by Garrison Frost

For years I thought I looked better without my glasses. My face looked better. My hair looked better. Even my clothes looked better. It was only after some time that I realized that this perception had more to do with my eyesight than my glasses. The truth was that I had no idea what I looked like without glasses because when I took them off and looked in the mirror all I was seeing was a slightly blurry version of myself. It was only when I put on my glasses that I could see well enough to realize that my hair was a mess, that I needed a shave, that my shirt had a spot on it.

And so I became familiar with one of the strange side effects of have poor vision, that is, not really knowing what you look like when you're not wearing glasses. Sure, you think you know what you look like, but you really don't. Logic says that you exactly the same with your glasses as you do without them — the only difference being the glasses themselves — but your head tells you something different.

You like your slightly blurry self. You like your wrinkle- and blemish-free complexion. You like your clothes. It's as though you're in one of those movies from the 1950s that only showed the lead characters in soft focus. And although you don't really think it through, you're convinced that when you put your glasses on, your complexion goes bad, your hair becomes a mess and your clothes need to go to the cleaners. Because that's just your perception; you fall into the trap of believing that everyone else's perception is the same. The reality is that your hair looks just as shitty to everyone whether you're wearing your glasses or not. This is why people who wear glasses are constantly stowing them away and going blind in situations where they really need them. It's not that they think their glasses look bad. It's the belief that when they put on the glasses, some head-to-toe negative transformation takes place.

Of course, this has all changed somewhat in today's age of contact lenses and laser eye surgery. Now you can see what you look like without glasses pretty easily. And while it's exciting to finally see yourself without glasses, it's also a bit disappointing. I finally got a look at myself without glasses about a year and a half ago when I got contact lenses for the first time. Before that, I hadn't seen what I actually look like without glasses since the third grade, when my eyes started to go bad. At first the experience was exciting. Convinced for so long that I actually looked worse with my glasses on, I thought I looked great wearing my new contacts. It was only when the contacts began to irritate my eyes, and I spent a day in my old glasses that I realized that I looked the same. The only difference was the glasses themselves. Nothing about the rest of me was any different.

One might think that this would be a big deal, a huge deflating revelation, but actually in the long run the opposite was true. For the first time, I was actually able to separate myself from my glasses, which gave me a startling new perspective of, of all things, my glasses. For all those years I had been linking my entire self-image to my glasses and blaming them for my poor appearance. Only now was I able to actually judge my glasses for themselves. And I liked what I saw.

My glasses were kind of cool. Black. Simple. Heavy. Utilitarian in a stylish kind of way. Hell, I started wearing them more, and enjoying the way I looked in them. This was totally different than my perception of my contact lenses, which were a huge pain to put on and occasionally rebelled against me. On occasion the irritation was so bad I had to run to the bathroom, yank them out, and seek relief from, you guessed it, my glasses.

If only I'd been born with perfect vision, I could have avoided all this. But, alas, when your eyes are 20-something-not-20, you're unavoidably in for a little drama.

(April 19, 2003)

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