#it still gets people placed into this more. idle/meek/unassuming box I guess

[vimbry]

you know it's weird tho like, I actually still feel more insecure about wearing glasses than I realise, and I've had them practically my whole life. they've been such a normalised disability aid for decades now to the point where many people, myself included, forget to even consider them one. there's been many famous people who wear them and liked for it, and with the rise of "nerd/geek" subculture and its associated aesthetic being a somewhat aspirational & popular thing to be now (esp with the hipster explosion of the early '10s), it's hard to remember a time up until pretty recently when wearing them was a shorthand for loser, unattractive, dweeb, etc. in fact it hasn't Really fully gone away.

like, so many forms of media I was exposed to growing up had the sucky best friend sidekick or class nerd who wore glasses, and casual insults in the dialogue were pretty common. a pretty common one-off plot would be where someone had to face the threat of temporarily wearing them and they'd be so torn up about it like. cool thanks (but then kid's shows do often run into far bigger issues of representing groups of people lol so, alienating parts of their audience while turning impressionable kids against them is not a surprise). I got teased about it at school and I think these definitely made a bigger impact than I really think about.