Eye Wear has Come a Long Way
It's Free to Look
“Boys don’t make passes to girls who wear glasses!” That was the mantra that my mom used to tell me the boys would spout out when she would hang out with her friends. Well, in 1950, it is likely that those glasses did nothing for the face of the girl who was wearing them, and the boys were not able to look past them.
When I joined the Marines, recruits, men and women both, wore what I can only define as “Clark Kent glasses”. They changed the style recently to these 1970’s tortoise-shell glasses. I would have preferred the old black frames though! The new glasses have been named BCG’s, or more fondly, birth control glasses. These were not attractive on anyone!
Now I wear glasses. It took 40 years but I strained and misaligned my eyes so badly that I literally can’t see straight, and my vision is so bad I cannot make out my hand when it is 12 inches from my nose! It’s a good thing that glasses don’t all come in 1970’s model tortoise-shell!
I hear nothing but good things about glasses, here in the new years, decades, century, and millennium. It seems that glasses are more a statement of individuality than necessity. Girls and guys who don’t need to wear them will don them to look more intelligent, or interesting. Sir Elton John is famous for his over the top specs, and Elvis, the “King of Rock and Roll” even had his huge old glasses that everyone just has to have when they visit Graceland every year. There is nothing like looking like the ‘king’.
Glasses are a definition of the personality of every individual. Actresses and actors will put on a pair of sunglasses to shade themselves from identification. The ‘Terminator’ made those black standard frame sunglasses popular, too! Aviator sunglasses were all the rage during Tom Cruise’s adventures in “Top Gun”. We just love our eye jewelry now.
I wish I did not have to wear glasses because I’d love to go to the store and buy all the sunglasses that I could afford! They are in so many styles that I would venture to say there may be millions of choices for eye protection eyewear. But, alas! I am destined to wear eyeglasses. Yes, there are contact lenses but I’m a hurry up and go type of person, and it just takes an incredible amount of time to get those things into my eyes. I’ll stick to the glasses, thank you very much!
My mom wore glasses, my dad wore glasses, my brothers needed eyewear long before I ever considered it, and when I was in middle school, I actually WANTED to wear eye glasses so I pretended I needed them to get a stage pair my brother had for some reason. I wanted to be different, to be unique, and kids in the 1970’s who wore glasses were different.
Now I look around and great numbers of children are wearing eye glasses. You need glasses to see, to read, to drive, to protect your eyes from flying debris, and from the sunshine itself. There is no escape from some form of eyewear. Just make sure you don’t end up looking like a bug, or “Harry Potter”! Unless, of course you’re into that kind of thing!