Wait a minute. People think “it’s looking at things another way” is backhanded??
Elphaba knows that to say she is attractive by conventional standards is a lie. Being green is no more common in Oz than it is here, and it has clearly been disgusting and off-putting to everyone else she’s ever met. Even Galinda. Galinda does come to see her beauty of course. But it wasn’t her first reaction.
Fiyero, on the other hand, is reasonably shocked to see her skin, but immediately starts trying to charm her into spending more time with him (riding back to the school with him) instead of pushing her away. He was surprised—I think it’s literally impossible not to be—but he didn’t look at her skin the way everyone else did.
So Elphaba asks Fiyero not to lie to her and say she’s beautiful because she knows that according to standards and literally everyone else in Oz, she isn’t. And Fiyero immediately rushes to tell her that he isn’t thinking about her the way all those other people do. He sees her differently. He looks at her in a different way. And in a world where the way everyone else looks at you is complete disgust (except for your best friend who is currently a public figure for the fascist government spreading propoganda about your ugliness and evilness), that is not a backhanded compliment at all. It’s just a compliment. A very meaningful compliment.
If I’ve been told all my life there’s a trait about me that makes me inherently ugly, and someone told me “I don’t look at you that way, I find you beautiful” I definitely wouldn’t gasp with offense and be like, wdym you have to look at me differently to find me beautiful? She knows that part. She already knows what everyone else thinks about her. She doesn’t even consider that the man who loves her might see things differently because of how ingrained in her it is, and he immediately rushes to correct her.
And then he follows it up by kneeling before her and singing a full verse about how she’s practically bewitched him and he’s so in love with to her, all while staring at her, never looking away, with the utmost adoration in his eyes. Proving to her that yes, she is beautiful, he sees her as so beautiful, even if he (and Galinda) is the only one.
In fact, the only other person who ever called her beautiful was Galinda in popular, and while I truly believe she meant it and that it was a moment of her realizing Elphaba’s true beauty, it was after a whole number about how Elphaba has to change everything about herself and become more like Galinda for anyone to like her, so I’m not sure if the truthfulness of that message really came across to Elphaba. Fiyero’s confession is indisputable. If he didn’t look at things another way from the rest of Oz, he wouldn’t be there, and he definitely wouldn’t be looking at her like she’s the most stunning thing in all of Oz and he can’t look away. It’s the first thing that makes her actually think that someone can see her as beautiful.
TLDR: Fiyero saying she’s beautiful and that he looks at things another way isn’t backhanded at all because Elphaba already knows all of Oz thinks she is ugly and evil, and Fiyero’s expression of adoration for her is inherently different from the way literally everyone else sees her. That’s what gives Elphaba doubt and Fiyero immediately tells her he sees her very differently from the rest of the world, and then proceeds to prove it.
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