On Vanity

I saw a lady in the front seat of a jeepney, holding her camera phone at a certain angle and taking numerous photos of herself. Vain? Vain.

This is what I think of being vain. A vain person is someone who recently realized the magnitude of his/her own beauty and vows to do two things: one, to take full responsibility in maintaining that beauty and two, to prove it to the world. The thing is, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Each of us are and can be beautiful. Hence, each of us have a tendency to be vain.

I believe that it all started with Friendster. Friendster requires users to post a profile picture and the magic started. From that moment, the population of photogenic people must have increased by 80%. And a lot of things followed that. More digicams, more dslrs, more photographers, Photoshop, etc.

Vain. Vanity. I have nothing against being vain. I sometimes pick up the camera and shoot photos of myself. And I scramble to be near the camera whenever a group photo is taken.

I don't think there is any problem with realizing the magnitude of one's beauty and taking full responsibility for it. But when one desperately tries to prove his/her beauty to the rest of the world, then it switches to "unbearable mode".

Examples of unbearable vanity? Some post every single shot they take of themselves. (Read: Fifty photos of oneself in different angles but with the same shirt.) And since vanity has become a semi-fad, a lot of poses evolved. I saw this album where a girl had thirty-something photos of herself doing only one pose : pouting. Some even go as far as buying a DSLR just to take better self-portraits. And someone even spilled iced coffee all over her blouse just because of vanity. Oops, that was me. Vain? Vain. HAHAHA.

The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that's laughable is vanity.
-Henri Bergson