The Vanity

Wishing you a season full of bounty, beauty, and brass.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and that holds doubly true when you are broke. My limited and mostly vicarious cultural experience had taught me every woman had in her home a dedicated space for beauty potions and powders. Whether a lady’s boudoir was filled with an elaborately carved antique set-up or her bathroom cabinetry was merely stacked with precariously balanced hot tools, there was a space, and mirror, all her own.

I knew from movies that the most alluring women’s vanities dripped with ribbons and bouncy flounced fabric. Often, they delivered their most knockout lines in profile, either seductively or frostily, as they smoothly applied lipstick or held perfume stoppers to their swanlike necks. 

When these women were Southern, their cutting remarks were spoken with drawls as long and lazy as the Mississippi River. The men in these scenes were rebuked by their withering words but left quivering by their sharp beauty. Unspoken yet obvious were their streaks of self-absorption, dames as puffed-up as the powder applicators pressed to their noses. 

I wanted to be one of them. 

Determined as only a teenager could be, I marched through our trailer one afternoon on a mission to build myself a special place to apply my cosmetics and practice being fabulous. I commandeered one of our old end tables from the living area and took it to my shoebox-sized bedroom. I found a hand-me-down lighted mirror in Mom’s room that was dusty from lack of use. Mom had neither the inclination nor the patience to pay more than sixty seconds of attention to her face each day. She wouldn’t even notice it was gone.

Seating proved to be more difficult. All our kitchen table chairs were spoken for, and the piano bench was already piled high with backpacks and library books. After much thought, I dumped out a large plastic bucket that had previously stored fruit cocktail for the high school and was now being used as a magazine rack. Being the daughter of a lunchlady had its perks, even though sprucing up the front room to resemble a cafeteria wasn’t my preferred style.

I stuffed the tattered reading material into an identical bucket on the other side of the recliner. Mom could replace the one I took later. There were plenty more industrial food containers where that came from, unfortunately. 

In my bedroom, I flipped the bucket upside down and sat. My knees banged into the end table no matter what position I twisted into. I would have to make it work. I added my Wet-N-Wild 99-cent lipsticks and a Noxzema-scented powder compact to the plastic tray on top, spraying a bit of my Designer Imposters perfume canister into the air to freshen things. I swiped my hand across both sides of my Clairol-branded looking glass to clean it. The plug reached the outlet with room to spare.

Sadly, I contemplated my bucket seat. It was in desperate need of flounce. Plus, it had left a large circular indentation in my rear end, leaving me feeling like the world’s biggest biscuit.

I looked around my messy adolescent bedroom for something glamorous and comfy to add. A pretty patchwork silk skirt, hidden under a 10,000 Maniacs shirt peppered with dog hair, caught my eye. The inner layer of the skirt looked like a galaxy, a background of deep midnight blue mixed with black and maroon swirls.  Working quickly with scissors, I cut the layer off. I went back into the living room and grabbed the only throw pillow in the house. The pillow was stupidly printed with geese, an artistic abomination that cried out to be concealed.  Back in my room, I plopped the throw pillow on the bucket and draped the skirt fabric on top. The excess pooled beautifully on the thin blue carpet. 

I carefully sat down and flicked on the mirror’s light switch. 

Turning my head from side to side, I pursed my lips in the shape of a kiss meant for a future suitor. I practiced a conversation in my head, complimenting him – but not too much. In real life, I tried to downplay my Appalachian accent, but this imaginary darling hung on to every banjo-timbred word.

I felt attractive, self-assured, brilliant. Could I charm the birds right out of the trees? My mind miles and years away from this tiny, lacking space, I winked at myself. The magic was real.

I was the latest woman to succumb to The Vanity.