vanity fair
Noun: A social environment or sphere characterized by excessive pride in one's appearance, abilities, or achievements, and a preoccupation with frivolous, superficial, and fashionable pursuits, especially as associated with life in large, sophisticated cities. It implies a world obsessed with public image, status, and empty pleasures.
The term "Vanity Fair" is used as a proper noun to describe a specific, often metaphorical, setting or state of society. It critiques a culture obsessed with appearances, fashion, gossip, and social climbing.
- After moving to the capital, she felt she had entered a Vanity Fair, where everyone was more concerned with their social media image than with genuine connection.
- The celebrity's memoir exposed the hollow Vanity Fair of Hollywood, revealing the loneliness behind the glamorous parties.
- He grew tired of the Vanity Fair of the corporate world, where networking often seemed more important than actual work.
- As a Cultural Critique: The term is often used in literary and social commentary to critique the emptiness of materialistic and status-driven societies.
- The novel serves as a sharp satire of the 19th-century Vanity Fair.
- Metaphorical Use: It can describe any environment—a workplace, an industry, a social circle—that embodies these vain and frivolous qualities.
- The annual fashion week was the ultimate Vanity Fair, a whirlwind of pretension and spectacle.
- Vanity (noun): Excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements.
- His vanity was evident in his constant need for compliments.
- Fair (noun, in this context): A gathering or exhibition, often for public entertainment (as in the original allegorical setting from John Bunyan's ).
- Frivolous society
- World of pretense
- Social whirl
- Rat race (when emphasizing competitive, relentless pursuit of status)
The term was popularized by William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 novel Vanity Fair, which satirizes early 19th-century British society. Thackeray himself borrowed the name from the allegorical "Vanity Fair" in John Bunyan's 1678 book The Pilgrim's Progress, a town representing worldly sin and distraction.
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a vain and frivolous lifestyle especially in large cities