For those of you youngsters lucky enough to have 20-20 vision, I envy the beautiful, fashionable sunglasses you can wear whenever you want. The one warning I’ll give you is that sometime in your mid-40s, you will most probably need glasses for reading—the loss of close-up vision eventually happens to all of us. When that day comes, there are many stores, like Anthropologie, that sell readers with cool frames.
For those of us who need some kind of corrective lenses in order to see where we’re going all the time, we constantly have choices to make. Do we wear what’s most comfortable, what looks the best, what we think will make the best impression? The answer, of course, is that it depends.
If, like me, you spend a lot of time working on a computer, glasses may work best for you most of the time. Turns out we blink our eyes less often when we look at the screen, which can cause them to get dry and bloodshot: uncomfortable and not a good look for anyone.
These days there are so many frame options that if you take some time you can find a pair—or more if you want to match them with your outfits—that look good. You might want to have someone with you when you try frames on so you don’t get railroaded into thinking the only ones that look good on you are the most expensive pair in the store. It’s good to have a pair of prescription sunglasses too if you can afford them.
Even after you’ve found glasses that look great, there are times when contacts may be a better choice. I like them for exercising, especially outdoors. If you ever tried skiing down a mountain on a snowy day with fogged up goggles that fit over your fogged up glasses or gone running and had to keep pushing your glasses up on your nose, you’ll know exactly what I mean—it just plain doesn’t work.
I also like wearing my contacts when I go to an event that requires being dressed up—somehow being dressed up and made up doesn’t go with glasses. Although for us mere mortals it makes sense to wear them if the alternative is not being able to see. I’m afraid the scene in the great old movie “How to Marry a Millionaire” where Marilyn Monroe gets on the wrong plane because she doesn’t want to wear her glasses, ends up sitting next to a nice man who wears glasses, insists she put hers on and falls in love with her when she does, is just what it sounds like—fiction.
Of course you could also get Lasik eye surgery. It’s not covered by most health insurance, so you’ll need to shell out a few thousand dollars, but everyone I know who’s had it is very happy.
And if you want to kill a little time and see how some glasses might look on you from the comfort of your home, try Glasses Direct’s Virtual Mirror:
