Well, the French version translates to "Proud as a peacock". I guess French people view beauty as a good thing, whereas English people see it as superficiality.
Re 'all hat, no cattle' I think it's supposed to be 'big hat, no cattle'. Randy Newman even wrote a song about it, lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdgcyT_nsBA
"All hat and no cattle" is such a great figure of speech. I'd never heard it before, but it just sounds so quintessentially cowboy, like something the narrator from The Big Lebowsky would say.
To quote a certain Arthur Daley from the TV series 'Minder'...