Glasses: Go Big

As I've said before, my feeling with basically all accessories is go big or go home (my junior high P.E. teacher used to yell that at us when we played football, and I never really got it, but I can totally get behind the sentiment when it comes to fashion).

With prescription eyeglasses especially though, I mean, when you have a fairly large glass and plastic contraption balancing across your nose and over your eyes and wrapping around behind your ears, is there really any point to playing it down? I tend to think that sensible glasses (see example below) are like Pamela Anderson trying to dress modestly, like John Galliano designing conservative skirt suits, like Jamaica invading America: a futile endeavor indeed.


It was with this attitude that I escorted my dear friend Rachel to Lenscrafters recently to help her pick a perfect pair of glasses. Luckily, Rachel is a stylish artiste who didn't need a lecture from me about making a statement with your eyewear (unlike my boyfriend, who tried to buy a pair of rimless silver boooorrring before I forced him to try on a more substantial black-rimmed pair and he got a crush on himself in the mirror), and we found a plastic-rimmed pair that look great on her.

In the course of this great glasses search, however, I spotted some giant, gaudy, mega-nerdy frames and decided to try them on for the same reason I try on velour jumpsuits and pimp-caliber fur coats whenever I go to Goodwill: I get a lame thrill from looking like an ass.


So I put these babies on, which kind of resemble the glasses my dad wore in 1976, and walked over to Rachel to commence the "ha ha ha don't I look bad?" proceedings, but she didn't really laugh, and instead said, "You know, those are kinda working on you." I looked in the mirror and she was right. Somehow these definitely-not-cool-on-a-hippie-in-1976 glasses (no offense dad) were a rocking fashion statement on me in 2007.

And now, true to fashion-obsessed form, I've been thinking about these glasses, dreaming about these glasses, nonstop in the weeks since I tearfully left them at the store, cursing the vision insurance that only funds a pair of extravagantly expensive designer glasses every two years (damn right there's a health insurance crisis in this country!). A couple days ago I was even considering applying to Lenscrafters, working there for however many years it would take to acquire a store discount and enough money to afford my D&G frames, then buy them and quit, yelling, "Suckas!" to my oblivious boss and coworkers as I gallop out the door and into my new life (thank god the thought of real work deterred me before I put that painfully flawed plan into action). Seriously, not a day goes by that I don't yearn for these glasses. Maybe that means I should get a hobby, or maybe that means I should write the next paragraph addressing the glasses as if they were a person:

My dear D&G frames, I want you to know I will wait for you. Since we've met I've forsaken my usual reading glasses, opting to squint instead of marring my face with anything but your almost comically ugly presence. Someday, when my insurance understands, even if the world never understands, you shall be mine.