Spectacles stigma

In My Humble Opinion
1

While visiting my kid’s elementary school the other day I overheard one student compliment another on their new eyeglasses. This conversation NEVER would have happened when I attended this very same school 45 years earlier. No, there was genuine stigma surrounding eyeglasses. If you wore eyeglasses that was already one strike against you. Kids, being the cruel creatures they were (and I’m sure still are), even had names for the unfortunate folks who needed visual correction - “four eyes.” I believe that attitude was not an entirely new one either. Norman Rockwell seems to have captured the prevailing opinion over 60 years ago.
http://rockwellprints.org/Optometrist%20Rockwell%20Print.jpg

I even recall seeing a foreign film on the “CBS Children’s Film Festival” about a Japanese kid that was bullied because he wore glasses. Here it is, a 1962 Japanese film. CBS Children's Film Festival - Wikipedia
So this attitude not only spanned generations but also cultures.

When did this stigma surrounding kids wearing glasses diminish/disappear? And more importantly why? Could it be a result of the zero tolerance policy towards bullying that generally prevails at public schools in recent years? Are a greater percentage of kids perhaps wearing glasses now than a couple generations ago?

2

Maybe they’ve become fashionable. It’s quite common for me to mock people in China who wear glasses without lenses. I’m not kidding: big, ugly sets of frames perched on people’s noses (usually girls), but without even a non-graduated lens to complete the fakery.

3

Eyeglasses are, more often than not, improvements on the appearance of the wearer.

Have you ever noticed that the only people who look truly dorky in glasses are the models in the ad posters for opticians?

4

I know! None of them look like they’d wear glasses if they weren’t being paid to do so. I was offered free lasik, and turned it down. I like always wearing eye protection, and can’t count the number of times my glasses have saved my eyes.

5

I got glasses when I was ten. Yep, I got the four-eyes bullying. I actually stopped wearing my glasses in school, until my mother ratted me out to every single teacher who made it a point of making me put my glasses on.

In college I got contacts, but my vision wasn’t as clear/they were expensive/etc. Now I wear glasses and I love them. Technology has come a long way with transition and progressive lenses, and I think the frames have gotten more fashionable.

My daughter has a lazy eye and had to wear glasses AND a patch. To my knowledge no one gave her grief about it.

6

Glasses have become an accessory and fashion statement. So much so, that people with perfectly fine vision are wearing frames with plain glass lenses.

7

It definitely happened in the 21st century. I resisted glasses in the 90s way past when I should’ve.

8

Lately I’ve been seeing and reading so many “the problem with kids today” topics and each time I think "no way, today’s kids are kinder, tolerant and more open-minded than ever.

9

We could always take the ‘glasses are now a fashion accessory’ argument that’s been raised and take it in that direction…

The problem with kids nowadays is they mindlessly allow themselves to be sucked into the whole consumerist culture. Not like the morally superior kids we were back in the day. Why, we were so not under the control of corporate interests that we used to actually MAKE FUN of people who wore glasses. But kids nowadays? No sirree…:wink:

10

I think the current thinking is “I’m so cool, I can wear glasses and get away with it”. Kinda like old-fashioned clothes from the thrift shop. It’s no longer necessary to be in lock-step with narrow fashion conformity.

11

And it’s not just mere glasses, but the particular styles that are popular now were among the dorkiest 15 years ago.

12

Glasses started to become cool in the 60s as the styles changed. John Lennon wore wire rims with round lens. One kid in junior high got some of the early Photo-Gray glasses and became suddenly cool as he was wearing shades whenever he stepped outside. Before that, especially for kids, they were big black monstrosities straight of the nerd handbook. I guess it still took some time before everything shifted. I know there are plenty of guys like me who do (or did) make passes at girls who wear glasses. I’ve heard of strippers who claim to make a fortune when they wear glasses. I used to wear a pair of glasses with flat lenses when meeting new clients or on job interviews because they make me look smart.

