Vanity Versus Beauty
April 26, 2024
Writer: Alanna Madry
Editor: Sonia Walke
Many lines are clear; two concepts where the distinctions are plain and inarguable. Kind versus mean, bright versus dark, positive versus negative, to name a few. However, in a world filled with so much art, why is it that the line between beauty and vanity is so blurred? And further, why is appreciation for beauty so often mistaken for vanity?
As a 20-year old girl, I am not ashamed to admit my love for online shopping, meticulously curating aesthetic Pinterest boards, aimlessly wandering the aisles of Sephora, or following content creators who have a vibe that I admire. Finding a connection with forms of expression is something that fills me up. On the other hand, I can also get frustrated engaging with these activities when the Sephora aisles look the same as when I last strolled them, and my Pinterest explore page is not sparking any emotions besides boredom. It is times like these that make the thought pop into my head like a knee-jerk reaction, “I’m so vain for caring about this kind of stuff.”
I have always believed that vanity meant something along the lines of an obsessive admiration for surface-level beauty. It took me until googling the definition while writing this piece to learn that the official definition of vanity is something quite different. According to Miriam Webster, vanity is the “inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance.” To my surprise, vanity has nothing to do with my appreciation for the artistry of the world, and everything to do with fixating on one's own artistry as better than others. So maybe my love for fresh flowers, modern art museums, mid-century modern homes, and vintage clothes wasn’t all that vain after all.
However, even after learning that my search for beauty in the world would not officially fall under the definition of vain, there can still be an undeniably icky feeling about letting my mood be altered by identifying something pleasing in my line of vision. While I mentioned earlier that our world is filled with so much art, the sad truth is that it is also filled with hatred, pain, and a certain degree of ugliness: things that can feel nearly impossible to find beauty in. Allowing myself to feel a sense of fulfillment in playing “I spy” with visual glory subconsciously makes me feel selfish and irresponsible when it feels there are substantially more important things to divert my attention to. A feeling that I would once describe as vain.
Despite this conflict, I remind myself of the importance of beauty in a world that can otherwise feel gray. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, every eight billion of us is finding diamonds in the rough- a concept I find rather, well, beautiful. Without searching for the spiritually fulfilling artistry that lurks in our world, we are left with little hope. As summer approaches and I catch myself stopping to admire the pink blossoms budding from trees along my walk home, rather than condemning myself for this act I will remind myself that it is an inflated pride in the little things, not myself, that I am observing, an experience far from vain.
