Nobody makes somebody plain or turns somebody plain, plain the
way somebody
already was before you met them, they just made themself appear/seem more colorful than they
actually were.
Making an observation of how plain and bossy somebody is isn'
t the same thing as trying to boss them around, give them orders, or tell them falsehoods about what they're like. Telling somebody that isn't as colorful as they seem to think or pretend they are that they're plain is calling a spade a spade instead of a pickaxe. Perhaps the other
person hearing it just doesn't like to hear criticism because they were spared (the
rod) from hearing anything that didn't
sound good as
kids, and they expect to be praised rather than criticized, even if the criticism is not really unfair to them.