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The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Rant: ‘you look amazing’" and posted in the "Expectant and Postpartum Moms" forum. The original poster is a new mother and, as such, is "exhausted and struggling". Nevertheless, "at least 10 times" other people have told her that she "looks amazing" or something similar. Because this compliment does not match how she is feeling, it is awkward for her and she is annoyed by it. She ends her post by saying, "Don’t comment on anyone’s body ever, but especially a hormonal new mom." This is a 12 page thread and I don't have time to read the entire thing. But, obviously a thread of this length is going to contain a lot of different opinions. The first thing that I will note is that the original poster does not seem to have returned to the thread after the first post. However, another poster who feels very much the same way as the original poster took over and posted nearly 30 times. So the original poster's viewpoint was very well represented even if she herself was not. The basic argument of the original poster and the poster who agreed with her is that by focusing on a women's appearance, her friends and acquaintances were missing the physical stress and emotional challenges the she was undergoing. Because they looked good, people assumed that they must feel good and that simply was not the case. Moreover, they don't even agree that they actually looked amazing. They concede that they lost weight and they attribute the compliments to that and nothing more. In their opinion, others are focusing exclusively on weight and missing the signs that they are somewhat in distress. Some posters are concerned that the original poster may be suffering from postpartum depression and urge her to talk to her doctor about it. Others explain that people are simply trying to be nice. Moreover, they say, some women appreciate the compliments. But a number of posters support the other two women in arguing that comments about people's bodies just shouldn't be made. I suspect that there is somewhat of a generational divide on this issue with younger people generally being more sensitive about comments about appearances. This is reflected in one post in which the poster stated that only "old women" think that others appreciate being told that they look amazing. My thinking is that a lot of people are more or less on autopilot when it comes to informal conversations. It might be common to ask another person how they are doing, but only in unusual circumstances does anyone really want to hear a litany of things bothering the other person. Telling a new mother that she looks amazing is a simple way of offering reassurance and support. Almost no one is going to tell a woman that she looks stressed and haggard. The bigger problem is not listening. Several of the posters describe replying to compliments by explaining the struggles they are encountering and having that shrugged off. In many cases, people simply might not want to deal with it or may not know how to react to it. But, that, more than the compliment, is where the focus on improvement should probably be.