#GLASSES AREN'T A FUCKING PIECE OF LAB SAFETY EQUIPMENT THEY'RE A PROSTHETIC ANYBODY CAN NEED!

[thesiat]

Oooh, a glasses post! Let me add my own knowledge to this:

My Background/Context/Qualifications: I've been wearing glasses for all waking hours since I was 4, and probably needed them earlier but 4 was the earliest kids could get glasses at the time I was a kid. Everyone in my family wears glasses and my mom has since childhood.

- I cannot see faces at all without my glasses, and that combined with my autism in interesting ways that resulted in I recognise people I know by their voices more than their face, like a fully blind person would. So a fun character detail to keep in mind!

- When I'm overstimulated or things are too bright, taking my glasses off can make things seem less bright. This might be because things are out of focus.

- Glass lenses break easily.

- Wire frames are lighter than plastic or horn.

- The worse your character's vision is, the thicker and heaver the lenses. For characters in societies that only have glass lenses, this means the lenses will get smaller. Large lenses are a luxury given to use by plastics (and are still really fucking heavy for higher prescriptions!). When my mom was a kid in the 60s she had what she calls 'coke bottle bottom' lenses. This causes heavy distortion of the eyes, hence why caricatures of people with glasses tend to draw their eyes as disappearing (near-sighted is more common than far-sighted).

- Before anti-glare and anti-reflective coatings (I'm old enough to remember this time), glasses had all kinds of problems with glare and reflections and the like. Light is going to be a problem for glasses without these coatings, and there's a reason I don't like overhead lights--I'm used to them causing glare. Even now, they still can. Lenses are still lenses.

- On that note--glasses can cause sunburn on your cheekbones. I had permanent rosy cheeks as a kid bc of being a little kid who liked to play outside in a place with over 3000 sunshine hours a year. Little kids don't like wearing hats, and we couldn't afford sunglasses AND regular glasses every year. They are in the exact spot blush would be too, so they're hard to notice. Again, a detail that I never see and want to point out.

- I can in fact read and see things in detail without my glasses--it just has to be like 3-4 inches in front of my face, in good light. My rx is quite high, though not the highest of the folks I know. I need about -6.75 on my worst eye, which is quite nearsighted indeed, but I have friends who are moreso.

- On that note, if there's even a small difference in prescription between your eyes, taking your glasses OFF can be pretty fucking terrible. I get headaches VERY quickly just bc my eyes are giving two different levels of focus, and that's not accounting for one has astigmatism and one doesn't. The people above me are talking about headaches from wearing their specs, but I get them if I DON'T wear mine. And in fact headaches are one of the first symptoms optometrists have used, for a long time, to know that you need glasses.

- It's actually more common than you think for glasses-wearers to not notice how dirty their specs have gotten, and in fact there's a really good bit about this in Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series that made little kid me very happy because it was ACCURATE.

- Colourblindness is not the same thing as not being able to focus, which is not the same thing as nystagmus or strabismus (not being able to keep your eye still in various ways, whether the muscles of your eye are uniformly weak and tremble or one side is weak and your eye drifts), which is not the same as astigmatism (double vision or warped vision), which is not the same thing as visual hallucinations, which is not the same thing as vertigo or other inner ear problems (vertigo is an inner ear issue not an eye issue!). These are all separate things that can occur on top of each other in any combination.

- Special Note: Albinism is an eye condition. The apigmentation is a symptom of an eye condition. People (and animals) with albinism (do NOT call a person 'albino' if you are not someone who has albinism!) lack pigment in their eye, which relies on pigment to work. But additionally, albinism in humans seems to also affect the muscles that move the eye around, so people with albinism don't just have trouble focussing--they also have a constant 'overexposure' effect (because their sclera and iris aren't blocking out light), and can have various kinds of trouble with moving their eyes. Albinism is a disability, and a lot of if not most folks with it are legally blind, which means they are so blind that it cannot be corrected farther than 20/200 with glasses. That said, legally blind is not the same as totally blind.

