I’ve been trying, here, to dig down and write some things that are real (even if they don’t frame me in the best light), and what’s on my mind today is vanity. My own vanities are a weird mix—things I literally don’t even bother to look at, and things I obsess about as if they were moral failings. (I’d try to puzzle out the logic behind that dichotomy, but I’m pretty sure logic doesn’t come into it!)
I’ve been mulling over this topic for a few days, ever since my AI image-generating software accidentally disappeared all my images and replaced them with descriptive text.
There’s one cartoon of myself that I had created by “feeding” the thing a few photos of myself—and the descriptive text that popped up for that picture began with, “An attractive middle-aged woman”… My first thought was “how does it KNOW what’s “attractive”?—and my second thought was pleasure (whatever the parameters used to determine it) that it labeled me so.
Nope, that’s a lie. My first thought was pleasure at the designation. and then I started wondering about the AI’s inputs & specs & process.
We’re not supposed to admit this about ourselves. We’re supposed to put up that front of false modesty where we pretend not to notice, or pretend not to believe ourselves pretty.
Yet the cosmetics industry gets women to spend billions of dollars every year on trying to make sure we DO look pretty. As for me, I’m a believer that my best “cosmetic” is a good moisturizer. (The tube of lipstick I own is Raisinberry, a color that Mary Kay discontinued more than a decade ago. ‘Nuff said.)
Most mornings I twist my hair up before I’ve turned on the light, and unless I glance up while I’m brushing my teeth, I’m unlikely to catch my own face in the mirror between getting out of bed and getting out of the house.
If someone drew on my face with a Sharpie while I slept, I’d most likely show up at work with the mustache still on!
The two things I like best about my face—a smile with dimples, and my eye color—really aren’t impacted by makeup. (If I want to play up my assets, it’s teal tops that make my eyes “pop.”) What I dislike most about my face—a weak chin!—isn’t impacted by makeup either. So, I guess, what’s the point?
It’s not that I don’t care how my face looks. I can be incredibly vain about a good picture. I just don’t find that fiddling around with makeup appreciably alters how I feel about those pictures, so most days I just can’t be bothered. (Do you notice how we talk about “a good picture,” as if we cared two figs about photographic quality? What we really mean is, “I look good here”—but we’re not supposed to say so.)
On the other end of the spectrum, from my nonchalance about face, is how I feel about that extra belly fat around the middle, and the way fat can bulge around a bra-back. For reasons I can’t fully comprehend, I find it absolutely mortifying when these things show. Mortifying way beyond the mere fact of being unflattering—more like a level of feeling as if I’ve done something BAD. Mortifying even mentioning those things, meaning I’m admitting I have them.
Why is that? Is it only an example of the body-shaming our culture’s media does to all of us, or is there something else behind it?
Recently I packed a tankini swimsuit for a trip—and found, when I got there, that the top was not as loose as I had remembered. In fact, it fit me almost snugly. And I might as well have been naked, I was almost that level of uncomfortable wearing it. It covered everything that’s supposed to be covered (in fact, it’s pretty modest, with a tank-top and a skirt-bottom), and it wasn’t straining at the seams or anything, it just wasn’t loose. Yet I spent most of my pool-time hiding beneath a towel wrapped around myself, because I was so chagrinned by its fit.
SHAME is definitely the right word for the feeling—but I don’t understand WHY. Vanity is certainly in the mix there, but that reaction—turning my towel into a burqa—was stronger than mere vanity discomfited.
Even when I was clinically obese, a condition in which there was no hiding the extra weight and bulk and shape of me, I found myself flushed with shame one day when a dressing-room mirror showed me that the shirt I’d been wearing was not loose enough to hide the bulges around the back of my bra. Again, this was something stronger than just discomfited vanity. A looser shirt would not have disguised the fact of my obesity, but I felt as horrified as I did the time I found I’d been walking around work with the back of my skirt tucked up in my underwear! A shame-level reaction.
