Old vanity

(1997)

New vanity

(2000)

If we're talking pride-in-appearance Vanity, I'm pretty low on it. I've finally resigned myself to my inability to dress myself. All of my clothes are ugly, ill-fitting, or both. I'm not exactly wearing sweatpants, but I'm pretty close. I rarely wear makeup unless I'm going to a club, I don't shave much, my nails are a mess, I usually don't comb my hair even if I'm going to work. I don't brush my teeth unless I AM going to work.

Something I am really vain about is pictures. It's because they're proof that I'm that ugly. If a picture looks particularly terrible, I love it. But if I'm trying to look good and I come out with a double chin or a cartoonish makeup job or a GIANT FAT ASS, I'm really depressed. I treat every picture like it's my school picture, the one that will go on the news when I go missing, the only way anyone will remember me. When I was younger, I would just resign myself to it. At some point, I realized I could just destroy the evidence. Unfortunately, this didn't happen until a few years ago.

My deepest shame is the horrible Glamour Shots of me that my mom has hanging up around her house. They're mortifying. I have begged her again and again to take them down, but she refuses. My parents are very married to the idea of me with long hair, regardless of how hideous I look in those particular pictures. My mom paid for the Glamor Shots in advance and made me get them. The woman who "glamorized" me bitched incessantly about how she was supposed to get the day off and blanketed me in blush, eye shadow, pink lipstick, and mascara. I wanted to beg her to go ahead and take the day off, but she terrified me. The dresser draped me in multicolored lamé, cheap earrings, and long black gloves. The photographer posed me in horrible caricatures of sex and glamour. It was a nightmare, but I didn't really mind. Until I saw the pictures. Then I almost started crying. I hadn't been that ashamed since watching a middle-school video my girlfriends & I had made all tarted up and trying to dance around sexily to some Prince song.

Maybe I'll put up the Glamour Shots up to try to exorcise my demons.

I am also very vain about my brain. I'm exceptionally vain about things I make & do. In this respect, I'm a big fat showoff. I'm always forcing people I work with to look at my page because I can't control myself & then deeply regretting it & wondering if I said something nasty about them a few minutes later. I was distraught when I saw how ugly my page looked on a Mac (if you have one, I am so sorry for what I have done to you).

Hello! This is a VANITY page! Look at me!! Look at me! God, how embarrassing. And here I am, trying to kid myself I'm not vain. Ach.

New vanity