- There's a lot of myths about 'reading in the dark will make you nearsighted' and that, but I'm pretty sure that's not true. I'm nearsighted not because I read in poor light, but because my mom and dad were both nearsighted. Eyestrain isn't the same thing as being permanently near- or far-sighted.

- As you get older, focussing between near and far things gets slower! Being able to see in low light also goes away slowly. I used to have really good darkvision and focus speed, but it definitely decayed after I turned thirty. Other people may have it decay slower than me, as I have some other bodily quirks that might be making my body age faster.

- Many folks who don't start out needing glasses become more far-sighted as they age!

- Needing glasses is an example of a disability that has become fairly normalised in our society, but it isn't totally normal yet--it's still rare to see characters with glasses, and most performers that need them are pressured to not use them on screen or stage because it's seen as detrimental to their versatility or attractiveness (bullshit!); my mom grew up with the phrase 'Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses'.

- people who wear glasses need specially-designed masks--of any kind, even the kind that don't cover their glasses. One of my biggest frustrations growing up was not being able to wear fun masks. It is possible to design masks around glasses but have you ever seen any? Exactly. I also have to use fashion tape on my nose when I wear masks over my mouth and nose, otherwise my glasses fog up.

- Makeup is also kind of a bitch when you can't see well. I can't wear foundation or contour my face because I can't see what I'm doing from farther than three inches away. Wearing glasses also means wearing mascara is a delicate operation, and false eyelashes are right out. Glasses also make it harder for people to see your eye makeup in detail, though not impossible! I still wear makeup but I also pick out very wild and colourful glasses as a way of adding the same colour and shaping to my face.

- on that note, glasses are a way to express your character's style! They're an accessory! They come in so many shapes and colours and sizes. I've had every colour under the sun and most of the shapes too. Granted the fact we can do crazy shapes that aren't round is because of plastics, but even so there are still glasses chains and so forth.

- Your eyes appear smaller when wearing glasses for nearsightedness, and larger when wearing them for far-sightedness. This actually goes for the entire area of your face your glasses are covering, so there's a strange effect when seeing someone's face at an angle, that can make their face look very different with and without glasses. When I take my glasses off for example, people are shocked at how big my eyes are.

- Glasses aren't the only aid people used for vision correction! Monocles were used by many when only one eye needed a bit of correction, pince-nez were a type of glasses that pinched your nose to stay on, rather than having a big frame hooking over your ears, and a quizzing-glass was a small magnifying lens on a fancy chain that was a VERY popular accessory during the English Regency. Dandies would often hold it out and peer through it when they were making a point about how ugly someone's fashion was, or to make other social 'cuts' as they were called.

- You need a place to put your glasses when you sleep. Being scared of losing them is a real thing! My heart stops when I hear them clatter to the floor from my nightstand when I'm reaching for them, or if I can't find them immediately!

- People who need new glasses every year keep the old ones for emergencies.

- If you start off needing glasses as a kid, your vision will change rapidly from year to year, then settle out when you hit adulthood--that doesn't mean it stops getting worse entirely, though!

- Glasses are a prosthetic; they're a part of your body after a while, and while some people always feel they're alien and unwanted, I can't imagine my body without glasses. It's REALLY upsetting when people ask to see through them (thankfully that doesn't happen as much as it did when I was little) or grab them away from me--like those are my eyes, don't touch my eyes!!! That's part of my body! So it's likely some characters that rely on glasses will feel similarly to me, or will feel maybe not so similar. It really depends on when you got them and how much you need them.

- YOU ARE NOT MORE INTELLIGENT BECAUSE YOU NEED GLASSES. I'm so sick of glasses being a shorthand for high intelligence, this really harms people!! I have learning disabilities and wear glasses and people straight up did not believe I was struggling just because I wore glasses, because of this stereotype! Please remember that making your character with glasses supergenius intelligent is NOT empowering to us! It's a stereotype and it's harmful! Make them a himbo/bimbo instead! I seriously have never ever in my life seen a dumb or even regular intelligence character who wears glasses other than harry fucking potter. Do better!

