Esther McCarthy: Why Irish women over 40 are wearing mega frame glasses
Irish Examiner columnist Esther McCarthy, modelling her new glasses, earlier this week.
It starts with a suppressed snigger. The usual bedlam of a Tuesday morning pauses as I bustle over to the breakfast table. My eldest looks up, lips twitching.
“Good morning, Edna,” he says, all innocence and porridge.
The other two stop fighting over the good spoon and have a look.
“Who’s Edna?” asks my sweet little nine-year-old.
“You know the little suit maker one from The Incredibles, Edna Mode,” says Smartypants.
“Oh yeah. How’s Scooby these days, Velma?” asks the middle fella, catching on.
“I can’t find my other ones, ok?” I say.
I have my new spare glasses on, and they are minisculely larger than my usual black frames. Or so I thought. I look at my husband.
I don’t think he’d have noticed if I was wearing Elton John’s specs and toupee.
But now the kids have clocked it, here is the perfect opportunity for a couple of easy brownie points.
I am thinking along the lines of a Breakfast at Tiffany’s era Audrey Hepburn, or modern day Demi Moore.
I raise my eyebrows expectantly, but no one can see them because of the frames.
I’ve never liked wearing glasses, but contact lens were out of the question, I have a thing about eyeballs.
I started needing help in the eye department when I was about 20, I realised I couldn’t see the board in college lectures. When I was younger, I’d read and read, and I remember my mam warning me I’d wear my eyes out.
And so it came to pass, ironically during a degree where I was supposed to be reading vast amounts of material, but I was more interested in eyeing up the talent on campus.
So it was either sit down the front and look like a nerdlinger, or get glasses, stay in the back row, and pretend it was all a deliberate nod to geek chic.
I hated wearing my glasses out socialising, I felt so self-conscious I’d usually take them off after a pint or two, when 20/20 vision didn’t seem all that important any more.
I lost so many pairs of glasses that first year, the staff in Specsavers started shouting Norm! every time I’d slink in.
But we didn’t have any good role models for glasses growing up. On American TV shows and movies, every nerdy Poindexter sidekick wore thick frames, that were usually accompanied by train track braces.
The look was a shortcut to let the audience know they were prissy, no fun, head of the chess club, and spent their spare time getting shoved in lockers, and not getting kissed. No smoochies for the four eyes.
Unless they were a secretary, then they may have a chance of their boss looking past the terribly unattractive corrective eye goggles, pulling their bobby pins out, and, as a cascade of curls tumble down her neck, he’d swipe the specs off and say, “But Ms Jenkins, you’re beautiful!” and then they’d kiss in a mushy, mealy-mouthed, side-to-side kind of fashion, their eyes screwed shut.
It took me years before I could perch my glasses on my nose with out gazing into the middle distance, pointing at my brain and intoning: “The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.”
It’s a quote from season five of The Simpsons, when Homer finds Henry Kissinger’s glasses floating in a toilet.
(To anyone who’s muttered, ‘That’s a RIGHT angle triangle, you idiot!” let’s go for a drink some time. You’re my kind of people.)
But now, there’s an undeniable trend of big glasses in a certain age group. Glasses are finally cool, I only had to age 20 odd years. Women over 40 are owning their myopia, but they’re saying we can be short-sighted and stylish, focus on my frames, not my failing sight!
And in doing so, they are giving the middle figure to those old tired stereotypes. In fact, I have one friend who recently got herself a present of glasses with big beautiful frames and glass with no prescription because she always wanted them, and she thinks they make her face more interesting. And she’s right.
So it’s out with the delicate thin invisa-styles and in with the mega-frames.
The next morning, I’m ready for the breakfast bants. “Over 40 doesn’t mean frumpy,” I tell my unbespectacled family.
“You may have the perfect eye-sight, boys, but I am the visionary! I’m not just wearing glasses, I’m wearing fashion, and history, and a whole lot of attitude!” I stop short of snapping my fingers.
“Can we just have our lunches now, Edna?” they say, unimpressed. Well, they’re the short-sighted ones. Because my glasses are bold and brave, and I’m going to embrace my new look.
But on the other hand, if anyone hears of laser eye surgery that doesn’t let you smell your eyeball burning, do let me know.
