Of vanity
I just got my teeth whitened last week.
They have always appeared very stained--flourosis, as my Edinburgh dentist and my Tampa dentist agree--and I have always been self-conscious about them. Zoom whitening cost me $500. My teeth now look, not gleaming, not preposterously glow-in-the-dark white, but fine. Fine. And just like that, I am no longer self-conscious about my teeth.
Why I waited until 55 to avail myself of this cheap and easy fix is a mystery.
It suggests (I should like to think) a laudable freedom from vanity, that excessive preoccupation with physical appearance that is one manifestation of the capital vice of vainglory, which is excessive preoccupation with appearance in general. (Not all writers in the capital vices tradition distinguish vanity about physical appearance from the more general vainglory that also concerns reputation, praise, status, and so forth: but tough. They're not writing this blog post.) But the very fact that I was bothered by my discolored teeth--not profoundly bothered, but persistently bothered in a low-key way--means I can't be entirely acquitted of vanity.
The vain person, much like the shy person (I used to be shy), falls under the classic rebuke, "It's not that you think too much of yourself: you think of yourself too much." I felt like everyone who saw me had to be thinking, "Whoa! What's going on with his teeth?" Probably not actually happening. Heck, I once spent a week's choir residency with a dentist who never once took me aside and said to me, "You know, I hope you don't take this amiss, but I could help you with . . ." Now maybe that's because he's a Southern gentleman, and maybe it was out of Chritian charity, but I'm inclined to think it's because It Just Wasn't That Big of a Deal.
Anyway, that's done, and I can move on to a new frontier of vanity. Thanks to a very effective and very inspiring trainer, I'm getting leaner, I've lost 4 or 5% body fat so far. Since I'm certainly not going to appear less than fully clothed in front of (almost) anyone not immediately related to me by marriage or medical necessity, surely this is entirely for health and not for looks. Even if, by some improbable benign conspiracy of genetics, diet, and exercise I were to end up with visible abs, the six-pack would be cross-hatched with the Frankenstein's-monster aftermath of my surgery: my belly looks like nothing so much as an incompetently tufted piece of furniture, upholstered in flesh. Nobody needs to see that. "Whoa! What's goiing on with his abdomen?"
A wise friend--himself a Southern gentleman and no stranger to Christian charity--has seen the abdomen in question and said simply, "It's only a thing if you make it a thing." Vanity is tricky.
Maybe there's some equivalent of Zoom whitening to be explored here. I understand Tampa General has an excellent cosmetic surgery division.
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