warn, and rightly so. But for women, it seems, that doesn’t apply.

When I told my wife about it at home, I became a victim for good. That’s just not okay, she exclaimed, then looked at me with concern and asked how I had managed to endure it. Friends acted as if I had been mugged at gunpoint and assured me of their sympathy. Of course, by then it was far too late to admit what I should have confessed right away but now no longer could: that I had actually found the compliments rather lovely and thought they were deserved.

Was this feminist empowerment at work, some belated balancing of power in which women demonstratively caught up on what was now already forbidden for men? I found the debate so disheartening that I resolved, from then on, not to flinch at a compliment like an animal that has never been petted.

A genuine, good compliment has no hidden agenda. It arises from the moment and fades with it, and sometimes it leaves behind a trace of joy. Of course, there are boundaries, and boundaries matter. But where they are respected, kindness can open doors – whole ballrooms of sociability. It can be a flash of lightning in the grey of everyday life. And you, who have read this column all the way to the end – you look fantastic, by the way.

Moritz Herrmann is chief text editor at stern. His reports have won numerous awards. The photos of him circulating online, he believes, are not representative.

This article has first been published in the printed edition of 30 Grad in autumn 2025.