I was the first child in my class at secondary school to get glasses. You can imagine the heartbreak. One day I was perfectly normal, the next I was heading home from the opticians with a pair of brown NHS spectacles. They looked cheap, they had nasty oblong-ish frames and, at the time, they screamed 'speccyfour-eyedsaddo'. My life was over, or so I thought. But thankfully I discovered that I only needed my glasses for long distance viewing, so I could restrict their use to watching television at home in glorious privacy. At school I learnt to sit right at the front of the classroom, close enough to be able to read the semi-blurry words on the blackboard, just to keep my unfashionable disability a secret. Sitting in the front row might have looked keen and geeky to my classmates, but that was infinitely better than me sticking my glasses on and proving it. Wearing plastic rectangular glasses was inherently uncool back then, and always has been.
Until recently. What the hell is going on in facial fashion? Suddenly everyone who's anyone is sporting rectangular glasses, the more widescreen the better. No curved lenses, oh no, just ultra-chic right angles - they're so very now. Maybe it's a London thing - you can't look anywhere on the tube without yet another hip young nerd sneering back knowingly through a pair of glassy oblongs. And did you see the media-type blokes at the Baftas last night? Acres of black-rimmed frames where last year there had been nothing but unshielded myopia. It's as if every 'speccy four-eyes' in the capital has upgraded their face furniture in a quest to wear the very latest style. Opticians must be rubbing their hands with glee.
It no longer matters what shape your face is, rectangles are 'in'. Maybe sir would like this frameless style, two thin glass tiles floating mid-face with no visible means of support. Or perhaps these supposedly stylish half-rimmed glasses, somewhat reminiscent of Gary Larson's Far Side matrons. Or maybe the ultimate in current rectangular style, the extra-long extra-narrow wrap-arounds with thick chunky plastic sidearms. It's as if people are trying make their spectacles more, rather than less obvious, especially if this means passers-by can distinguish the designer label more easily. Hell, we even have to call them 'eyewear' these days, just to provide the appropriate level of elite desirability.
Maybe this is a seismic irreversible shift in ocular fashion. Circular Buggles-style specs will never return. Oval lenses will forever signal 'out-of-date loser'. Viewing the world through thin glass slits is now the only sociably acceptable spectacle option. Me, I'm torn between finding these ubiquitous chunky oblongs both unfeasibly laughable and irrationally attractive. Maybe I should ditch my contact lenses and place my disability back on public display again, à la mode. But I really wish that rectangular geek chic had first come into fashion 30 years ago, because maybe then I could have sat at the back of the classroom with the 'in' crowd. The rest of you, you're only just catching up.
You've Been Framed
