The perverts do exist, but, ladies, not every man paying you a compliment is harassing you. I learned this the other day (the hard way) as I quickly scurried to my car carrying bags of grocery. I was in gym clothes, sweaty, my body ached from my boot camp class, I was hungry and the last thing I needed was some strange creepy man “seeking” at me, as we Bahamians say, initiating some trivial conversation while looking at my thighs and breasts. This said, once I’m away from work I sometimes forget that my career has indirectly taken me into thousands of people’s homes and that being a reporter my face is probably airbrushed into some people’s minds. So this day in the parking lot at the grocery store I totally forgot this and at the moment I was just a woman who did not want to be bothered, especially by a stranger. I saw this tall man approaching me and my, “Lord I aint here for this today” face was fully activated. I pretended as if I didn’t see him trying to catch my attention and refused to make eye contact, but I was cornered.

“Hello Ms. Smith, I love watching you anchor the news and just wanted to say keep up the good work, you’re doing a good job.”

And he left. No slick comments, no asking for a card (aka my number), no eyes wandering south as he spoke. Just a genuine, sincere compliment. Normally when I’m being hit on I know right away. But the minute he began to speak I could tell he was just a guy wanting to play a lady a compliment. And believe it or not, there are many of them out there. Now I cannot ignore the fact that the occasional jerk who’d much rather use bitter, vile language to describe our body parts have probably forced us to immediately scowl and get defensive at the site of a strange man looking our way. But I do believe that gentlemen still exist, that a guy can see a girl and just want to compliment her on her dress or her hairstyle or even her shoes. There’s this one guy I met who stared me down from head to toe for about 10 minutes straight not saying a word. I was anxious to turn up my nose (and my lips) and ask what his problem was, but before I could my coworker charged, “Why are you looking at her like that?!” His face swelled with embarrassment before he said,

“I just wanted to tell her that she’s very well groomed and immaculate, but these days men can’t pay a woman a compliment without her calling it sexual harassment.”

Geesh! He was literally afraid to pay a genuine compliment after, more than likely, being the subject of a thousand cuss outs from women who saw him as creepy and perverted. But the poor guy was really a nice gentleman who just likes to let a woman know when she looks good. In the fast paced world that we live, we’re often so consumed by work and errands and…life that we don’t have the time to stop and take in a breath of fresh air or blush at a genuine compliment. It does us no good to create a community of scary men who end up being creepy because we constantly shut down a kind word. Again, I do agree that the perverts do exist and I also agree that as women we should not just accept rude, nasty street harassment. But not all men are perverts and that little thing called “woman’s intuition” is very real and she lets us know when danger is lurking. Maybe we should listen to her more as opposed to automatically activating bitch mode when a strange man is nearby. Besides, what lady can’t use a kind word to help her through the rest of the day? But then again these are the things they don’t teach in school. It was always boys play with boys, girls play with girls, totally forgetting that some day boy and girl would have to interact! And now many of these interactions are skewed because much of what we were taught, has no bearing in the real world and we’re left to figure this all out by ourselves. So ladies the next time you see a man with gazing eyes, you’ll know almost instantly just what he’s into and if it’s all good, take it with a smile…and pay him a compliment as well, men dig that kinda stuff too.