Dreaming of a Day Without Glasses

I've had to wear prescription eyeglasses since I was about seven or eight years old -- third grade, for Americans. I was first diagnosed as having problems with far-sighted vision, but it soon settled into full-on astigmatism. Basically, my whole world is blurry. It doesn't seem horrifically bad when I don't wear my glasses -- I'm not bumping into walls or talking to lamp posts like they're people -- but the prescription is an especially tricky one. So much so that I cannot wear contact lenses.

Always with the glasses, hmph.

And this truly grieves me. I've tried ever since high school, every few years, just in case the technology catches up with my eyeballs, but the lenses, either hard or soft, don't fit right & do not correct my vision enough so that the difference between wearing contact lenses & not wearing glasses is significant. It's not a comfort issue -- I find contacts perfectly comfortable. It's quite literally an issue of my vision prescription not working in any modern contact lens to the point where the lens will adequately correct my vision.

But I'm trying again right now. I have a sympathetic optometrist, who is going through the three brands of lenses on the market that can be made with my prescription, & she is trying to see if they will fit & actually work. So far, we've got a semi-decent result on the left eye, but the right eye is terrible. One last option is on order.

Throughout my life, I've been pretty resistant to popular norms of beauty. I'm quite satisfied with my short, chubby body, & I've only once attempted to change it, with results that backfired in the long run. I'm happy being pleasantly curvy. I know how to dress myself to my best advantage. I feel like my good appearance is one of my assets in life, maybe not my top one, but it's never a detriment. I've always been able to attract plenty of romantic partners & have been married to a devoted person for 12 years now. Intrinsically, I know I'm a beautiful, sexy, attractive woman when it comes to my looks. I don't feel any need to compete with the fashion-magazine cliches of what's "supposed" to be beautiful.

Except when it comes to my glasses. That always feels like the one thing holding me back. Nobody wears glasses anymore! Take a look around any public place, browse through fashion mags & blogs, even the alternative or gothic ones -- the best-dressed people, the trendy gals, the cool kids, really just anyone under 50, the majority of people Do.Not.Wear.Glasses most of the time.

Sure, there's the occasional hipster wearing fake black plastic frames (although trend-spotters say that fad is so over -- & let me tell you, having worn those exact glasses back in grade school, there's nothing hip about them).  Sometimes celebs sport "geek chick" fake glasses to give themselves cred. But the fact that these trendy glasses are always framed (hah) in terms such as "Poindexter look" & "uber-nerd" simply reinforces the ugly factor associated with glasses.  Hey, for decades, the standard-issue glasses in the U.S. Army were jokingly called "birth control" because they were so ugly. But it's not just that old plastic frame; it's that nobody really likes wearing glasses. They're unsexy & uncool.

The few folks wearing glasses without irony in public tend to be senior citizens or a random person "dressing down" while quickly running an errand. While almost half of the U.S. population uses corrective eyewear at some point in their lives, they sure don't appear to wear them on a regular basis. People with vision problems wear contact lenses when they want to look genuinely good. Because they can. I don't blame them.

I'm old enough to have grown up when "nerd" & "geek" were 100% negatives. Nobody wore an "I love dorks" T-shirt when I was in high school in the mid 1980s. Kids who wore glasses then were looked down on, called names like "four-eyed freak" (in addition to "nerd," "geek," & "dork") & generally shunned.

Dressed for a party, but still, glasses.

Even now, when geeks are supposedly cool, the stereotypes live on hard & fast. Pretty girls don't wear glasses. Nerdy girls wear glasses, "sexy librarian" types wear glasses, smart girls wear glasses. For example, there are countless rumors that Sarah Palin wears fake glasses to make herself look smarter.

When was the last time you saw a sexy Hollywood starlet wearing glasses on the red carpet? Name five recent non-nerdy female characters on TV shows who wear glasses & get laid regularly. Show me five magazine ad campaigns featuring women under age 50 wearing glasses -- & the products must be for things that are cool, sexy, or fun, not baby food, cleaning products, or mutual funds. Yeah, guys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses in mass media.

My current quest for contact lenses is far reduced from my lifelong frustration with the stereotypes. I understand that the available lenses won't give me enough visual acuity that I could go to the office or even go shopping. 20/20 vision with contacts is beyond my dreams, unfortunately.

What I'm hoping for right now is contact lenses that allow me to see well enough to recognize faces & read large signs -- & then I could at least wear contacts with historical costumes. Because few things annoy me more than non-period glasses (& women, before the 19th century, would avoid wearing glasses in public; firstly because only very wealthy women could afford them, & secondly because they'd only use them for reading or sewing, which were done at home).

Of course, I'd love to be able to go out for cocktails wearing a fancy dress & not need glasses. To finally be able to drop the sexy-librarian pose & just be sexy for a change. Just be pretty. *sigh*

Related links:

• Girls Who Wear Glasses: A Tribute -- Jezebel looks at a few modern icons such as the ever-nerdy Daria, Lisa Leob, and Rachel Maddow.
• Fetish Friday: Our Favorite Women Who Wear Glasses -- ComplexGirls manages to find (what I think are one-time) pix of starlets & even a pornstar wearing glasses, along with the obligatory Tina Fey & someone who played Velma in a Scooby-Doo movie.
• Celebrity Spectacles: The Hottest Lenses in Hollywood -- Zimbio has some repeats & some men (who always get away with things women can't, hello patriarchy), plus relies on 'celeb wore glasses once!' type photos.
• Celebs Who Wear Glasses -- Celebuzz has even more repeats & men, but the fresh pix are notable because the women are all clearly running errands, traveling, or carrying their children. An exception that's not an exception to the stereotype is Katy Perry going for a retro sexy librarian look.
• Celebrities in Glasses -- Tres Sugar's descriptions reinforce every stereotype by nailing most of the women with terms like "geek chic," "nerd," "librarian,"  & even "schoolgirl."