The world needs more compliments. Just try not to be weird about it | Emma Beddington

I’m inspired by Barbara from Stroud, who went viral for her way with a kind word. What we don’t need is the corporate nonsense from the likes of M&S and ‘chief compliments officer’ Gillian Anderson, writes Emma Beddington

I hope you don’t mind me saying that you are looking very nice today. Ugh, no, sorry, start again.

I have been thinking a lot about compliments – why, how, good and bad ones – because of Barbara from Stroud, whose vox pop went viral when she was asked how to make someone’s day better. “If I see someone and I like their shoes, dress, hat, I say so,” she said. That this quite ordinary comment, albeit from a clearly delightful woman, got millions of views and compliments in return (including from former England goalie Mary Earps) suggests an understandable longing for nano acts of niceness.

Missing the point entirely (though maybe not, since I’m writing about it) is the marketing department at Marks & Spencer, which has just appointed Gillian Anderson “chief compliments officer”. Her job description? “To spread joy and positivity, and to compliment M&S customers and employees.” What this piece of corporate whimsy means is suggested by a cursed mini-ad in which the actor, radiating powerful if professional “Will this do?” energy, compliments a woman, or rather her M&S outfit (“I love that dress”), as she strides past her. I guess she has had sillier roles, but I absolutely hate it; it’s the opposite of Barbara from Stroud, somehow.

Part of what distinguishes a great compliment from a stranger from one that washes ineffectively over you (or worse, feels intrusive, or icky) is sincerity: a proper compliment can’t be a contractual deliverable, or given with an ulterior motive. Another is specificity. “You’re beautiful” is OK (well, from the right person); “You have a very well-turned ankle” (a real example, not directed at me) hits harder. The comedian Milo McCabe has made an art form of delivering highly specific compliments as the suave, smoking-jacketed surrealist Troy Hawke. “You have a marvellous weight distribution between your feet”; “You have the head of a composer”; “You look like a benign motorcycle club version of Father Christmas.” There is a real quality of noticing required for this to work: McCabe told the New York Times he “put 100% focus on someone” and the compliment just came. They work, too, because they’re a bit weird: I was thrilled when someone told me I had “cute ears” and believed it for years (until, contemplating a piercing last year, I snapped a pic of the gnarly cartilage on the side of my head and was instantly disillusioned); an internet friend has never forgotten the time she was told, approvingly, by a medical professional, she had “breasts that could stop a bullet”.

There is also an element of vulnerability. “I wonder if a lot of people would like to do it too and are a wee bit shy,” Barbara mused when asked why she thought her comment had resonated. It’s true: you don’t want to come across as a creep, foisting unwanted attention on someone. I’ve been watching (OK, I accept this already sounds creepy) a girl in my gym teach herself handstands and when our paths cross in the changing room I’m desperate to tell her how impressed I am, but I don’t dare. What if she does, indeed, think I’m a weirdo pervert? Saying something nice to another person runs the risk of being rebuffed and that’s partly why it’s such a gift.

It is worth it, though. Getting compliments feels good (it lights up the reward circuitry in your brain, though research suggests appearance-based ones can also, interestingly, be cognitively sapping and subtly perpetuate gender inequality) and so does giving them. I do occasionally dare these days: being a middle-aged woman, assumed to be non-threatening and slightly eccentric, has helped. I had a delightful conversation about tulips last week after admiring the habitually “strictly business” woman in the bakery’s botanical tattoos. When a compliment lands like that, it feels like unlocking a secret – perhaps that we’re out in the world looking steely and self-sufficient, but we’re mostly sensitive souls who chose carefully what shirt to put on today; when someone says it brings out the colour of our eyes, we can open and soften, like spring blooms.

So could we be a bit more Barbara? I’m determined to try (and may I say, if you’re still reading this, you have an unusual and impressive attention span).

• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist