''You look really lovely today" - be the change you want to see in the world

Possible humblebrag inbound

Oct 28, 2025

So I've written about 400 words getting a bit1 shouty about ‘Medical Grade’ skincare, and that’s almost certainly next, but then this happened today and I wanted to talk about it instead.

Lovely

I was on the Tube this morning, past commuter peak, in a relatively empty carriage. Just across from me was a woman in her (probably) mid-twenties, who I’d noticed for having beautiful-coloured hair and improbably thick false eyelashes2.

I’d mostly spent the journey a) smiling about a message I’d received overnight from a much-loved friend who lives far too far away and b) wondering why men are3.

She stood up to get off the train, but looked at me with that ‘I’m about to say something to you’ look4. This often precedes a compliment, in my experience, but I’m also warier since about 15 years ago, when a woman came up to me with that look. I smiled preemptively, waiting to be lavished with praise. Instead, she asked me if I knew that my skirt had split all the way up the back. I very much did NOT know, and the hubris still makes me wince a little bit, even now.

Anyway, today my arse was not making a last-ditch gasp for freedom and our special guest for this week smiled at me and said, “You look really lovely today. Proper smiley. Have a really great rest of your day.”

And with that, she was gone, like a little auburn fairy5

I mean, it’s obviously delightful to get a sincere compliment from a random stranger before 10am
She had absolutely zero agenda. There’s no version of this where she was angling to buy me a bag of chips and then fingerbang me into oblivion6.
It’s friendly and specific, without being about a specific body part or item7.
The “proper smiley” component of this is actually rather beautiful. It’s the antithesis of “Cheer up love, it might never happen,” that some chaps8 deploy in the name of megabantz9. It’s more “Thanks for giving me a glimpse into your joy. It suits you”. You know?
She hopped off and went about her day before I had to get into a whole reciprocal conversation. I just about had time to say “That’s really kind, thanks!” before the doors closed.
It radiated through the rest of my day. The friend I met for brunch greeted me with a “You look gorgeous!” and when I ran into someone else I hadn’t seen in 6 months, she was similarly effusive. Now, it may just be that today I had An Incredibly Good Hair Day, but I suspect I had a little more pep in my step because of the Auburn Fairy’s unexpected compliment.

Why I want to talk about it

Let the record show that I looked fucking great on 27 October 2025.
Sincere compliments are a beautiful thing, but the temptation is often to focus on one specific thing, which often does more to compliment someone’s taste than their appearance.

The advice - which I’ll repeat here - is to instead try to give a compliment that transcends appearance. “You look really lovely” isn’t “I like your hair” or “Have you lost weight?” or “Nice dress!”. It’s just: you look really lovely.

Some will advise you to compliment a person’s choices. I had this happen to me on a dating app the other day, and I can’t say I care for it.

Our hapless (and short-lived) hero fired in with: “Great boots10! And incredible lips 🔥”
Me: “This is really just congratulating me on things that I‘ve bought11.”
We didn’t last long.
I might be about to embark on a Masculine Cleanse12, which, amongst other things, encourages you to find validation from within yourself, rather than from men.
This should give me some bandwidth to throw out some scattergun validation of my own. I’m going to start dishing out ad hoc “You look really lovely today”s to the women of the world.

I encourage you to do the same. I’m pretty sure it feels equally good to be on either side of that exchange.