Ah, yes, vanity. Why everyone knows that "Vanity, thy name is woman." And it makes sense — to most men — when you look up that word in any dictionary providing more than two definitions/illustrations. Put vain before most feminine nouns, and you make that subject or object almost worthless. Or, describe a female's failure to achieve a notable feat, and you wind up with futile. You want to go with how a fashionista perceives her self? Then go with conceit and pompous. Well, what's a man to do or think when even a woman's magazine carries the title Vanity Fair? Shame on women; shame!
Okay, my right hand waves and wiggles high in the air for your attention. Yes, I'll confess. I've been guilty most of my younger years supporting such a canard. For years, didn't it seem obvious? How cute for little girls to try lipstick and don grown up lady's clothes? And look at all those little girls, each with their mother's consent, strutting across the stage during little princesses' beauty contests.
Today, however, with most of my life behind me, I find it necessary to reevaluate earlier opinions, thereby fading away into my final hour with a more mature perspective. And so, when I ended this past April Fool's tale of "Going on a Dig," I claimed that I had to address my vanity before questioning such of others. Thus, please join me on an abridged rewind of my life's clock – a long journey where I've learned to shed and/or revise many an earlier, supposed 'truism.'
Formative years: I don't remember wearing a suit or donning a tie before my thirteenth birthday. I do remember how my friends and I looked and thought about another guy our age who wore black, shiny, patent leather shoes to tap-dancing classes. What a 'dandy sissy.'
Adolescent years: By the tenth grade, I found certain dress standards non-negotiable. I had to wear blue jeans, preferably Levi's, the dirtier the better, and I had to scrunch 'em down low on the waist. 'Polo shirts' made the best summer tops, and in California, if you had 'cross-the-border' huaraches (woven leather sandals Hecho en Mejico) such footwear identified you as an associate of the alpha male pack.
Into the eleventh grade, school dances offered an amalgam of fashion, pop tunes, the need for a date, and praying for the courage to ask a girl for a dance. It thus became mandatory to wear a jacket and sport a tie with a military knot. By my senior year, I had transcended my first love and had no compunction about wearing coat and tie for my senior yearbook photo. I also picked up some fundamentals on color coordination. And few young adult males strolled by a glass front store window without stopping to comb their hair.
Into the US Army in 1948 at age 17: I had my civvies to wear into Monterey from Fort Ord (now a Park); carried a fake ID to allow me to enter a bar, and even sported a white silk scarf a la Hollywood inspired, New York playboy mode. Transferring in early 1949 to Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, TX, with nearly all of my barracks mates from 18 to 22 years old, we often discussed ambitions and even reviewed selected books (Mickey Spillane sat high on the literary hierarchy). But more than anything else, the majority of our male conversations centered on women and the need to make out. I can cite but one memory of one guy who talked of entering a Trappist Monastery. The rest of us, without consciously saying so, sought out high-speed highways to hedonism. And as one young male actor put it in a popular movie from that time, "I want to die young and leave a good-looking corpse."
Thus, before my 19th birthday, I had a full-fledged, tailored suit of blue sharkskin, a blue knit tie (Windsor knotted), and wore dress shirts sporting French cuffs. (Oh, all right, I also had a pair of blue suede shoes.) "Clothes make the man." I believed that advisement. Words to live by.
Fortunately, later assignment to Japan enlightened my young mind, and broadened the acceptance of attitudes sometimes at variance with how things were done back home. Moreover, the military model mandated wearing the army uniform on and off the base.
Jumping ahead to 1953: Take me out of this man's army, and into college. Economics meant continuing to wear the civvies acquired up to that point. Periods of barely getting by kept getting in the way of presenting even a semblance of look at me; am I not wonderful? A 1955 marriage enabled my continuing education, where anthropological studies opened doors to other cultures and differing perspectives on fashion and definitions of success. Thus, by the time of graduating from UCLA in 1958, I had significantly settled down, and gradually shed many vanity veneers of my earlier years.
Leap-frogging through the next five + decades: Where am I now? Am I vanity free? Certainly not, but I do not equate my appearance (clothed or naked) to any fixed status point. No person or group mandates my preening toiletries. Further, jumpsuits define my official retirement uniform. Long sleeves for work; short sleeves for all other events. I doubt if I can find anything in any wardrobe closet considered formally dressy that'll fit. Matter of fact, I've given away more than thirty ties to a quilter.
Today I offer the following pronouncement: Clothes don't make anybody a somebody. Moreover, ever since the human species covered their originally naked selves, much of humanity has worked overtime in linking it's vain efforts at survival onto supernatural entities, and affixed those creations with extreme vanities. I am not surprised that mostly males have defined various gods, constructed the edifices to house them, plus, provided the majority of ministries to spread selected gospels. If you really want to study vanity, go to religious texts and/or oral traditions.
Our progenitors tried to make sense of life's origins and proposed supernatural creators who offered (possible) hereafters. Not likely our ancient ancestors confronted much comfort and joy; so why not expect good and happy times in the afterlife?
Today, three major monotheistic religions each claim to offer the One True (father figure) God. (Let's excise the Father/Son/Holy Ghost model from the Old Testament's Hebraic Yahweh.) Welcome to the male dominated, theocratic world that defines a non-believer as heathen, apostate, or infidel and assigns women secondary status. It's hard to beat a supernatural vanity that has the omnipotent power to send you to Hell forever!
Vanity, thy name is man. Shame; shame on us!
