Vanity and aging

The February 2026 episode of Bella Freud's "Fashion Neurosis" (Apple Podcasts) in which she interviews Esther Perel is especially compelling because Esther responds with perspicacious remarks about clothing, and mentions the merits of vanity which reframes the abnegation the quality draws. 

Bella notes that Esther wrote that "vanity with a good dose of humour is wonderful", and Esther says, "Somebody once said people with vanity age much better; they're taking care of themselves" and develops that idea: “(They) can age less better because they are upset at the fact that they have lost their youth, but they can age better because they're actually taking care of themselves.... And it's not just clothes, and it's not just makeup, and it's not just a particular hat. And it's a lot of things combined, but you know that they're still looking at themselves....in a society where often people have stopped looking at them."

Granted, when overdone, vanity is an obnoxious and pathetic trait; devoting so much time and focus to an image that will inevitably change is ultimately a mug's game. But like several of the Deadly Sins, e.g.,  Lust and Gluttony, if you dial it back a tad, it's kind of fun. 

My own vanity shows up unbidden. I was invited to a chef's highly-staged five course dinner and wondered, What in the world will I wear? Then it occurred to me that no one will care. But I cared, and mustered layers of black cashmere, olive eyeliner and Chelsea rain boots, because weather trumped fashion on an evening when freezing rain took out 100, 000 homes' power.

Some diners wore dresses, some jeans, everyone ate dessert off a half-naked dancer (prone) with a headdress of stag's antlers. I thought, When a man is wearing a trifle and stag's rack, all rules are off!

We tend to be vain about our best features, and to carry that pride secretly tucked inside, feigning surprise if someone notices them: Oh, my sloe eyes, really?  At least we did before the digital age; now there is  a subculture called LooksMaxxing where people boast and post. Fanning vanity of course sells products.

Esther offers the antidote to being a vain jerk; humour mixed with irony. You can be inordinately smug that you inherited gleaming highlights from some ancestor but at the same time, the hair itself is fine as dandelion fluff so you're forever fussing. You have the hand strength and span to be a concert pianist, but you're tone deaf. We're glorious, flawed, and stuck with it.

There are of course exceptions. Matt Damon supposedly said about George Clooney, "God must have thought, 'What if I gave it all to one guy?'"

The opposite of vanity is humility. Vanity is lashed to comparison; humility lets go of that score card and acknowledges what is bigger than our ego. I once watched the big-wave surfer Kelly Slater on a spectacular ride, and when he finished, instead of a victory fist pump, he sat on his board, bowed his head, and cried. He was humbled by something greater than himself.

I'm still vain as I move through life, aware of the wish to defend what I prize, while at the same time watching it alter or diminish. Didn't I have eyelashes last year? What happened to my stamina? 

At the same time, I still enjoy putting on good clothes and stepping out. If I deny vanity, I think I'd feel less vital. Esther connects vanity to self-care, and I believe it can even contribute to communal care because it propels us into the world, and into contact.