Misguided vanity.  It might be in a Psychiatrist’s Handbook.  I looked at a space in my mouth where a molar had been removed and decided I wanted an implant. The insurance company wouldn’t pay for it, though, because it is cosmetic. 

“A moment of misguided vanity,” I muttered.

“Hm?”

“Thank you!”  Click.

Literary heroines suffer from misguided vanity.  Amy in Little Women sleeps with a clothespin (or something) on her nose because she thinks it will straighten it.  In Valley of the Dolls, Jennifer North refuses to have mastectomy when she has breast cancer because her boyfriend might not love her without a breast.  And so she dies.  In Anna Karenina, Anna outshines Kitty at a dance, and Kitty’s boyfriend, Vronsky, runs off with Anna. But Kitty ends up with Levin, a handsome estate owner who is madly in love with her.  So that’s actually better. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s silly younger sister, Lydia, is vain and thoughtlesss:  she runs off with Wickham, a rake and a liar, but isn’t a bit fazed when he refuses to marry her at Gretna Green.  Darcy and Lydia’s uncle track them down and force Wickham to marry her.

It’s hard to think of a literary heroine who isn’t vain.  Tess of the d’Urbervilles isn’t one to look at herself in the mirror.  In Margorie Kellogg’s novel, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, the heroine’s face was disfigured by a lover.  In Mary Webb’s Precious Bane, Prue Harn has a harelip but a beautiful body. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s best friend marries a ridiculous minister, because she wants her own home and is still on the marriage market at 27. In Villette, Lucy Snowe is plain, and decides to marry an absurd little middle-aged man, but then something happens. And so Charlotte Bronte, urged by her publisher, wrote two endings!

As I said, we all have our moments of vanity.  We dye our hair, wear fashionable clothes, go on crash diets, or have facial peels.   Sometimes looking in a mirror is enough.   You lament that you aren’t in your thirties but later cheer up.  Then you become sensible and don’t bother with beauty regimens. Or perhaps you do even more so!

Do tell me about your moments of misguided vanity, if it’s not too embarrassing!