Line between fun and grooming, and vanity

[shondrea]

Ah, pride and vanity. As a teenage girl, two words that provide so much to think about.

So here’s my question. Everyone likes to look nice. Everyone likes to be well groomed and trimmed and smellin’ like a rose. But where is the line between looking nice and ENJOYING looking nice, and being vain and proud?

See, I ask this after a conversation my friend and I had today. We’re country girls, but girls all the same. We like makeup and doing our hair and our nails and all that girly-girly stuff. Today, we were talking about much fun it would be to have a girl’s day out, something a lot of girls we went to school with did but we never got a chance to try. Getting a new haircut, a manicure (something we’ve never done), sampling new makeup at the fancy department stores we never get to shop at, and ending up with those cutesy fruity (virgin, of course) drinks at the downtown old fashioned saloon. We’ve got spring fever, preening and grooming out of our winter coats, and it seems like a harmless bit of fun, but being someone getting back into the faith, I’m being extra cautious about my decisions, and it crossed my mind to wonder when harmless (if somewhat frivilous) fun can become vanity?

 

[takers]

I think fun becomes vanity when vanity takes the place of fun. By that I mean it’s fun to wear pretty clothes, do your hair, and wear make-up. It becomes vain when you refuse to step outside of the house without your hair done, make-up in full force, perfect clothes on no matter the situation. If you run late to important events because you haven’t got your hair ‘just so’, or if you back out completely of things because of looks then you’re stepping into vain territory. I think so long as looking nice is the sub-goal but not the main goal in life then you’re having fun and vanity takes a back seat.

 

[mariahloves]

I think what you’re describing is just fun. To me, vanity would be when you spend all of your money on cosmetics, clothes, haircuts, tanning, etc., spend hours everyday on your appearance, worry about your looks all the time, and when the way you look and how much time and energy you put into the way you look becomes who you are and consumes your whole personality, then that’s vanity. Having a girls night out getting your nails done and trying on makeup is nothing like what I said above.

 

[Sirach_43]

To me vanity comes in when you think that because you are pretty than you must be better than other people or when you start thinking that looking good is more important than having a good character, to the point that you are becoming a shallow person.

What you are proposing just sounds like fun. So go have fun with your friend!