Wearing them or being one?

[oursin]

Have been given to think this week about that time-worn trope embodied in Ms Parker's apothegm that
Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses
having been reading some collected film reviews of C A Lejeune* including one in which she takes a hearty codfish to
[P]lain girl [blossoms] into a tearing beauty by the simple device of taking off

Comments

[ankaret]

I've forgotten who it was who pointed out that through all those innumerable Quidditch matches and associated Slytherin attempts at match-fixing, no one ever thinks of knocking Harry's glasses off, and Harry is never discomposed by his glasses getting rained or steamed up, even in the presence of chest monsters. I suppose the proximate causes could be (a) anti-glare hexes and (b) Draco Malfoy's inability to plot himself out of a wet paper bag, but I'm sure the ultimate cause is that JKR has never tried to play any kind of sport in the rain in glasses.

I think we are supposed to believe that people in films get contact lenses, though they never manifest any of the red-eye or 'Bugger, I came out without my saline solution' or other troubles of lens-wearing. My favourite transformation of that kind is in The Princess Diaries, where the heroine gets her hair straightened and it stays that way permanently, not even frizzing up when she spends a night by a lake with an amorous cousin in the sequel.

[oursin]

I suppose it was just possible for a character in a 1943 movie to be switching to contact lenses, though I think at that date they may have been those huge ones that covered the entire eyeball.

[tree_and_leaf]

Actually, in one of the early books, there is a Quidditch match where Harry can't see anything through his glasses, until Hermione teaches him a spell to keep them clear. I can't remember which book it is, though.

[ankaret]

Thanks! It's a while since I've re-read the early ones.

[moon_custafer]

I was going to say that I've started doing that in bars and my gym when I don't want to get distracted by all the ^%*$! tvs on every sightline.

[oursin]

Personal point of fact here: it was soon after I had my long hair (which tended to hide my face) cut short early in 1981 that I started moving back to wearing glasses rather than contacts. While the string of eye infections I had been getting (archive dust + contacts not a good mix) I do rather suspect there were issues of hiding/masking involved as well.

[moon_custafer]

Heh - I grew my hair long after I went back to glasses; one of my shallower reasons being: mid-length bob + glasses makes me look like Velma on Scooby-Doo, whereas long hair + glasses makes me look like the Book Store manager in The Big Sleep who is only in one scene, but is possibly sexier than Bacall's character... ;P
Incidentally, do you think the sexy-librarian fetish is based on the possibility that she might take off her glasses and let down her hair, and the tension is more exciting than the actual sight of her doing so?

[oursin]

I think the prim-buttoned-up concealing raging fires element must be a large part of it.

[jonquil]

This week on Torchwood, Owen, the lizardy rapist creep, is turned into a milquetoast by alien action. How can we tell? He now wears the character's previously-established reading glasses all the time. (That's got to be uncomfortable, by the way, speaking as a person who needs reading glasses.)

Furthermore, the previously sexually unfulfilled Toshiko is getting lots. How can we tell? She's wearing a sweater unbuttoned down to her (remarkably pretty) cleavage.

Ah, coding, how do I love thee.

[londonkds]

I must admit, I read Adam as partly a satire on Adam as ultimate fanficcer, and the frequency with which such cliches turn up in fanfic.

[smellingbottle]

[T]hat untidiness which is dearer than any order, since it shows an infatuated interest in the universe which cannot spare one second for the mere mechanics of existence.

This was the motto of a large part of my teens and twenties. I still hold to it, within the bounds of looking like a reasonably together adult on the days I teach.