Betty Beguiles is blogging about the difference between making the effort to dress attractively and succumbing to the sin of vanity. She names three innocent (read: vanity-proof) reasons to care about personal appearance:
First, I want my husband to know that more than a decade after we first started dating I still like to look pretty for him. I think that's a perfectly innocent way for me to express my affection.
Second, I think it's important to show my children that this vocation of mine is worthy of respect and that I value it. I want them to know how much I love being a wife and mother.
And third, I hope to witness to the culture effectively. I aim to convey to the world that I love my life and am thriving.
All of these are good reasons to put effort and resources toward appearance: dress for your family, dress for your work, and dress for the world.
How those efforts get expressed, of course, is going to be highly individual. Is self-expression another innocent reason to care about your appearance, or is that a sign of vanity? I'm not sure. I tend to think that if you carefully choose your clothing/makeup/footwear with "self-expression" as a primary goal — even if the result is sloppy or ugly – you might be creeping into "vain" territory, because it's such a self-conscious act. When a person dresses practically and attractively in accord with his or her state in life, though, the result can't help but let the self shine through, and be an expression of the unique combination that is the intersection of what she likes, what she needs, and what she does.
I caught this side comment with interest:
(Somewhat related is my goal of becoming more physically fit. I pursue this not to have a hot body, but rather because I want to be as healthy as possible…)
I call bluff on every woman who has ever uttered this.
Yes, yes, we're all supposed to pay lip service to "health" as the reason to become physically fit and lose weight and all that sort of thing. I've done it myself. But admit it people.
You (yes, you) want to have a hot body.
Health is more important! Yeah, yeah. But you also want to have a hot body. To say otherwise is tantamount to saying, "I want to dress well, but not so that I look good. What's most important is to avoid hypothermia."
And I say that to want, and to work towards, and maintain what you've got in the hot-body department, whatever that may be is, absolutely permissible and nothing to be ashamed of, for all the same reasons that Betty outlined that it's permissible to dress attractively.
Is the road of consciously working towards physical fitness with the motivation of looking better fraught with temptations to vanity?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
So is the road of dressing attractively on purpose. As one of Betty's commenters, the indefatigable Jen-of-Conversion-Diary, wrote in the combox to the linked post:
When I put effort into my appearance, especially if it's to go out in public, I ask myself if any part of my goal is to feel or be perceived as being better than other people. To me, that's the heart of vanity — wanting to be valued more than other people.
This applies to having a fit body as well as to having an attractive outfit. And believe me, the temptation is there. I got a tremendous rush from the realization, after my weight loss, that I looked so different (better, in my opinion) from before. It took me a few months to come down from it. I am still drawn to mirrors.
There's also the temptation to begin looking down on people who look more like you used to, or more like you look on a bad hair day, or whatever. Assuming that they (unlike you) are letting themselves go, lazy, etc. I continue to struggle with the temptation to use unattractive strangers on the street as motivators to keep me from falling back to gluttonous habits: eyeing the fat people at the salad bar, and their plates, before I go up to choose my portion. It is not right for me to use my image of these unwitting strangers as a means to an end.
I'm not sure about reshaping one's wardrobe, but with something like weight loss or visibly improved fitness, vanity comes mixed with a good deal of temptation to pride. This is the thing that makes it different: For months and months, everyone congratulates you. This does not tend to happen with clothing choice; I mean, someone might compliment you on your cute shoes or your new top, but nobody says "I wish I could dress like that" or "Tell me your secret" or "Gosh, it must have been a lot of really hard work" or "I can never find the time, how often do you get to the mall?" But it does tend to reinforce the smug feeling of "I'm special, most people don't manage this, I did it all myself, I must be a really dedicated, strong, smart person compared to all those others," etc.
But — just like with desiring to dress attractively — the fact that sometimes it comes with vanity doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to desire to have an attractive body. Betty B.'s reasons will do just fine. Let's reiterate:
First, I want my husband to know that more than a decade after we first started dating I still like to look pretty for him. I think that's a perfectly innocent way for me to express my affection.
Second, I think it's important to show my children that this vocation of mine is worthy of respect and that I value it. I want them to know how much I love being a wife and mother.
And third, I hope to witness to the culture effectively. I aim to convey to the world that I love my life and am thriving.
These are all good reasons to want to be visibly, physically fit too.
In a way, you could think of the dressing part as an outward extension of the same impulse: dressing well means, in part, clothing the body you have as if you love it and care for it and appreciate its beauty.
It's a little bit of a paradox. I think it's pretty much impossible to dress well unless you're able, somehow, to accept the body that you are living in right now. We've all seen people who make the error of dressing as if they were 50 pounds lighter or 30 years younger. Or, heck, as if they were much heavier or older than they are. It doesn't look good. But on the other hand, dressing well is something that really improves the appearance of a body. So you can't dress to enhance your body unless you first accept and acknowledge the body you have.
Which is, I think, also kind of true about trying to have that body itself be as good-looking as it can be.
bearing blog 