Not Wearing Contacts

It’s not a very political or significant thing, but I’m doing my best to embrace my glasses, in a world of fake-hipster-frames and contact lenses and where “four eyes” still hurts.

(source: laragrey12 @ tumblr)

It’s not entirely by  choice. I wore contacts full-time during eleventh and twelfth grade, and into my first year of university. The problem is, I over-wore them, trying so hard to have a beautiful face unmarred by glasses, convinced after years of being called “four eyes” that I could blend in and attain the perfect look and everything would be fine.

It wasn’t, of course. I still had teenager problems and I still had beauty insecurities. But I wore my contacts too hard, until I had to stop during first year because my eyes became too sensitive. I rebelled by getting a beautiful pair of frames, bright red.  For almost two years I was “the girl with the red glasses”: it became part of my identity, like being Canadian or tall or queer or into philosophy. They were amazing, great, funky glasses. And one day they broke, snapped, right by one of the arm hinges.

(dorolimited @ flickr)

I went back to some black frames, which I do, I really do love. In a way, the red glasses had erased my identity outside of the red frames. And although I sometimes wonder if I could gain a glow of beauty with contacts, I love wearing my glasses. My eyes are probably still too sensitive for contacts, but I don’t think I’d wear them regularly anyways.

Glasses still have such a stigma, especially for women, despite the faux ones being trendy. Very very few brides wear their frames on their wedding day,  even if they’ve only gone a handful of days in their lives without glasses. So it does give me hope when I see people like Keiko Lynn embrace frames and wear them unabashedly the majority of the time.
I’m not hating on contacts, just saying that embracing and loving your glasses is always an option.

Currently on repeat: Beyonce – Countdown