Spectacle

          Two posts in one day! I'm on a roll.

          So ...

          I feel like these need to be a part of my life.
          I don't know. I've always had a fascination with glasses. This stems even from before I got mine in third grade. It probably has something to do with the fact that both my parents wear glasses. It was never a source of social shame.
          I never experienced those horror stories that seemed to have plagued others ("Four eyes!" and the like). When I came to school the day after getting my first pair of frames (tortoise shelled monstrosities), I was just happy to be able to see the board with ease.

          A friend of mine tells me he made his mother cry when he got his glasses. On the way home from the optometrist, with his newly spectacled, four-year-old eyes, he looked out the car window and said, in tones of wonder, "Mom! There are leaves on the trees!" He assumes that he meant leaves, as opposed to undefined green blobs.

          I don't know how much of this is tied in with my own need for assistive optical apparatus, but I find glasses ridiculously attractive. Not in every case - but I find that an attractive person who regularly wears contacts, or who only needs reading glasses, oftentimes becomes infinitely more attractive when you add in prescription frames.
          Maybe it's the old scholastic stereotype - smart people wear glasses. Maybe it's simple narcissism coming out (appreciating glasses on another based on appreciation for one's own glasses). And there again, it might be something actually complex, like glasses symbolically and semi-subconsciously indicating a self-confidence and general indifference to what the rest of the world thinks. A sort of, yeah I could wear contacts or get laser surgery, but I'm going to wear glasses even if they're stereotypically dorky, so fuck that noise.
          Or I could just be reading into all of this too much. The upshot of this is that glasses are sexy.
          It doesn't make sense. Biologically, speaking from an evolutionary standpoint, I should find 20-20 vision attractive, seeing as I have 20-800 vision (I can see at twenty feet what normal people can see at eight-hundred feet). However, it remains that I have this irrational ... well, I won't call if a preference, because I don't prefer the visually impaired over those with total visual acuity.
          One friend of mine has a weakness for thin, musician's hands. Another is wildly attracted to redheads. I guess a predilection for glasses is weirder than those, but it's in the same vein.

          Or not.


          Anyway. So, those frames. Kitschy, retro, completely absurd. Basically, perfect.