Vanity – Not Always a Sin
Mon., September 8, 03:29 PM
A long time ago it occurred to me that vanity may be a survival tool. I truly detest the casual office. “Women dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the garbage, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail; men dress up for weddings and funerals.”
I certainly know that it works for me. I’m convinced that the way I dress for work is affecting my moods. I feel careless – not carefree – and I’m just lucky that it doesn’t affect the quality of my work as well.
I came in today wearing jeans and a basketball tee shirt, with sneakers, of course. Boss Lawyer has no objections; the only time he dresses like a lawyer is when he has to be in court. I think that, if I needed an attorney, I would really be put off by a receptionist wearing jeans and sneakers.
I observed this vanity phenomenon among my mother and her sisters. There were five of them, sharing a lot of the same genes, and I have monitored their aging because they were the first generation in our family to live that long. (What do my sister and I have to look forward to?) How clever they were seems to have nothing to do with it. The ones who stayed sharp longest were those who cared about how they looked. Mother, who died at seventy-four, was careful about her appearance and kept her mind active; she participated in the activities within her community – even learned to play bridge. She only began to fail after she broke her hip. One of her sisters was doing well at eighty-five, when she entertained guests and worried about when she could get her hair done. By comparison, the youngest sister – a mere seventy-seven and a woman who earned a master’s degree – is definitely losing it. To her sisters’ dismay, she never cared much about her appearance. A good haircut was one that looked the same wet or dry.
I have been aiming at this concept from several angles, and I’m getting nowhere. I could – and I still might – go into detail about how hard it is to find the sort of clothes I consider acceptable. Or rail against body changes that I can’t control. That may be what’s bothering me, but I still haven’t found the key.
We’ve already established that I am not worried about getting old or wrinkles or gray hair?
What about getting shorter? It’s not as if I haven’t been short for most of my life. I always had rather long legs for a short woman, but I don’t think I do any more. A lot of my height – or lack of it – resulted from the curvature in my spine. But I’m also aware that my beautiful long earrings now touch my shoulders. They aren’t supposed to do that.
I am vaguely annoyed that my medication rules out sitting in the sun long enough to get a little color. What good is it to have legs that are still shapely if they look like a couple of dead fish? A deformed toe means soreness from wearing pretty shoes (and even hosiery occasionally). That wasn’t supposed to happen either. I’ve had some success with sunless tanning creams.
Weight? Well, I’ve been both thinner than I am now and heavier. I’d rather be thin, but it all became a non-issue about five years ago. I had found myself putting on some stubborn weight with the hormone research, and I decided I really had to shed about twenty-five pounds. I had lost about five pounds when I was diagnosed with diabetes, and the doctor said, “Stop. You are losing weight for the wrong reason.” That is, I was losing because my blood was retaining the sugar instead of utilizing it – a dangerous condition.
According to the doctor’s records, my weight has not fluctuated since then. I feel heavier, however, and I wonder if I’m just not as strong as I used to be. Now that’s a depressing thought.
I wonder whether my mind is equating the changes to some kind of general decline. I went from skirts to tailored slacks (with matching jackets) to jeans or shorts. In the process I have gone into jobs that require less skill (though I still could do the work) and that – just incidentally – pay a good deal less. At a time when I’m feeling greater pressure on my finances, I seem to have lost control of them. Maybe control is what this is all about.