Anyway, I doubt the anti-bullying campaign had anything to do with the change, that’s something recent and the trend towards acceptance of glasses has been going on for a long time. It’s more likely tied into the acceptance of academic success that may eventually make doing well in school more acceptable. That may tie in to socio-economic disparity in the past where kids wearing glasses were a sign of higher economic status, not to mention a sign of poor athletic ability which we all know is the greatest measure of a persons contribution to society :rolleyes:

13

Nerd style is in, for one thing. For another, glasses are way cheaper than they used to be. So they aren’t just an upper class, educated “pansy” phenomenon anymore. Minimum-wage-earning parents can afford to buy their kids glasses. Because they’re cheap, they are far more common, too. They’re also the recipients of much-improved technology, so coke-bottle lenses and taped up frames are far less common. All this works against their stigma.

When I got glasses in high school in 1997, I didn’t get a whole lot of “four-eyes” comments, but because I got black plastic frames when they weren’t that popular, I got “Buddy Holly” and “Drew Carey” comments all the time. Then a few years later, “Harry Potter”. But it was all pretty lighthearted.

14

I was briefly excited about getting glasses at first when I was twelve or so because they were a bit of a cool fashion accessory. Nobody made fun of me for my glasses back then, they found other things to be mean about.

When I got older, I got contacts, then laser surgery. I loved not having to wear glasses. Now I’m at the age of needing them again for reading. Not much to make fun of there - just about everyone in my age range needs them.

15

Salma Hayek in Dogma…

16

I started wearing glasses in sixth grade around 1963. No one ever made any derogatory comments about them. I can’t think of anyone actually commenting on them at all.

Our school didn’t tolerate bullying. If you say anything nasty to anyone in gym class, the coach would be telling you to cut it out. I’m sure it occurred, but the sort of ugliness everyone says happens in their schools as a routine matter was extraordinary and quickly stopped by the teachers.

17

Empowerment has something to do with it. Years ago, there were few choices in frames, and even fewer for kids. Parents picked out their kids frames from the five or six types offered, and it was usually the cheapest, unless the parents were wealthy, and then they picked out something less obvious.

Now there are all kinds to choose from, and kids are encouraged to choose their own frames.

The switchover was happening in the 1970s for glasses.

Hearing aids are finally following. Kids are allowed to pick glitter or other decoration for the ear mold, and a color for the behind the ear part, and there are rings and other things they can decorate the aids with. Instead of trying to hide them, they are now accessorized, and personalized. FWIW, the same thing goes for wheelchairs and other kinds of devices kids need.

Personalized is empowering. It just is. Allowing kids to use whatever they have as a means of self-expression, whether it’s their eyeglasses, the headcover they use when they lose their hair from chemo, or the color of the pads on their orthotics, or the color of their temporary arm cast when they fracture their radius, makes all those things more easily accepted, and cooler to the other kids.

FWIW, when I was in the first grade, there was a kid who needed glasses, and was ashamed of getting them. So his parents called all the parents of the kids in his class and said please don’t make fun of him. I told my mother I would never consider making fun of a kid for getting glasses. And I never had. The most popular girl in class had just gotten glasses, and so had my best friend. I hadn’t said anything, except to ask my friend if I could try on her glasses (you know how kids are). It was first grade. Lots of kids were getting glasses for the first time.

However, this kid, when he put on his glasses for the first time, was met with giggles. And it wasn’t “Rob looks funny in glasses,” it was “I can’t believe Rob’s parents called everyone up.” I mean, what was funny was how embarrassed he was, when most people thought glasses weren’t a big thing. Some of the loudest gigglers were kids with glasses.

I don’t think he ever wore them again, which was kind of sad.

I will say, they were kind of stupid-looking glasses, which years later made me think that while most kids picked out their own frames, Rob had probably refused to, so his mother picked them out, and picked the ones that were sturdy, not “cool.”

18

When I was in the army back in the late 80s, the bulky black plastic framed glasses the government issued were called “birth control glasses”. Now those same frames are worn by popular attractive people all the time.
Fashion marches forward.

19

This applies to me as well. I got my first pair at age 12 between 6th and 7th grade in 1961. I can’t recall ever hearing anything about them and I was the very epitome of smart kid poor athlete. If I didn’t get teased in middle school, it’s hard for me to think anyone at my school did.

20

It’s also not considered a disgrace to have a child with a “disability”, as if wearing glasses was one. My guess is that back in the day, people just didn’t wear them unless they were totally disabled without one.

Braces on a child’s teeth aren’t considered shameful, either. And that’s all I’m going to say about this.