Split Personality

Last night body shaving and putting on make up were described as acts of vanity. We should just present our (natural) (face) selves to the world. It was pointed out that the speaker spends more time than any other at the table in the bathroom in the morning. That in response to another who suggested that good hygiene (grooming) is not the same as vanity.

Later on it occurred to me that we all present different faces of ourselves in different situations. I was thinking specifically of my online personas - the occasional and opinionated blogger, the saucy tweeter, the alternately edgy, outraged and whimsical facebooker and the professional observer of all things marketing and social media on linkedin.  Never mind that the real me - my truly favorite personal interests of writing, reading and jazz and trance music only show up in the privacy of my home or the subway but not online. Sometimes in the office but except for the infrequent book update on linkedin, strictly in the offline world.

Is there any meaning here? I am deliberate in what and how I show up online because I can be. Similarly for me words and music are mostly private inner life experiences. Is this vanity? I think it just is.

Consider another aspect of this: external perspectives of ourselves. People only see slices of other people. Based on what we show, what they want or expect to see and the nature of the interaction. At work colleagues may see the cool, rational self. At home the family may see the bitter, angry, frustrated, tired self. In the grocery store perhaps the gracious self shows up. Behind the wheel the aggressive road warrior. All different aspects of same person. None fully representative.

I think Hannah Arendt said something about the story of one's life cannot be told until her death. After death one might be able to put a life in perspective. Granted there's a lot of biographical and autobiographical evidence to the alternative. Just look at Mark Twain's bio published on his express orders 100 years after his death in order to quell controversy at the time of his death.

Still the who and what we are and our motivations and intents are never fully knowable either internally by our selves or externally by other peoples views of us.

So why the characterization of grooming as vanity? Or I should say more precisely the view of an act as grooming by one yet vanity by another. A mourning for the loss of a child to young adulthood? A disagreement of values? A projection of a perception?

I'm not sure the question is answerable. Each participant saw and heard what they saw and heard just as each presented what they wanted to show. It's never possible to know the full truth of a person.