Healthy pride in appearance can easily blossom into vanity, the all-encompassing love affair with oneself. Just as children are admonished to "leave something on the plate for Miss Manners," so do the following tales remind us to keep a weather eye on how close we're coming to that line.

There's an old saying, "Suffer to be beautiful." In this section you'll encounter apocryphal tales of those who took this maxim all too literally.