How Women Really Feel About Compliments: A Mini Study

Written by Emma Witler

From Butterflies to a pit in my stomach

I, like many young women and girls, pretty much melted the first time the boy I had a crush on called me cute.

He thought I was cute!

Sure, that’s what all my mom’s Facebook friends say every year on my birthday. But this time, it came from a boy—and I liked how it made me feel more than I wanted to admit. But it didn’t end there.

He called me cute first. Occasionally, he’d say I was pretty, usually in response to me fishing for the word. But somehow, that wasn’t the adjective that stuck.

“You’re hot.”

It’s hard to explain the gut feeling I had when I first heard those words. I thought they’d make me feel confident, striking, attractive. Instead, I felt surprisingly self-conscious. It wasn’t about who I was to him—it became about what I did for him. My body worked for him.

I began to notice he didn’t look me in the eyes anymore.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve found the terms “hot” and “sexy” to fall incredibly flat. To me, they’re red flags. If those are the first words someone uses to describe me, it usually means I won’t be cherished for who I truly am. It tells me they don’t value the standard I hold as a godly woman. That standard means nothing to someone who simply has the “hots” for me.

I used to wonder if it was just me—maybe I was a little scarred from that experience (it took me a while to realize his real intentions), and now I’m more confident in my worth: first as a child of God, and second as a woman. But to find out, I decided to ask around.

I surveyed girls and women from multiple generations to determine how women really feel about compliments.

Heartfelt compliments VS. sexualized language

Before I share the results, let’s define a few of these words:

“Cute”, according to Merriam-Webster, means “attractive or pretty in a childish, youthful, or delicate way”—also described as “dainty” or “charming.”
“Pretty” is defined as “pleasing by delicacy or grace” and “having some conventionally accepted elements of beauty.”
“Hot” or “Sexy” refers to being “sexually suggestive or stimulating,” or more mildly, “generally attractive or interesting.”
“Beautiful” means “excitingly pleasant, excellent of its kind, wonderful.”

And in Scripture, “beautiful” is used to mean “adorned, glorified, honored, handsome, good, valuable, virtuous.” (Notice: some of those descriptions aren’t even physical!)

What Do Girls Actually Want to Be Called?

Most of the women I asked had similar views on being called “cute” or “pretty”
“Cute” feels sweet and wholesome—usually in a casual or friendly way. Maybe it’s her freckles, the way she scrunches her nose, or how she looks in a certain color.
“Pretty” has a bit more intentionality. It focuses on feminine beauty—her eyes, her hairstyle, the way she wears her favorite dress.

But things shifted when I asked about “hot” and “sexy”
How women really feel about compliments like this is that they’re more insulting than flattering. This language is off-putting and should have never became so casual. Nearly everyone said it felt uncomfortable or objectifying—such language seems too intimate and sexual, as if it should be reserved for only for marriage. These words feel shallow, overly sexual, and one-dimensional. Unlike “cute” or “pretty,” they reduce a person to their physical image and not much more.

Our culture throws those words around constantly—on billboards, in commercials, music, celebrity interviews, even in #BookTok captions. But genuine, wholesome compliments are rare. Why? Because we live in a hyper-sexualized world where “sexy” has become the standard to aspire to. 

A 2019 article in the journal “PLOS One” explains how sexiness applies “also to clothing and self-styling and hence to cultural ways of enhancing or highlighting physical sexual attractiveness”. In other words, our cultural fixation on sexiness makes it a common tool for flirtation—but a shallow and superficial one.

Beyond Surface-Level Compliments

A confident girl—especially one who knows who created her—doesn’t want compliments rooted in a broken world’s standards. She is not her waistline, tan, figure, or sex appeal. She’s so much more than what qualifies someone as “hot.”

She is beautiful.

Every girl I interviewed agreed: “beautiful” is the word that feels genuine and thoughtful. It reflects depth and intentionality. It describes how she carries herself, her character, her mind, her kindness. It’s the warmth in her hug, the glow in her smile when she sees someone she loves. It’s her quiet confidence and strength.

To a daughter of God, beauty reflects Christ’s light and love within her. Seeing and acknowledging that—that is the greatest compliment of all. It affirms her whole self, inside and out.

Imagine a Culture That Sees Real Beauty

Imagine if our culture started to truly see the beauty in people again—not just their sex appeal or surface-level attractiveness, but their real, God-given beauty. Learning how women really feel about compliments and truly honoring their bodies and emotions would cause a huge shift in society.

I believe it would change everything.

Your friend,

Emma

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Want to become a renewed PROVEN woman like Emma? Take a peek at what that looks like today by checking out the free e-book