Writing Characters with Glasses

Glasses are one of those components in writing that one just knows whether the writer has any experience with or not from the offset. So how do we write glasses-wearing characters or characters with impaired vision?

What is your character's eye strength?

Now, you don't have to know your character's exact diagnoses but you should know what sightedness your character has. Near-sighted means your character has trouble seeing things far way but can see things up close. Far-sightedness means a character can see things better in the distance than they can in before them.

Typically, one eye can be weaker or stronger than another, so a lense may be slightly thicker or slimmer than the other. Myself, my left eye is much weaker than my right.

Wearing Glasses

Typically when you wear glasses, you start to ignore the frames in your peripheral vision, however if you may notice it more if you haven't been wearing your glasses for a while.

Also when you change lenses, your sight is funny for a while. Things, like the fucking ground itself, seem a lot closer which can lead you to feel very disoriented. Its best to break glasses in gradually, in the words of Our Lady, Theresa Manion, "Do not make unnecessary journeys, do not take risks on treacherous roads..."

Glasses can get dirty and smudged very easily and do require cleaning. You may often see somebody wipe their glasses with their shirt tail but this isn't always effective, some fabrics just worsen the issue. Dry tissue paper is the best or a glass cloth. Frames also should be cleaned too.

Glasses tend to fog up when it rains, when you sweat or when you're somewhere steamy or drinking/eating something really hot. It can be a nuisance but it usually won't impair your vision that much.

Glasses can strain your eyes and start to chafe after a while. Long periods of wearing glasses can make your eyes start to ache (it always happens to me) and the best thing to do is just remove them and rest your eyes. The frames can also rub against the tops of your ears or the bridge of your nose.

People who need glasses tend not to remove them very often. If your vision is very bad, you won't be whipping your glasses off at every opportunity like Horatio Caine. If you only need reading glasses or need glasses for specific tasks you, wouldn't wear them 24/7 as it can further damage your eyes (I did this and now I can barely see 4ft ahead of me).

You can do tasks without your glasses but you do feel more cautious, especially if you have difficulty making out details. Glasses usually make you more comfortable in situations.

And as for the whole pushing up glasses when they slip (and they do slip but gradually), there's no right way or wrong way. Personally, I adjust by moving the entire frame between my thumb and forefinger so I don't smudge the lense. But pushing it up by the bar that crosses your nose is also effective.

When you're not wearing glasses

Not wearing glasses isn't delibiltating if your character's sight isn't majorly mad. As I mentioned before, they can still carry out tasks. But not wearing glasses can leave you a little unsure and sometimes disoriented.

Most people can still see without glasses, things just aren't as focused. For me, things get very fuzzy especially if they are far away but I can still make out the shape - for example, I can see how many fingers you're holding up but not your ring. I can do a lot of tasks without glasses.

When you're not wearing your glasses, you do tend to squint which can help you see a little better or tend to lift things to your eyes to see them better.

Characters wearing glasses

If your character loses their glasses in a fight, they won't be unable to fight back. They can likely still see some things.

Glasses hurt when knocked from your face, you can cut or bruise from a blow to the glasses. (it's happened to me which is why I have a massive scar on my forehead).

Your character will likely dislike going to the optician. Getting your eyes looked into by a stranger with a torch is irritating. Buying new glasses is a long drawn out hellish experience.

Breaking your glasses will upset your character, mainly because they're expensive. A character may opt to get the glasses fixed instead of replaced.

Your character will keep their glasses near at all times. Sleeping, they will be in reach. In the shower, they will be somewhere close by. Glasses may your more confident in your ability so they will always be near.

Also your character will likely not store their glasses in a pocket (they can break) or on their heads (your hair can smudge the lenses).

If your character has one of those early 2000s rom-com moments where their glasses are removed so the world can see their "true beauty", yeah that isn't a thing. Now that person can't fucking see.

Also, your character will likely hate anybody grabbing their glasses or wanting to try them on.