Vanity vs Appreciating your Beauty

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identifyasCatholic

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I feel like I end up mixing these feelings and become unable to identify the difference. In terms of vanity in appearances vs appreciating your own beauty, how does one know the difference?
 
St Francis de Sales says we should highly value cleanliness and orderliness, both with our house and our personal dress. There’s nothing wrong with making yourself look nice and presentable, but when we start to ache for approval from others, it becomes vanity and this leads to a lot of pointless suffering.
 
identifyasCatholic said:
vanity in appearances vs appreciating your own beauty
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I think it quite normal to be aware of how we look and how we likely appear to others. It becomes vanity if, as the previous poster pointed out, we wish for others to appreciate our beauty as well. I find it best to look at my flaws and assume others see those first and foremost. That keeps me from thinking too highly of myself. 🙂
 
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If you have a good memory you don’t need a mirror, especially with some of today’s hairstyles!

😉
 
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The holy bible says a woman gives herself to her husband. If a woman thinks she is above and beyond that, she has a problem according to god.
 
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To me, the tipping point would be the same as it is with so many other sins; when your appreciation of your physical attractiveness distracts from your devotion and duty to God.

For example, it’s probably a sin if you use your appearance to manipulate people in bad ways. Would it be sinful to use your attractiveness to lure people into doing works of Christian charity? I don’t think so.

Physical attractiveness is as much a gift from God as is a beautiful singing voice or a keen intellect or a gift of being compassionate. If you have a beautiful voice, is it sinful to take singing lessons? Is it sinful to take pleasure from singing to entertain others? Is it sinful for a brilliant scientist to take pride in winning the Nobel Prize?
 
Do you worry about your looks more than anything else, even you’re spirituality? I think that would be vanity.
 
I was referring to thinking you are attractive and looking in the mirror and such, but yes that does tie in, and you’re right, how would that apply if one is single?
 
I knew some model beautiful women. As young ladies, they had no choice but to realize that their appearance was beautiful. That said, all of them chose well in their clothing and behavior. One competed in beauty contests, but she did not behave or dress out of vanity. However, I did know one attractive woman who told me: “If I had legs like that, I’d wear mini-skirts every day.”
 
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I can’t help thinking of the Kardashian sisters, especially Kim, when it comes to the topic of vanity. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone more in love with their own
“beauty” than Kim Kardashian. I would say she appreciates her beauty, but when you see the people around her like her hair
stylists and make up people who are there to help create her look, how hard would it be to look beautiful.
I think when you are so self absorbed with
your beauty, it becomes a big problem.
 
If not warned about what can happen in the world of modeling, then manipulation of a person can easily occur. Your agent, the makeup people, and so on, sometimes look at human beings as things. In the case of the Kardashian sisters, someone decided they would look good for selling clothes and beauty products. Someone said, “I want that face and that figure.”
 
No, I am referring to a person being at their very best, if they have the best clothes money can buy… if they have the best cologne or perfume in the department store… if they have the fastest and most expensive car and best mansion with a castle for a vacation home. The best makeup, facial features and cheek bones. Not even the slightest blemish about them.

Will they seek and submit to a spouse completely. The Bible says one must.
 
We can determine whether or not they are making that commitment based on whether or not they are doing various things.
  1. Engaging in conversations downing their spouse with peers or family, saying they are more deserving of an attractive passerby
  2. Engaging in conversations downing their spouse to their spouses family due to their “obvious superiority”
  3. Blowing themselves up on social media for people to see what belongs to their spouse given for publicity (publicity over marital chastity)
  4. Stripping jobs
  5. Sex outside of marriage and homosexual relationships outside of the marriage (showing their spouses sexual organs to be less than completely pleasing or fulfilling to them)
  6. Encouraging the above to be performed by friends and family including teaching their children this is appropriate behavior
And more…
 
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And there is nothing here stating that she cannot approve of her looks.

Is “time” the only thing separating a him or her from their significant other? I seem to think you have ignored the idea that she is already someone’s wife.

Many famous athletic coaches say “you play how you practice.”
 
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In both instances she becomes a wife, religious life or marriage. These come after the holy sacrament of confirmation. A woman that is also catholic and goes to church believing herself to not be made for married life because she is better than any suitor is also committing a sin of vanity. It can be spiritual arrogance or physical arrogance, perhaps even both.

In my church I’ve met such a woman who believes herself too good for single unmarried catholic men, so it is for her arrogance that I am now in the process of dating a non-denominational Christian that respects my Catholic way of life. Vanity causes a domino effect to harm those in their church.
 
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