Is It Okay To Be Vain?

This article was originally published on Katie's substack, Plant Based.

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I used to think that trying to look hot was gauche.

Not being hot in general — I was by no means exempt from the crippling shackles of beauty standards — but the effort that went into it. It shows you tried and you care, both of which I unfortunately find deeply embarrassing (I’m working on it). I’m practicing accountability, so I’ll willingly admit that a good amount of this embarrassment has to do with personal insecurity. It’s more fun to blame societal messaging, though!

Before I point the finger at the ultra-pervasive pretty/skinny culture of yesteryear, I’ll just spend a brief moment getting us all on the same page when it comes to vanity as a larger concept.

Few of us can hear the word vain and not think of the famous Carly Simon song. In an effort to avoid academicizing the Laurel Canyon mystique, I’ll keep the analysis short and sweet; all you need to know is that the titular verse, “You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you” has a negative connotation. As a 7-year-old hearing that song, it was pretty straightforward that vain (whatever that meant) = bad.

In the Carly Simon sense of the word, vain is self-absorption, pride, borderline narcissism. That’s directly related to what I’m talking about, but I speak for a lot of us when I say that the de facto definition of vanity has more to do with our physical appearance than our concept of self. Whoa.

If we want to get really technical, a quick consultation with Google will define the term as “excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements.” For the purpose of this essay, let’s just stick to the appearance part. I'm not in the mood to give ego a full essay just yet. Mine’s too fragile at the moment.

When I, like most people (a.k.a. the 3 friends I polled) think of vanity, I think of caring deeply about one’s physical appearance. I blame the makeup desk of the same name. In literature and media, vanity is a trait embodied by antagonistic characters: for the nerds, Dorian Gray, for the normies, Snow White’s stepmother, and for the rest of us, Jenna Maroney. These people have a preoccupation with their appearance to a life-altering extent. Not to defend a Disney villain, but you know what else is life-altering? Plastic surgery. Just saying. I guess we can all blame the Grimm brothers for stigmatizing trying to look good.

That was the underlying sentiment around beauty that I internalized; you either had it or you didn’t, but to try was to fail. Hence my lasting insecurity.Effortless was everything in the late aughts, especially in the appearance industry. Going on a diet felt shameful, a face full of caked-on makeup was bad, and botox was a big, big secret.

I don’t have to tell you about the favorability of thin white women, that one’s been spoken about ad nauseam, and I don’t think it would hit coming from a slightly proud but also mortified member of the community herself. There are plenty of other bones to pick with the early 2000s beauty standards and its obsession with natural-born perfection. So on behalf of my tween/teen self, here is a short and non-exhaustive list of grievances.

1. The word effortless. How many f***king ad campaigns used that term. Even Beyonce, God love her, told us she woke up like this. Beyhive, please don’t come for me, but I don’t really think she did.

2. The glamorization of eating disorders (which are apparently making a comeback?!). Exhibit A) Blair Waldorf. Exhibit B) Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Exhibit C) The famous ‘almond mom’ origin story.

3. Celebrities denying botox and fillers. Get real, people. It’s taken a new generation of public figures entering the spotlight to start sharing their high-touch beauty secrets with the masses. A big thank you from the curious people at home and the dermatologists/surgeons that want validation in the form of Instagram followers.

4. No Makeup Makeup. I’m all for the stuff, and from a branding perspective, that copy is genius. But from a personal mental health perspective, nuh uh. This no makeup makeup conversation still exists, but it feels a lot different now than it used to. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m sensing an underlying level of self-awareness now.

But is there really a thing as caring “too much” about the way one presents herself?

I thought that being dolled up, or putting effort into my appearance meant that I cared way too much about the male (or female) gaze. The gaze of anyone, actually. Growing up, the goal was for nobody to look anywhere near me. Plus, being glamorous meant I couldn’t also be smart or athletic. I was in honors classes, for crying out loud. How could I care so much about such superficial matters as my appearance? Shouldn’t people care about what’s in my brain more? Hey, don’t blame me, blame society.

Fast-forward to now. Vanity feels pretty acceptable these days, wouldn’t you agree?

Botox-injection chains are branded to look like millennial bait and dudes who want to diet, errr biohack, are cool. But nothing says “I care about the way I look” more than everyone’s favorite miracle drug. Yep, you guessed it — Ozempic.

When it first came out, there was plenty of shame and cyberbullying and anger, no question. I don’t want to discredit the difficult conversations and victimization that came with being a founding injector, but I’d argue that most of those angry trolls in Mindy Kaling’s Instagram comments were mad not because of her sudden change in appearance, but because of her secrecy around it.

Now that the initial shock and confusion of their introduction has passed, the GLP1 conversations I hear feel resoundingly nonjudgmental. It’s actually… quite beautiful. Their popularity and the open dialogue around them have taught me that it’s okay to put effort and money into our physicality, a lesson that somehow didn’t click for me when it came to fillers and BBLs.*

But this is bigger than a weight loss injection, or even wearing makeup, for that matter. This is philosophical! This is about how we’re now, after what feels like forever, ready to admit that we care about the way we look. We’re rationalizing our beauty-oriented choices less and less; ‘the botox was for my migraines’ and ‘the diet was for my cholesterol’ are fewer and far between. Finally, we feel empowered enough to tell our friends the real reason for our appearance alterations. We got [fill in the blank pill or procedure] because we wanted to look good. The sentence ends there.

I couldn’t help but wonder Carrie Bradshaw voice why is it that we’re suddenly divulging our once hush hush beauty secrets these days? I’m no sociologist, but I’d bet it has something to do with the internet and what it’s done to our sense of embarrassment.

We’re at an all time low with public shame. This can be immensely positive (i.e. being proudly vocal about one’s sexuality) but absolutely not in others (the guy on the subway needs to stop shamelessly playing candy crush without headphones). When it comes to our desire to look good, I think it’s mostly a good thing.

Since shame is out and superficiality is in, I’ll give this whole vanity thing a go. I like feeling beautiful. Why was that so hard to say?

The real issue is when our self esteem is entirely dependent on our external appearance and that’s a topic I’m simply not ready to tackle just yet (or ever, actually).

Footnotes:

*Probably because of the aforementioned “skinny is better” ethos during my childhood, and the interest in making ourselves bigger (butt cheeks, other cheeks, etc) perplexed me. Now that the pendulum is swinging back towards skinny, my inner childhood tendency towards skinniness, means that I can now formulate conscious thoughts around the topic.

**I have to give the obligatory everything-in-moderation caveat, doctor’s orders.