Unfortunately for her (and her parents), that all changed when she hit middle school.  She became so caught up in what she was wearing and how she looked that she caused herself many miserable moments and hours, and caused those around her a great deal of frustration and annoyance.  If she got a new shirt, it had to be a certain brand name or she moped around for hours sometimes.  She deliberately disobeyed her mother's order to wear a heavy winter coat on a day when the temperature was below zero, because it was somehow not cool to be wearing a heavy coat--she wanted to wear her windbreaker.  She was willing to risk getting sick and to be extremely uncomfortable just because of what she thought her friends would think of her.

Just two years earlier, she had been very outspoken in criticizing the older girls who were doing exactly what she was doing then.

Don't get me wrong--she was a great kid, with many wonderful traits.  But her vanity got in the way of her relationships with others, and at times it was very difficult to be with her.

Even the way she talked changed--she was more willing to use words like "geek" and "nerd" to describe people who didn't dress as "cool" as she did, and she effectively closed off the possibility of contact with a large number of people.  It was very sad to watch, and we could only hope that she would grow out of the phase soon.

I know many adults who do the same thing--they're so caught up in the way they look that they obsess about their clothing and their hair and their make-up.  They spend hours on these things when a few minutes a day would do.  They've bought into the idea that looks are everything, and they're doing their best to impress others with the way they look.  And they accomplish that in the short run.  They're missing the bigger picture, though.  Most people see through the looks and the clothing rather quickly, and realize that they're dealing with people who aren't addressing the substantive part of their lives, people who are so caught up with the outside that they're neglecting the inside.  They're unhappy and stressed out if they don't look just right (and sometimes even if they do), and they're much more likely to lose their peace of mind over a stained dress or shirt or coat than other people who may attend closely to their looks, but who don't make them the major focal point of their lives.

The other side of vanity is the false impression that one gets of oneself because of their exaggerated evaluation of themselves and their looks and/or abilities.  They may be constantly in the company of admirers or wanna-be's, but they fail to acknowledge the fact that these people around them are in serious need of help to find their own identities.  The vain person is at best annoying, at worst, useless to others.  There's a certain arrogance that comes with vanity, and that arrogance keeps the vain person from seeing the needs of those around them.  While they may be quite happy about themselves, that happiness comes at a cost.  Self-satisfaction on one level can keep us from trying to improve other aspects of our lives.  How many of the high-school beauty queens end up not even going to college or trying to start a career, for they've let their vanity carry them through their high-school years, and haven't done a thing to try to improve their minds or cultivate friendships? 

The vain person is to be pitied, for that person has a very unrealistic perception of just who he or she is.  That person may bask in the admiration that comes because of his or her looks or clothes, but that admiration is fleeting and insincere.  The bottom line is that the person is a human being, with wants and needs and desires just like the rest of us.  That person needs to learn about him or herself and about life, but is probably neglecting both areas.  Other people have heaped praise upon the person about one aspect of his or her life, and that person has focused all his or her energy on that one aspect.  Their feelings of success, their self-esteem, their feelings of accomplishment all stem from that one aspect of themselves.  And we all know what happens when that one aspect goes bad.

(And as a postscript, the young lady did grow out of the phase rather quickly and became one of the least vain people I've ever known--a truly loving and caring person who I believed learned a lot from going through that particular phase.)

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