You’re So Vain — You Probably Think This Ad is About You

A humorous look at our own emptiness

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Most people associate the word “vanity” with excessive concern or pride in one’s appearance, or sometimes with some other personal quality. But at its root the word “vanity” refers to emptiness. To say that someone is “vain” is to say that he or she is empty or lacking in meaning, depth, or substance.

It makes sense that people get worked up about externals when there isn’t much happening on the inside. And thus it makes sense that we connect emptiness (vanity) with excessive show.

There are lots of expressions that enshrine this connection:

All form and no substance
That Texan is all hat and no cattle
All bark and no bite
All booster, no payload
All foam, no beer
All sizzle and no steak
All talk and no action
Show me the money

The Wisdom Tradition in the Bible, especially the Book of Ecclesiastes, speaks of vanity at great length. And there the word tends to refer to the ultimate futility of whatever this world offers, to the fact that the world is ultimately empty and vacuous.

Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun (Eccl 2:11).
He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity (Eccl 5:10).

And thus the world, which so mesmerizes our senses, shows itself ultimately to be empty of power or any lasting substance.

We have here, no lasting city (Heb 13:14).

As for man, his days are like grass: or as the flower of the field. Behold, he flourishes. But the wind blows and he is gone; and his place never sees him again (Ps 103:15-16).

I thought of these notions of vanity when I saw this very funny commercial. It shows a man concerned only with his appearance. Actually, he is even more vain than that! It is how he smells that concerns him (this is an Old Spice commercial). He is so vapid, so vain, that even if he doesn’t look good, at least he smells like someone who looks good!

As he moves through the scenes of the commercial he becomes increasingly devoid of substance (literally)!

Symbolically we can see him as the vain person who goes through life carelessly, paying no attention to the way in which the world, the desires of the flesh, and the devil strike at and eat away at him. But again, never mind all that, at least he smells like someone who looks good! His only real substance is to be lighter than air, a whiff. It is form over substance, impression over reality. It is empty show; it is vanity on steroids.

Here is a humorous look at vanity, a vanity so vain that it exists even beyond appearance and extends into the vapid, vacuous, and vaporous vanity of merely “smelling like someone who looks good.” A remarkable portrait of the empty show that vanity ultimately is. Enjoy!

Msgr. Charles Pope
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s the pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian in Washington, DC. He attended Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary and holds Masters degrees in Divinity and in Moral Theology.
He was ordained in 1989 and named a Monsignor in 2005. He has conducted a weekly Bible Study in Congress and in the White House, for two and four years, respectively.

Reprinted with the permission of Msgr. Pope. Originally published on his blog on the website of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.