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.
The great Irish writer Flann O'Brien wrote the following statement for the masthead of Blather, a magazine he founded while at Trinity College in Dublin:
'*Blather* is here. As we advance to make our bow, you will look in vain for signs of servility or of any evidence of a desire to please. We are an arrogant and depraved body of men. We are as proud as bantams and as vain as peacocks.
'"Blather doesn't care." A sardonic laugh escapes us as we bow, cruel and cynical hounds that we are. It is a terrible laugh, the laugh of lost men. Do you get the smell of porter?
(There's more, but like Fermat's last theorem it doesn't fit in this tight space.)
It's about ranchers. If you're at an auction in Texas and you see a man swaggering about in a nice suit and huge cowboy hat, he might own a big farm with a big herd — or it might all be for show.
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.
Of course it's no wonder that a non-native like me has challenges with cliches and idioms anyway, but an additional problem comes from the basically same sayings being a bit different in different languages/cultures.
For example, in Finland we don't speak about pigs flying but cows. And instead of "birds and bees" we say "flowers and bees" (which I dare state is more logical).
'*Blather* is here. As we advance to make our bow, you will look in vain for signs of servility or of any evidence of a desire to please. We are an arrogant and depraved body of men. We are as proud as bantams and as vain as peacocks.
'"Blather doesn't care." A sardonic laugh escapes us as we bow, cruel and cynical hounds that we are. It is a terrible laugh, the laugh of lost men. Do you get the smell of porter?
(There's more, but like Fermat's last theorem it doesn't fit in this tight space.)
To quote a certain Arthur Daley from the TV series 'Minder'...
For example, in Finland we don't speak about pigs flying but cows. And instead of "birds and bees" we say "flowers and bees" (which I dare state is more logical).