Me: (Wow, that’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.)
Steve the Hot Girl: (Walks up)
Me: You’re the most gorgeous, elegant, enchanting manifestation of beauty I’ve ever borne witness to. I want to lay rose petals at your feet and adorn you with diamonds. Truly, you are the envy of the gods.
Steve the Hot Girl: Thanks, pervert.

Maybe it’s because I have unparalleled kindness to share. More likely it’s because quirky love movies like “(500) Days of Summer” have imbibed me with the desire to compliment girls in socially uncomfortable ways. But every once in a while, I encounter a stranger — a girl — and I’m filled with the unquenchable need to inform her of her stunning beauty in an almost completely platonic way.

Let’s get this one important thing out of the way before we go any further. I’ve had a lovely girlfriend for one and a half years now, so I’m not just begging the universe for good relationship karma. If anything, I’m approaching dangerously negative karma, assuming my girlfriend reads this at some point and decides to eat the eyeballs out of my head for noticing other females.

It’s not my fault, though. Love might or might not be blind, but it sure as hell doesn’t affect my actual vision. I have no intention of starting something romantic with every attractive girl in the world, but it kind of sucks that in a world where girls are pressured to look like Barbies, I am powerless to make them feel good about themselves.

The problem, as demonstrated by Steve (Steve can be a girl’s name too, you know) is that never ever ever in a million years ever forever can I so forwardly compliment a member of the opposite sex on her appearance, even platonically. Not without looking like I’m hitting on her, anyway, and let’s be honest, I’m not cute enough to get away with that with the girls I’m compelled to flatter. Too often (always) I’m forced to watch as girls go by, helplessly unable to inform them of what they look like.

This is a problem that, from my limited peer research, affects both genders. Although if we’re still under the honesty policy, we can admit that though most girls will respond adversely to guys’ advances, guys will more likely respond with the closest verbal equivalent to unzipping their pants.

But the fact remains that you know the feeling of noticing a Steve. On rare occasions, a girl comes along with a certain X-factor that can’t be articulated, and I’m overwhelmed with the impulse to reach out and smile or compliment her, even if I never see that person again. You know it’s happened to you, too. He’s the totally incredibly hot guy with the slightly-but-not-too bushy eyebrows in your art class; or the tiny, quiet girl who only wears sundresses who you see every day at 1 p.m. in Lowry Mall. Yeah, that person.

Girls, I suggest you all get together and decide as a unit if it’s okay to hit on you platonically without hitting on you sexually. Is that too much to ask? Really, I just want you all to feel good. Platonically.