When it's at the point where you need to ask someone else if it makes you look fat, then it's probably something that looks at least OK.

That would also be my take, although if you could please to convince my ginger-haired olive-skinned freckled green-eyed sister that she looks like the poster child for bubonic plague in pale pink, I would send you cookies and roses.

But in that instance? I'm asking because I'm genuinely uncertain, and if I find I'm being lied to about it, I'm going to be pissed. The stereotype seems to be canted precisely the other way.

It's not important. Just one of the many many things I do not understand about how a culture occasionally works.

It's monkey grooming. Sometimes the value of the interaction isn't in the truth/lie. Lie To Me. Joss wrote about it, even.

Lie To Me. Joss wrote about it, even.

OK, now I'm really confused.

If I'm remembering that episode correctly, Angel lies to Buffy in the first place, claims he wasn't with Drusilla, when Buffy asks him pointblank.

So - I don't get it. If she'd asked him if she looked fat, and he'd lied to her about it and she'd caught him in the lie - what am I missing?

Or is my complete inability to grok this going to just frustrate me?

BUFFY
Well, does it ever get easy?

Ford BURSTS from the grave, a snarling VAMPIRE, and lunges at Buffy -- who plants a stake firmly in his chest. She doesn't even look as he explodes into dust.

GILES
You mean life?

BUFFY
Yeah. Does it get easy?

GILES
What do you want me to say.

She thinks about it a moment.

BUFFY
Lie to me.

GILES
Yes. It's terribly simple.

As they start out of the graveyard:

GILES
The good-guys are stalwart and true.
The bad-guys are easily distinguished
by their pointy horns or black hats and
we always defeat them and save the day.
Nobody ever dies…and everybody lives
happily ever after.

BLACK OUT.

BUFFY (O.S.)
(with weary affection)
Liar.

Yes, but she knows Giles is lying to her - she hasn't prefaced that speech with "For God's sake, Giles, be straight with me." She has stated, flat out, that what she's just been through has worn her down and she wants a moment of peace, of fantasy.

And when she asks Angel, early on, about seeing him with Drusilla, she doesn't want to be lied to - doesn't all the grief start precisely because Angel isn't straight with her?

I apologise if I implied anywhere that all lies were good. I didn't mean to. I was citing an example of someone wanting to be lied to. In the social contract of many "Does this make me look fat?" questions, the answer demanded is "Yes."

I don't know if there's a similarly accepted response for "For God's sake, be straight with me ... does this make me look fat?"

That's a different question.

I apologise if I implied anywhere that all lies were good.

No, no, you didn't do that at all - my befuddlement was - and is - because there seems such a huge difference between the two things. Buffy (and for heaven's sake, tell me, please, if I'm remembering this wrong; it's been years since I saw that episode) knows the answer to her own question, and Giles knows she knows it.

So I'm mentally doing this sort of transposition thing in my head, and it goes like this:

Woman: Does this dress make me look fat?

Man: What do you want me to say?

In that instance - opinion, please. If he makes that answer, does she know that he wants to tell her the truth and say, yes, in his opinion (which she's asked for), the dress or whatever is totally unflattering and makes her normally curvy rearend look like something she personally doesn't want to contemplate?

And if he says, "no, not fat - but it makes you look sallow, doesn't do you justice, and that blue one looks sensational on you, why not try that one instead", is that futzing with the monkey grooming thing?

I suck at this stuff, what with the lacking of tact. So it fascinates me.

I know when close friends mean something other than the literal reading of their words. So "Does this make me look fat?" really means "I don't feel good about how I look right now. Comfort me." and *my* answer would be "Why you gonna ask ME that? You look great, let's go." Do I care if she looks fat in it? Nope, and I know her well enough to know her subtext.

Other friends might answer her "No." or "No more than usual." That's up to their social contract.

However, she does know how to ask me the actual question of "Does this make me look fat?" It might be something in her face or her hands, or her stance. And that question gets the sort of answer she wants -- flat out, but gently delivered, if required, truth.

That snippet of the episode is Giles finding out he's supposed to lie right then -- it's Buffy's need to hear one specific answer that I was trying to demonstrate.

So, it varies from person to person - yep, okay. Makes sense. But that takes me back to the complete one-sidedness of the standing joke. Because

However, she does know how to ask me the actual question of "Does this make me look fat?" It might be something in her face or her hands, or her stance. And that question gets the sort of answer she wants -- flat out, but gently delivered, if required, truth.

If the standing stereotype is correct, then men can't read any signals. And I guess maybe that's the stereotype that's really puzzling me.

Because either I'm even blunter than I think I am - no mistaken signals ever, which I don't believe - or most men can read signals.

Because, see, pretty much all the men I know?

Can. Truly. They read signals just fine.

edited for clarity.

In my experience, some guys are more intuitive than others about subtext, but there's nothing gender-related about the inability to understand social nuances. Fuck, guys have wanted me to lie to them too.

I don't think the standing stereotype is supposed to be any more accurate than "men can't cook" or "women can't drive stick." It's a cheap and easy joke, which has no real bearing on human tendency or ability.