I am spending more time and money on how I look as I get older, and I cannot tell whether that is care or fear. Where is the line?

“The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.”

This proverb comes from a culture that read age as accumulated wisdom rather than as decline. Grey hair is called a crown, with a single condition attached about the life lived underneath it. The saying assumes something our own culture does not, namely that a face showing its years is displaying evidence of something rather than losing something. That is a very different place to start when you look in the mirror.

“Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”

Peter writes to women in a Roman world where elaborate hair and gold jewellery signalled a household's rank, so this is about display and status as much as vanity. He does not forbid attention to appearance. He relocates the valuable part to what he calls the hidden person of the heart, and the thing he describes as precious is the part that does not fade along with the face.