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This is just politeness. It's rude to rub it in that you just have some fundamental flaws that cannot be improved. So people focus on the things you can change. Also praising makes sense in relation to stuff you did. You expended effort and achieved a positive result, that's laudable. You deserve no cookies for how your face looks or similar. "Anyone can achieve anything" is the western (or rather just American) myth. Nurture over nature, growth mindset etc. It sounds warm and cozy, a just world, up in the fluffy clouds. Talking about the dirty reality down here is just ugly and a vibe killer. Other cultures are much more matter-of-fact about these realities.
No one's talking about rubbing anything in here. The conversation is about praising others.
Why not? Someone having a prettier face due to luck of genetics makes things more pleasant for others around them, almost by definition. If such people receive praise that they value, that provides incentive for such people to show their faces more often than those who aren't genetically lucky, which makes the lives of those around them, including my own, better.
But even before we get into the logic of incentives, by default I'm going to praise people based on how I appraise them. Proving you can accomplish things with effort is one way of raising my appraisal of you, but also proving that you are genetically gifted in a way that makes my life more pleasant is another way. This is why, again, women praise men for things like being tall and assertive and men praise women for things like having big, natural tits. They don't care about how much effort these people put into accomplishing these things, they just care about the effect they have on themselves.
People praise each other for succeeding at hard stuff. Men also praise men for building a cool shed or doing cool skateboard tricks or whatever else.
Among each other or to the man? Towards him, it's a signal he should keep up the way he is treating her, not to get too lazy comfortable, thinking that his physical appearance will carry him all the way.
It's effort and taste, again. Praise is feedback to keep up up the good work. Positive reinforcement. There's not much to reinforce about how good you are at being tall again today.
In their face? Not the best strategy unless you're already having sex. Or among the boys? Don't women also fawn about a guy in non-personality ways when among trusted female friends?
I'm not sure what the point of your comment here is, because all your points seem entirely orthogonal to the phenomenon I talked about. So I'll just directly answer the direct questions that were in your comment.
It's probably not the best strategy, but it's absolutely a very common one, and for good reason. Men complimenting women for their great figure or other genetically-determined aspects of their physical appearance, such as their "big beautiful eyes" as part of flirting is pretty much cliche.
AND among the boys, not OR, though in all-male settings, they'll often feel more free to use crude language, such as using the phrase "tits."
I'm not a woman, so I lack any meaningful insight into this, but I'd guess that this is probably the case.
It's a big faux-pas to comment on women's tits in a mixed environment, creepy drunk uncle territory, it's like construction guys catcalling and whistling-territory. Eyes work because eyes are emotionally expressive, it's the window to the soul. You can similarly compliment her smile, but not her thick lush lips, unless you're already having sex or petting.
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