Let’s do the pros and cons. Think deep, get creative. I want to know how you feel personally about vanity.
I’m too good-looking to answer this question.
confidence is healthy.
when u stop caring about other people…when it gets in the way of your relationships…that’s a different story.
Are you equating confidence and vanity? If so, you need to rethink that equation unless you can actually defend it. Can you?
fuse why are you talking about me.
I’m pretty sure he was addressing that line in the sand where confidence crosses over to narcissism and vanity. How in the world you took it to mean that he was “equating” confidence and vanity is a mystery, however.
Yellow, you need to rethink that slip into idiocy unless you can actually defend it.
I think vanity can be camouflage for insecurity.
Maybe. Or maybe they were spoiled as children.
Then they grow up and think some song is about them…
I’m actually both good-looking and insecure, so I’m vain[size=150]²[/size]. And that song, yeah - “You’re so vain” - It was about me.
Vanity is an essential part of being human, being an experiencing subject. We perceive our world and interpret that which is experienced in light of our own forms, functions, needs, desires, prejudices, meanings etc etc. We “see ourselves everywhere” we look. As with anything, this subjective self-encounter takes on levels of intensity in both how well (efficiently, without error) it is achieved and to what degree conscious understanding and behavior are informed by it. All people are vain, but does one use this vanity to derive further knowledge about oneself, and thus about others and life generally? Or does one become a slave to vanity, exercising it unconsciously and thus remaining passive and overdetermined by (inefficient and self-destructive or blinding) vanity? Is one elevated or held back, consciously speaking, by one’s vain nature?
The usual problem associated with vanity is not of vanity itself but of an unexamined and ill-conceived vanity, vanity allowed too much leverage in the psyche that it “falls in love with itself” and creates conceptual and emotional blocks and blinders, leading to ego-inflation, narcissism, hubris.
Self-acceptance demands understanding and embracing your vain nature - it ought to be further edified and cleansed through honest exposure to one’s conscience, not willed away or ignored. Vanity is only harmful when it is, well, harmful… obviously.
am i equating confidence and vanity? did i say confidence is vanity?
blurr got it right, albeit in a more…insulting way than i would have preferred.
Excellent 
Sorry. Feel free to show Ms. Yellowed-With-Age as much respect as you’d like. She lost mine ages ago, and I’m not going to fake it.
All of the above. I don’t think there’s any one cause for vanity.
You make it sound like it’s an std.
Oh hang on, it is.
Herpegonasyphillaidavainia…
Sidenote: Do other diseases look down on std’s…?
Only if she’s on top… :-"
Arf. I was almost too innocent to understand that one.
What he said
I think that vanity comes from two polar opposites of self esteem. Humpty nailed one end and AnitaS nailed the other I reckon. So on on hand those who are incredibly egoistic are at one pole, and those who are insecure with their looks also become vain. So the middle ground are the ones who are not vain. Here’s my scale:
Confident, Egoistic--------------------------------------------------------------------I---------------------------------------------------------------Insecure, Shy
========================================================Well Balanced================================================
It’s a bit reductionist but I think it works.