Telling you that you’d look better is rude. I wouldn’t do that, anymore than I’d tell someone to lose weight.
But people try to give each other helpful advice and I don’t see the big deal about this one.
I wouldn’t push surgery on anyone, but I’d be more than happy to tell someone about how my vision was something like 20/500 and I grew up wearing coke-bottle glasses and then eventually suffering with hard contact lenses and then finally being able to get soft lenses but my eyes were so dry & red that people constantly asked me if I had been drinking or smoking pot “Ha, ha, ha!” I’d tell them how it was my life-long dream to become a military pilot but the military wouldn’t think of training someone with my vision. I’d gladly tell them the day, and the day after I got eye surgery were the happiest days of my life. The doctor didn’t promise me much beyond “significant improvement” but what I got was 20/20 vision.
It’s real hard to do but I’ve finally learned to just pretend I don’t even hear such advice when it is kept up. Once is enough.
However, I was also guilty of this a long time ago. There was a particular dentist in town that I though was a real self-absorbed jerk based on some conversations I’d had and also overheard at parties.
A woman friend mentioned that was going to the dentist the next day and he was the dentist. I immediately launched into my version of what was wrong with this guy but after a while I noticed that she wasn’t really listening and she finally said some to the effect that X was over there and she wanted to see her before she had to leave.
It came to me like an epiphany that she really didn’t give a damn what I thought of her choice in dentists. He suited her and that’s all that was all she needed.
I’ve tried my best to never do that again and I think I have succeeded reasonably well.
That’s a terrible analogy. First, how many children one should have is a subjective judgment, whereas vision is objectively good or bad. Second, a person’s reproductive capabilities are a more private matter than their visual capabilities. Third, “you should get sterilized” implies “you should remove yourself from the gene pool,” which implies “you’re a bad person”; I see no similar implication in recommending LASIK.
Of course I wouldn’t say anything to you if you recommended a brand of peanut butter, because my choice of peanut butter isn’t a big deal.
I put eyesight in the same category as weight, at least as far as public discussion about it goes. You wouldn’t go up to some morbidly obese person and “recommend” gastric surgery, would you? Of course not. It’s considered beyond rude. So why would you go up to someone wearing glasses and “recommend” LASIK? Maybe there are valid medical reasons for the person not to have it. Maybe the person just doesn’t want to have it.
Recommending someone have surgery is quite another.
I’m sorry you fail to perceive the difference. Do you go up to people with big noses and recommend a rhinoplasty? Do you go up to women with flat chests and recommend breast augmentation? You DO realize that LASIK is surgery, yes? It’s an elective procedure done primarially for cosmetic reasons. Do you think it’s OK to go up to a middle-aged woman with wrinkles and recommned a facelift?
Actually, I don’t mind the occassional “have you considered LASIK?” if, when I answer “It’s not for me.” the subject is dropped. It’s the persistant pushing of this procedure that pisses me off. Not to mention the folks who, when I say “Not for me.” then proceed to ask me for a medical history and specific reasons why not. None of their fucking business! Which is, more or less, what I tell them.
This is my typical response. I’d never really thought about it, but it’s true that a great number of people do suggest laser eye surgery when they find out that I wear contacts/am severely myopic. I have no idea if I’d be an ideal candidate (everyone I know who’s had it started out with a much weaker prescription than I have), as I can’t afford the surgery anyway.
Anyway, it usually shuts them up. I guess people are okay with telling you to get surgical procedures, but talking about money is gauche.
What, you were never a teenager? I don’t know about you, but Four-Eyes was a common insult back in the day. The only justification for pushing LASIK is some weird problem with people with glasses. Think about it. The only concievable way that the topic could come up is if they knew that that person had a problem with their sight, and the only obvious external sign of that is glasses.
rkts is apparently now the authority on what other people can find insulting. Weight, yes. Eyesight, no.
We get it because our son is Korean and our daughter biological. I take all queries into adoption assuming people don’t mean to be rude and are interested for a reason. But I do start with “why do you ask?” (The more polite form of "why would you ask such a personal question). Often folks start with why they are asking “we are thinking about adopting and…” But then there are people who INSIST that you ALWAYS have a biological kid after adopting (“oh, it always works that way?”) And a lot of people DO get insulted when even the basic questions are asked (“Where is he from?” is amazingly insulting to some people.)
I wouldn’t have any idea if glasses are inconvenient and annoying. Since I’ve been wearing them since I was 5 years old, putting them on is akin to brushing my teeth – something I just do. There’s no qualitative judgment made except that with glasses, I can see. Without them, I grope blindly. But all that has nothing to do with the fact (a) it’s none of your damn business and (b) it’s none of your damn business!
Not to mention the fact that there are DEFINITELY other considerations besides the cosmetic for getting LASIK. Just one example: At my age, I’d probably end up like my husband post-LASIK, having to switch glasses even more than I do now, since past a certain age LASIK isn’t going to change the fact that your eyes just can’t adapt to multiple distances as easily as they can when you’re young. So I’d still end up with, at minimum, reading glasses, and probably distance glasses as well. And then I’d have to take my glasses completely off for middle distances, meaning I’d be constantly losing them. The way it is now, they’re either on my face or sitting in front of my computer, nowhere else. Ever.
Also, as it is without LASIK, I can read just fine with OR without glasses; if I got LASIK, I would end up with, at best, middle distance vision and require glasses to read. So why would I want to actually lose one of my current two options for partaking of my favorite pastime?
Everyone has their own reasons to want/not want LASIK. And they frequently go WELL beyond cosmetic. But nevertheless, I return to my original thesis: It’s none of your damn business!
Had you read the other posts in this thread, rkts, you would realize that my analogy is not a terrible analogy. Perhaps a lobotomy (that’s surgery too, by the way) would help you understand that. {No, I’m not recommending it–it’s yet another analogy.}
Isn’t it possible that people are just trying to be helpful? Glasses and contacts are annoying and inconvenient for the wearer.