I might buck the cultural norms when it comes to cosmetics, but clearly I haven’t escaped all of the cultural conditioning our society imposes…
I’ve been working, again, on losing weight. Five years ago I took off thirty pounds that got me out of the “obese” category and into merely “overweight”—and I’m finally targeting the additional thirty pounds that would get me down to “healthy” weight. (Not the first time I’ve tried to lose more—but the first time I’ve met with any success at it.) Of those 30 pounds, I’m 12 down, and I’m SEEING it, especially in that belly area I’m so hyper-sensitive about.
Twelve pounds doesn’t seem like a lot, I told my mom—a difference that only my husband and I would really be able to see. “Well, think of those five-pounds chubs of hamburger meat at the store,” she answered, “and imagine unpeeling a couple of those packages’-worth from around your middle. That’s not nothing.” Put like that? First of all, ew. But secondly, she’s right.
Amazon brought three new swimsuits yesterday, for our upcoming Hawai’i trip, in a size smaller than any of the ones I own. They fit. They fit in an I-won’t-have-to-hide-beneath-a-towel fashion!
I am wondering, this morning, how our vanities and hang-ups get so deeply hard-wired. This weight loss is such a relief because it’s the only way I can release myself from that obsessive attention to how my clothes fit my middle. I can’t talk myself out of that preoccupation.
It would be more psychologically healthy, I know, if I could (honestly) say I wanted to lose that weight for health reasons. That should be my motivation—but it’s not. Improved health is the bonus, not the main headline.
Fair or not, it’s vanity driving this bus.
Do you have hang-ups that defy rationality in their scope or depth? Do you know where yours come from? Does this happen for men?
Kana's Chronicles 
I lost weight a few years ago, with Slimming World, but put all that weight back on. Mainly because I cannot keep dieting, and like cake too much. I also know I need to be more healthy because of high cholesterol, and blood pressure. I don’t mind how I look, but I would like to stick to a healthy diet.
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It’s hard to KEEP doing, isn’t it? I’ve lamented that I haven’t been able to get the next 30 pounds off, but in reality I’m lucky I didn’t gain back the first 30 I lost…
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It’s a work in progress, but if I lost weight once, I can do it again.
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Exactly true! :)
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🥰
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love this page
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I relate to every detail of this. Sigh.
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at least we’re not alone, then. ;)
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Men don’t like the belly bulge. In 2024 I lost 36 pounds, like you out of obesity into simply over weight. It felt and looked good. Various events happened and I lost my discipline gaining back fifteen pounds. The quintuple bypass surgery I had last week will not doubt provide sufficient motivation to lose that fifteen again.
My vanity? I always comb my hair first thing in the morning, not wanting to be seen with sleep hair. Really, I’m 82. What’s the point anymore.
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Wow, quintuple bypass! Yes, I can see that being a sufficient motivator. :)
You could embrace the tousled, casual look of uncombed hair, just for fun to shock the people who have never seen it so!
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i can relate to your anxiety and your discomfort with your weight issues. From the time I was around 12 when I was out on a very restricted diet to 2013 when my mom passed away I was obsessed with my weight. My mother was very thin, she was fixated with weight all her life, and for some unknown reason she was obsessed with mine. It’s ironic that she was a great cook and made 3 course meals for my family all of my growing up years. I no longer feel shame, but I’m still healing from the many years of dieting, the zillion ways that eventually failed. About 29 years ago I was diagnosed with a thyroid dysfunction that made it difficult to lose weight, but my mom didn’t listen. In 2913 when she passed, I began riding above the pain and stress and finally the mom pleasing disease I had. I’ve finally accepted myself and have a healthy and great relationship with food now. Thanks for writing such a touching post
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I’m sorry to hear about such a fraught relationship with your mom, on this issue. But what a pleasing outcome, that you and food are on good, healthy terms, now! :)
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For most of my life I never considered myself pretty, or good looking just average but now at 62 I will say to myself that I look good, I do like to care for my skin by moisturizing daily and showering regularly and when I go out I like to look nice which is why I have house clothes and going out in public clothes and why when I get home I change from my going out in public clothes into house clothes. That’s just the way I am
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I do the same thing! The minute I come in the door at home, though, the comfy around-the-house clothes go on! :)
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Love this. I had weight loss surgery just over 12 months ago and have lost 30kg. I am maintaining this weight. I went to the doctor yesterday and she asked me if I had put on weight and said that my face was ‘chubbier’ since she had last seen me. She took my ‘vanity’ and well and truly flushed it down the toilet!
