Hi everyone. Last night Tristan and I had come back from the store. My brother told Tristan he deserved an award for willingly going shopping with me and he and my dad started laughing. I asked what that meant and Tyler said I couldn't ever just go into a store and get something without stopping to look at clothes and makeup and that he didn't even know how much of his valuable time I had wasted when he went to a store with me. His VALUABLE time!!! Yeah I wouldn't want to keep him from discovering cold fusion or doing surgery on kids in underdeveloped countries! Then my dad told him all women do that and that we can't help it because all women are vain and my brother and even Tristan agreed with him! When I said that men are just as vain as women all three of them said no, men aren't vain! OMG! REALLY??

My brother never met a mirror he didn't like. He's as picky as any girl when it comes to his clothes. He does spray tanning, uses teeth whitener, has me wax his unibrow and shaves his chest because you can't see his muscle definition clearly when his chest is hairy. Then there's my dad. A couple of months ago he was freaking out about turning 39. He had LASIK done because glasses would make him look older. And every time I cut his hair he askes me if it's getting thin anywhere.  He has very thick hair but he always asks me anyway. Once when I cut his hair I saved some of the cut hair and then put it on his pillow while he was in the shower. When he started to make his bed he almost had a stroke.  Hilarious!  He, Tyler and Tristan all spend a ridiculous amount of time at the gym. One of my kitchen cabinets is packed with protein powder, muscle milk, protein bars and endless supplements for gaining muscle. Tristan has the same collection at his house. These three are more vain than some women.

It's funny to me how most men will say being vain is a female trait. I think it effects both genders equally. It might seem like we are more vain because women have to do so much more than men. We are expected to look good. If we just jumped out of the shower and got dressed like some guys do for a night out we would get called ugly or slobs. But when we try to look nice we are called vain.

I think vanity effects both genders equally.  What do you think?

Agree with your last paragraph. Your brother, dad and bf made a completely sexist remark. It's like when men sleep around their just being men but if a woman does that she's being a slut. Different standards

Sadly, double standards for sure and those standards go right over into work places resulting in us having to hold a higher and more beautiful look regardless of how we might like to dress. Hugs
Mariah

I think that on average women are more prone to be aware of physical appearance overall, but I would not call that true vanity, more a matter of attempting to live up to cultural expectations. And while there are certain things that drive men in the same fashion, that is often more insecurity than true vanity as well. (Well, except for the constantly looking in the mirror part just for the sake of looking. That actually is vanity.)

Vanity is often a misunderstood concept, and I believe hinges on that someone wants to be beautiful for the sake of simply being beautiful, and then in turn hold that beauty over others. (It's more than beauty in truth, but that is the simplest metric to mention.) But most people who are supposedly vain are not attempting to be beautiful simply for its own sake, but seek to leverage it for other purposes such as social acceptance or finding a partner--that's not vanity, that's survival in a world of aesthetics.

Quote from: Roll on November 03, 2017, 09:25:02 AM
I think that on average women are more prone to be aware of physical appearance overall, but I would not call that true vanity, more a matter of attempting to live up to cultural expectations.

Yes, very much so. When a good part of you sense of self worth is based on physical appearance, we do what we must to make ourselves better. Call it vanity or cultural expectations, we do it anyway. It is just what we do.

The economics of gender are such that men gain more satisfaction from what they do, and less from how they look.  There are certainly exceptions and a high degree of overlap, but society evaluates women by how they look, and we learn the lesson well.

Additionally, it takes about 10 minutes to look good as a man.  10 years into presenting as female full time, I still plan on at least an hour.  It's not that I resent this.  I am worth that time, and I enjoy it.

Men are so vain, that they will go to great lengths to make it appear they don't care what they look like. They constantly think about sex. Therefore, they think about what they need to do to get sex. This is a primary drive in their vanity. I wonder how many would dispute that, in their efforts to make women think all that male posturing is effortless.

A vain man sticks out like a sore thumb frankly. So obvious.

But when I encounter vain men the joke's generally on them and they didn't tend to bother me with their thoughts. When I encountered vain women, not only were they themselves vain but they insisted on telling me I ought to be, too. Or they would insist on intrusively pointing things out about my appearance or style either in a passive-aggressive way or else just a nasty way. Men have never done this to me.