Heart and Mind

Looking Funny Without Glasses?

It's a pretty good time in history to be wearing glasses, isn't it? Despite many people's continued claims about hating to wear them or hating how they feel or look, it's really not so bad these days. Consider that glasses are more stylish than ever (there can almost be a chic and "smart" quality to what once was mostly considered a nerd-ish quality), they're smaller than ever (the ones I wear would probably have been considered "reading glasses" or "half-glasses" back in the 1980s and earlier), they're thinner than ever (no more "coke-bottle" situations where your degree of myopia was reflected—no pun intended—in the thickness of your lenses, as they can make them all pretty thin now), and they're lighter then ever.

They're a lot more inconspicuous, if you choose a style that's not real bold. In fact, I think most people putting on a pair of conservative glasses look not too different, or at least not too bad. But that wasn't the case "back in the day." When you used to have to wear these big, thick, heavy glasses, people sort of had to get used to what you looked like in glasses before they started blending into your face. So people who didn't wear glasses tended to, arguably, look not so good when they stole a pair of glasses from a friend who wore 'em and put them on during study hall for a laugh. It was like a novelty for people with good vision to "nerd it up" with your glasses.

But once you got used to what someone looked like, the opposite was true, too. I knew people who wore glasses 24-7 (I didn't become 24-7 until I started wearing contacts) and once in a while when they'd take off their glasses to wash their face or something, they'd look really different. They'd actually look kind of funny, similar to what a non-glasses-wearer looked like when they donned the specs.

That's a weird thing for me to think about. Somewhere in my twenties I basically ditched the contact lenses except for rare occasions and basically became someone who wears glasses all the time. And, even though I think I don't look too different without them, it bugs me to think that people might think otherwise and consider that I look "funny" without glasses.

I also "worry" (term used losely, of course...this is not something that keeps me up at night!) that I might look really bad in the future when looking back at pictures of this era after the look of glasses goes out of style. You know, people from 1982 who dug their glasses that had stickers of their initials on them and frame-arms that made 'em look like they were on upside down probably wish they doffed the lenses for the old pictures.

Part of me says, "Yeah, but this is different...these glasses are way better." (See first half of this post for details.) But the more logical part of me realizes that I'm basically quoting the definition of style: something that looks good now but will someday not when time passes. I think I'm screwed.

posted by Steve @ 3:45 PM