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What a thing to say!! Good for you, keeping off the weight. My late husband had gastric bypass and went from 500 pounds to 230. I used to tease him that he was “half the man he used to be”. ;)
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Engaging
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My mother regales me constantly with my need to lose weight. I lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers until they switched their plan. Then the switched again. That’s when I discovered they weren’t in the business of helping you lose weight. They were in the dependency business.
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I suppose it’s not in their best interests for you to FINISH losing weight—they want you to keep needing them, don’t they? I’m sorry you’re hearing that from your mother—none of us needs that extra voice making us feel worse.
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Yes, your mom is right. I measure mine in packs of butter. 🤷♀️
One great thing about aging (and there are many) but all of a sudden it is not so important what others think of us. It is what I think of me. I wear what I enjoy and feel comfortable in.
If you are getting bulges around your bra, you’re probably wearing the wrong size. I have always, since middle age, had bulges around my bra. At the ripe age of 70 I decided to go get fitted for a bra. Best thing I ever did! I had been wearing way the wrong size. When the fitter told me what size I should be wearing I laughed thinking she was out of her tree. No, I was out of mine. My new bras are comfortable and there are no unsightly bulges.
Thirty pounds is a lot to target in one hit. It’s daunting! Try losing it in ten or five-pound increments. You need to be able to reach a goal and feel good about doing so. Then decide what your next goal loss will be.
And don’t beat yourself up over any slips. We are only human. Occasionally we need to reward ourselves. Acknowledge it and move on.
Good luck!💐
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You are probablly right about the bra size, and suddenly I’m feeling silly for never thinking of that! Maybe I’ll treat myself to a bra fitting once I settle into a weight with stability. I’ll certainly need new ones in any case–I’ve already “shrunk out” of some of mine. ;)
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Oh man, I’m constantly comparing my 51 year old body to my 25 year old body and getting depressed every time! Gone is the flat, toned stomach, the strong, defined arms – I was very proud of them. I am working on them with more attention to see if I can make improvement. Nobody warned me what happens in your late 40s/50s or how slow the weight loss is. If they had, I’d have lived on lettuce in my 30s!
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I’ve stopped looking at college photos for that very same reason—oh, the cute little dresses I could wear back then! But I take heart in the fact that the weight-loss IS happening, however slowly… We can DO this!
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A refreshingly honest post! I have to admit that I can be vain although I realise I was never ‘pretty’ but I was considered attractive. I was always proud of my fitness and my figure. But I’m like one of your earlier commenters – I look at how I am now I’m older compared to my younger days and am never happy about any of it. My health is worsening all the time despite me living ‘healthily’ in the main, and my fitness is rapidly diminishing. I only look in the mirror (deliberately) in a morning to comb my hair and am always sad to see the sagging of my jawline and the bags forming under my eyes. I’ve managed to fight off the grey hair until my late 60s but now it’s starting to go.
I’m like many of the commenters on here though who have a ‘going out’ look which is nothing like my ‘slumming it at home’ look. I haven’t worn make up for years but agree that facial moisturiser is a woman’s best friend and never go without it.
I have to say that I’ve literally never cared what other people think of me – I’m more disappointed in myself and for myself.
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Yay, I’m not alone with the moisturizer-instead-of-makeup! None of my in-person acquaintances share this “practice,” so it’s nice to meet you!
I know a person can’t regulate how she feels, but to whatever extent you can… Try to skip that disappointment IN yourself. You’ve kept your routines healthy, you’ve kept your skin healthy and moisturized, and best of all, you’ve managed to avoid that social “conditioning” that so many of us succumb to, in fretting what people THINK of us and our looks. That sounds to me like stuff to be pleased about, not disappointed in. (And imagine how things would look if you HADN’T taken that care of yourself…) Just my two cents. :)
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No idea why it listed my comment above as ‘anonymous’ as I am logged in! It’s from Mountain Coward / Carol anyway – thanks for the follow… Having a read of your blog now.
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Now I’ve REALLY met you, lol! ;)
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