Most people consider comments about their physical appearance to be intrusive. Bodily autonomy is a pretty common value. No one is entitled to controlling another person’s body. No one owes you anything, including niceness when you violate a common boundary.

Telling a woman you prefer anything about her appearance when she didn’t ask you is creepy, especially if she is communicating she is not interested in the male status quo opinion and that’s what you are pushing. “You’d look better if you’d just smile,” isn’t a nice compliment. It’s a controlling asshole thing to say, and shows your male entitlement. Just like calling a woman uglier after she cuts her hair.

Women in particular do not want to hear from men their opinions about looking like a woman, because a lot of times they are unaware of what they are demanding. The OP could have chosen to cut her hair because she has cancer or lupus, for example. Or most likely, she KNOWS men prefer long hair already and has her own reasons for choosing short hair. Maybe she wanted to look more appealing to women by emphasizing her jawline, for instance. Or sometimes, looking a little different can be more interesting anyway to others if that is what she’s concerned about.

In any case, yeah, most compliments are indeed creepy. Do you understand what women mean when they call a man creepy? They are calling him a hunter. They are saying he’s being predatory to them. Invading their emotional boundaries is one aspect (invading their emotional boundaries to comment on physical appearance), narcissism is another (laughable hubris that they even know what would look good on women when they don’t understand hair or makeup or clothes for women), and last is controlling behaviors/objectification (feeling entitled to treating women like a doll to dress up).

So yeah, incels are admitting it themselves - all compliments are creepy when used by predators, yeah.