Vanity, Thy Name is Wo(Man)..

Vanity, thy name is woman. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella; nearly all the fairy tales would have snippets about women and vanity - hours of combing the hair, sitting in front of the mirror; plastering all those mud-like texture stuff onto the face; of carefully tailored clothes, pelisse and paletetots, uncomfortable clothes like bustle, or wasteful attires in the haute couture, all acts of vanity. If the hairbrush can talk, I'm sure there are many tales of vanity it can tell us.

And why not? In those days of serfs and lords (hamba dan tuan), the upper echelon of the society had slaves to meet their needs; which of course freed the women fortunate enough to be born into that class a certain life of frivolous pursuits. The only hazards in their lives were probably childbirth and the fall of their men; in the strongest-takes-all environment those days. So yeah! Women had hours and hours to entertain vanity. Else what could they do?? But I think vanity is not just women's domain. It's just that over the ages, women have always been portrayed as vain.... by men!

Vanity, Thy Name is Man... sounds so weird, right? Yet I think men are just as vain as women. For women... vanity equals to jars and tubes of creams, trips to the beautician and hairdresser, face-lift, plastic surgery,... but men also do that now. Metro Man is the invention of the 21st century! They too go for their manicure and pedicure! The soft look is in. LOL! But man's vanity goes beyond just being the Metro Man.

It also comes in the form of what car they drive, how big of a house they have, how pretty the lady they kepit beside them, how successful they are in bringing the $$$... call it stoking the ego... but it's also vanity. Only different in form. But women are fast catching up also with men in this. Emancipation, equal rights.... I'm glad to be born in this gen!

Contrary to what is commonly held, William Shakespeare didn't say this in Hamlet. What he did say was, "Frailty, thy name is woman!" in his exasperation when he found out his mother remarried soon after his father's death.

Anyway, it should be... Vanity, thy name is Wo(Man). In this world of equal opportunity, I think both genders are equally represented in the matter of vanity too! If the old ways were straightforward, vanity today is a combination of marketing and science... SKII, technical re-bonding, hair dyeing to preserve that fleeting youth, facial, Mary France Bodyline, liposuction, bust lift, eye brow tattoo, eye lift, botox.... but all in the name of vanity and money. Vanity, Thy Name Is All! Kah! Kah! Kah!