OUR CHERISHED VANITIES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18536, 5 April 1930, Page 9 (Supplement)

OUR CHERISHED VANITIES

THE PANGS THEY BRING. By KATHERINE CARR. IN “THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD.” Along with all the other tedious admonitions thrust upon us in childhood we have all been taught in our extreme youth that “self-praise is no recommedation.” Most parents consider it an essential part of their parental duty to crush our little spurts of pride and our infant vanities before ever we ourselves became aware of them. When we were introduced to some pompous visitor and, feeling the need of drawing attention to our small selves we exclaimed exuberantly, “I can stand on my head. You watch me!” How shocked our grown-up relatives were and how earnestly they impressed upon us that exasperating dictum that “children should be seen but not heard.” But despite the blighting influences of our parents and teachers we have all emerged from childhood with our own peculiar vanities—some that they failed to crush out of us, and others that in spite of their best intentions they unconsciously fostered in our young minds. One of the most lamentable vanities that can be grafted on to innocent young things by overfond parents is the belief that they they can sing or recite or perform on some musical instrument, when in reality they have little talent; whenever the family entertains visitors the children are called upon to do their parlour tricks and unless the parents’ judgment is a stronger quality than their parental pride, the children are very easily led to over-rate their own talents and are in grave danger of growing up to be priggish or unutterably boring. There is no

doubt that the modern fashion of training small children to perform in public and of entering them for big public competitions is a form of parental vanity, which does infinite harm to a great many children. In order to have their sons and daughters winning prizes and the applause of the multitude, to have them perhaps hailed as infant prodigies, these misguided people rob the children of their playtimes and often succeed merely in making performing monkeys of them and laying them open to the ridicule of teasing school-mates, or unkind adults. Where sniggers and ridicule are the reward of infant efforts to entertain, no praise in later years can quite obliterate the memory of that childish hurt. On the other hand where public appreciation of some childish performance is too lavish, and the praise too fulsome, the effect on the child-mind is likely to be unwholsome, and to distort the child's sense of values.

However, to revert to the vanities, which we all cherish in spite of our early training and not because of it, we all have our own little pecularities. There is the girl, who is so vain of her physical charms that she feeds on flattery. She cherishes every compliment that comes her way, and bores her friends with a recital of what someone said of her hair and her complexion and another said of her figure. It is all very soul-satisfying while it lasts, but what of the future when her charms will have faded, and there will be no more compliments forthcoming to salve her hungry soul? No less tiresome than the woman whose vanity is wrapped up in her physical attractiveness is the woman who prides herself unduly on her cleverness as a housewife or her prowess in the world of sport, and falls into the habit of “Holding the floor,” and proclaiming her own cleverness to her long-suffering friends, whenever she finds herself in possession of a potential audience. Again we come across that vanity of the plain person who is always on the defensive —and this perhaps is the most irritating vanity of all —the fat woman who alludes to her own grotesque dimensions. not jokingly so that the reference can be laughed off, but in a way that demands the contradiction of her hearers as a matter of politeness; the woman whose features may be homely but whose general appearance is pleasing and comfortable—what are you to say when she makes constant reference to “this snubnose of mine,” or “my homely profile”? Is it that she wants to be contradicted and to grasp these contradictions as little straws of comfort to her bosom? Or is she merely seeking to anticipate anything unflattering that might be said or even thought about her? Perhaps her mistake is in believing that the people who have grown to like her for her own sake even notice her features, when they have grown accustomed to seeing her. The plainest face in the world can become dear to us for the character that shines out from it, so what, after all. is this foolish mental unrest that we call vanity?