As a girl myself, I would re-title this whole node "don't only tell a girl she's beautiful" because I think that's where the problem lies. It's a matter of what really matters, and if all we emphasize is beauty, the results can be very destabilizing.
I'll even provide an example, and I'll even admit it's about me, as much as I hate to. I have a friend that I've known for a whole bunch of years, a friend who is very talented and who I really respect. The possibility of us dating has always been non-existent since I've been happily committed to someone else since before we met. He's a poet, and a particularly good one whose work I really admire, and whose company I cherish. But invariably, when we get together, he tells me how beautiful he thinks I am.
Yes, everyone here is right, it does make me smile, and it does make me blush, but it also makes me wonder. He has heard my poetry too, which although nowhere near on par with his, is sometimes quite good, and we've had long philosophical and political debates that stretch into the wee hours of dawn, but he has never told me that he like my writing, or that he thinks I'm intelligent, interesting, anything but beautiful.
I tell him these things. I tell him how much I enjoy our long conversations, his company, and these are more fitting with the kind of person he is. He writes over and over again about how our beauty-obsessed society has made him feel like he was never good enough. He writes about escaping from a world that values us based only on the way we look, but he always tells me I'm beautiful.
Don't get me wrong, he is a wonderful friend, but he does remind me of how rarely we emphasize the things that matter. I'm training to be a secondary school teacher right now, and when my peers give me feedback on presentations I give, I keep hearing about how I'll make a good teacher because of my voice. My voice. Not my passion for working with young people, not my carefully thought out pedagogical foundations, not my ability to provoke critical thought, but my voice.
It's just all a matter of emphasis, and although it's easier to glance at someone and respond to how they look, I'm going to make a point of listening to someone today, and responding to what they have to say. I'm going to spend my attention on what I think is important.