Written by Mercy Williams
Have you ever felt it? That moment when a woman praises you, and the ground beneath your feet feels light? Your cheeks swell with boundless euphoria, and your heart flutters, because when a woman can see you — really see the light you carry — time pauses, and the earth shifts in complete adoration.
But have you also noticed? Sometimes we hold back, afraid of being misunderstood. Afraid of being judged. Afraid of being rejected. Sometimes, you can see this fear in the eyes of other women. We, just like they, swallow our words or rehearse them to the point of ridiculous perfection, because God forbid we say a kind thing to our female colleagues, friends, bosses, aunties, or sisters, and they think we mean something else… or worse, that we’re being disrespectful. And so, even when we finally muster the courage to say the words, we cross our fingers and pray they land softly in their hearts. We hope, silently, that they will receive them with the warmth and goodwill with which we released them into the universe.
A few days ago at a co-working space, one of the team members walked into the kitchen to have breakfast. She glanced at me and said, “You’re cute. But not in a bad way.” I smiled, thanked her, and went back to my meal. I was new to the space, sitting quietly in a corner, observing the easy banter floating around the room. Not long after, she turned to me again: “Mercy, I’m sorry for calling you beautiful oh, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. Before you go and drag me on social media…” She chuckled.
“Ah! It’s true, oh. Gen Zs!” another man chimed in, and everyone burst into laughter. I laughed too, assuring her I wasn’t offended.
“Hope you won’t go on Twitter and say, ‘Can you imagine? At work, the Production Manager just told me I’m beautiful! Who does she think she is?!’” she continued, her animated gestures making the moment even funnier. “Because I know you Gen Zs… Wait, are you Millennial or Gen Z?” She paused and looked straight at me.
“I’m a Zillennial,” I replied.
“Wetin be that one again?” someone asked.
“We’re like the youngest set of Millennials but the oldest of the Gen Zs, so we don’t fit neatly into either category,” I tried to explain.
“Gen Z!”
“This one na Gen Z.”
“Don’t worry, we understand.”
Their voices overlapped, laughter bouncing around the room. It felt like the icebreaker I needed: a warm entry point into this new workspace. Yet, beneath the humour, I couldn’t stop thinking about why the kind lady had felt the need to justify her compliment.
Last night, scrolling through TikTok, I saw a video of a beautiful, young, androgynous woman. The comments were a sea of heart?eyed emojis and sweet praises. But one comment caught my attention:
“I am straight. I am straight. I AM STRAIGHT!!!”
Dozens of replies followed, teasing her to “check herself” and questioning her certainty. And just like that, I was reminded of what I’ve seen far too often: women struggling to give other women genuine compliments because they fear it will be read by others or even by themselves as something more.
Sometimes, it is, in fact, a hint of something more. A gentle reminder of the fact that admiration and physical attraction between women are not mutually exclusive, especially if said women are self-proclaimed heterosexual or even bi-curious. Although often a controversial discourse, research on sexual fluidity in humans has revealed that not only is it higher in the female population, but it is also more complex than we think, especially in a world often governed by patriarchal and religious beliefs.
For those new to the concept, sexual fluidity, in the words of American psychologist and feminist Lisa M. Diamond, author of the well-known book “Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire”, is basically the ability for our sexual desires to shift depending on context. She describes it as a kind of flexibility that lets people experience changes in who they’re drawn to, whether in the short term or over longer stretches of life.
In the words of American feminist and poet Adrienne Rich, compulsory heterosexuality is the belief that everyone is straight unless they prove otherwise. It’s not just an assumption — it’s a system built on misogyny, one that forces women into heterosexuality, hides queerness, and makes straightness seem like the only “normal” way to exist. You see it in the way families ask young girls about their “future husbands” before they’re even old enough to understand desire, or how media is saturated with boy-meets-girl storylines, leaving little room for anything else.
But back to the story on TikTok and the girlies battling to convince us—and themselves—that they are indeed straight; sometimes, behind those digital cackles is a curiosity, a yearning that’s yet to be nurtured. And while that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if it were true, the fact that this is where our minds go first is telling. It says something about the unspoken rules we’ve inherited. Rules that make us second?guess the simplest, most human thing: which is one woman telling another woman she’s beautiful.
And that’s just one example. Compliments don’t always have to be dressed in flowery statements. Sometimes, they arrive quietly — folded neatly into gestures, tucked into the way we interact with each other through both our grand and barely noticeable acts of kindness.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled on one of the most interesting threads I’d seen in a while on my Instagram feed. It was started by a woman who asked others to share how they practise micro?feminism.
While I already understood what feminism meant, I was intrigued by this new framing. I came to see micro?feminism as one of the subtle ways we women can compliment each other, not just in what we say, but in what we do.
In some of the posts I saw for instance, the women pinned responsibilities to fathers rather than take the traditional route of assuming only mothers should take on the task of nurturing and looking after the kids.
Through these small gestures, along with the more grandiose ones by women for women, we can continuously usher ourselves into a world where women are more confident in their capacity to give and receive kindness from other females without fear or prejudice.
So be it through words, through the radical acts of micro feminism, through the loud and the silent ways that we offer sweetness to each other, when women compliment women, the earth shifts.
