A mishap this weekend with an errant contact lens that was infused with tree debris for a full afternoon left me in glasses today. I wear my glasses maybe a half dozen times a year, making me preoccupied with them the entire day. I could feel them perched on my nose and was bothered by my lack of peripheral vision. Chiefly though, I felt like a dork.
Today I wasn’t just a young lady, I was a young lady in glasses. She’s an entirely different species. She’s asserting her acumen, her identity as a brainy being. Spectacles confer intelligence, a stereotype that is not without both anecdotal and scientific evidence. Some studies have found a direct correlation between myopia and IQ, perhaps because the gene that determines brain size also determines eyeball size. When I started wearing glasses at age 12, I thought of it as my final merit badge for Geekery. My brother told me that I ruined my eyes by reading for hours on end, and I believed him. I felt like a martyr to obsessive literacy.
According to a rigorously scientific poll on Misterpool.com, 95% of respondents say “Yes, women with glasses are sexy”. I think what they mean is sexy woman are still sexy in glasses, in a different but not entirely unrelated way to their usual sexiness. A few men do fetishize the spectacled female. Witness Girls with Glasses, a website featuring pictures of cute women modeling glasses that was born from its creator’s obsession with Lisa Loeb, whose persona would be dust without her trademark retro frames. Reportedly, she’s allergic to contacts.
Thanks in part to Lisa Loeb, eyeglass frames are uber-stylish these days, but teenaged Meredith could never find frames that flattered a pasty, pimpled complexion. I slapped in contact lenses the moment my optometrist suggested them. As Dorothy Parker said, “Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses.” There’s vanity involved, but also security. In lenses, my vision is suctioned to my corneas; glasses can shatter at any second.
The most chilling episode of the Twilight Zone is about Mr. Henry Bemis, a spectacled bookworm who can never find enough time to read. Henry sneaks down to the vault at the bank where he works to read, and survives at atomic blast that wipes out everyone in town. Looking on the bright side, he rejoices that finally, he can read in peace, all day long, for the rest of his life! Then he breaks his goddamn glasses. It’s a moment that TV guide ranks as #25 of TV Guide’s 100 Most Memorable Moments, and a moment that preys on the phobias of four-eyes everywhere.
From www.coolopticalillusions.com
