SLAVE TO VANITY | ESSAYS
Essayists:
John Fenning, MD
Who are the Slaves to Vanity? We are really talking about slavery not imposed from the outside but but self-induced.. Thus, you are abdicating your freedom to achieve some goal other people define for you. Then we come to Vanity, a subject which has intrigued philosophers and writers of varying ilk for centuries. Samuel Johnson in his major dictionary does not see too much difference between Pride and Vanity. Religions have made Pride and/or Vanity a deadly sin. But many have separated the two.
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Terry Tincher (Poet, Owner Space 39 Modern and Contemporary Gallery)
Vanity is the hallmark of the meek and powerless.
They cry for
good opinions of themselves
Not being able to set their own value
Fredrick Nietzsche
Time has scoured my beauty,
oo many days have passed.
The glow of youth is waning,
my time is in the past.
Richard L. Tooke (Curator, Collector)
Inside all of us, male and female, we feel that our beauty and youth is hidden beneath our unacceptable outer appearance. The prince inside the beast of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.The frog prince. Narcissus, who was fated to fall in love with himself at great peril. Gustav von Aschenbach s love for the Polish youth, Tadzio, leadinghim to the barber that tinted his hair and brought the appearance of youth to his cheeks. This led him to ignore the signs of death all around him in Venice, staying on longer then he should have, parading around Venice with his false appearance of youth, hoping to attach Tadzios attention. We all know that he died on the beach at the Lido with Tadzio in his view as a young god with a halo of sun behind him.
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Jenny Higgons (Writer for celebrity magazines, Editor)
The night before the 1990 French Open, Andre Agassi was in a frenzy. But his mood wasnt brought on by nerves about his match the next day. Instead, it was because he had no bobby pins. At age 20, the tennis great was going bald, and the hairpiece he used to hide his secret was coming undone. Of course I could play without my hairpiece, he wrote in his autobiography, Open. But I was too self-conscious. Poor Andre succumbed to Americas unwavering emphasis on beauty.
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| 1. | excessive pride in one's appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc.; character or quality of being vain; conceit: Failure to be elected was a great blow to his vanity. |
| 2. | an instance or display of this quality or feeling. |
| 3. | something about which one is vain. |
| 4. | lack of real value; hollowness; worthlessness: the vanity of a selfish life. |
| 5. | something worthless, trivial, or pointless. |
| 6. | vanity case. |
| 7. | dressing table. |
| 8. | produced as a showcase for one's own talents, esp. as a writer, actor, singer, or composer: a vanity production. |
| 9. | of, pertaining to, or issued by a vanity press: a spate of vanity books. |
| 1. | a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant. |
| 2. | a person entirely under the domination of some influence or person: a slave to a drug. |
| 3. | a drudge: a housekeeping slave. |
| 4. | a slave ant. |
| 5. | Photography. a subsidiary flash lamp actuated through its photoelectric cell when the principal flash lamp is discharged. |
| 6. | Machinery. a mechanism under control of and repeating the actions of a similar mechanism. Compare master . |
| 7. | to work like a slave; drudge. |
| 8. | to engage in the slave trade; procure, transport, or sell slaves. |
| 9. | to connect (a machine) to a master as its slave. |
| 10. | Archaic. to enslave. |
