The Ugly Glasses Chronicles

I suppose, objectively speaking, I can't quite call them ugly. They were bold. They were rectangular. They were trendy, in both the positive and negative senses of the word. They were chosen by a friend whose objective fashion sense I (still do) trust implicitly, and any halfway competent person could fully justify them as a fashion choice. They were also a wise purchase. The day I tried them on was the last day that they were on sale for 50% off (bringing their price BELOW the limit covered by my insurance!!), and three separate Lenscrafters employees assured me that I could return them for a full refund (which I ended up doing), so I decided to give myself time to see if I'd grow into them.

But the more I wore them, the more they made me feel hideous.

Their rectangular shape emphasized the squareness of my jaw and the lines on my forehead (which I detest not because they're lines, but because they are exactly the same as my father's). The thicker frame completely boxed in and emphasized the dark skin around my eyes when I wasn't wearing makeup, making me hesitant to even run to the grocery store without full makeup. Wearing my hair up was no longer an option, which is problematic at hip-length. Red lipstick no longer worked (and what's the point of life if you can't enjoy red lipstick?) I felt butch. I felt like a laughingstock. I felt like a fashion victim. I felt 13 years old again. I cried myself to sleep. I avoided making eye contact with my reflection in mirrors. I couldn't imagine wearing them with a sexy dress. If I had run into a client with whom I've only corresponded by email, or someone from high school whom I haven't seen in 10 years, I would have been embarrassed to be seen in these glasses.

So I went back and got the glasses I'd had my eye on in the first place, the pair I was, despite my best efforts to be open-minded, daydreaming about wearing. The pair that I fully expected would cause my fashion-savvy friend to say "We can stop shopping right now, this is perfect!" (In reality, they were relegated to about 4th place.) They're less fashion-forward, but I feel like myself in them.

I felt better now. I could breathe. I could stop crying, knowing that glasses that made me happy were on their way. But it would still be 10 days until they could be made. During that time, I had to navigate the city, meet with clients and convince them of my competence, get beauty treatments from people who are cooler than me, buy things and return things, deal with relatives over xmas, and generally perform as a competent adult despite the fact that my every instinct wanted to vanish into shame and shoegazing like my 13-year-old self.

So I had to very quickly learn a new skill. I had to fake being confident in these humiliating glasses. I had to aggressively externalize my energy, pushing the green of my eyes beyond these thick plastic rectangles that were boxing me in, convincing the world that I'm a confident hipster and this look is totally on purpose and of course I can totally pull it off. It was exhausting, but it was effective. I think I managed to carry myself as though this were a deliberate fashion choice, and somehow I managed to develop an effective "quelling glare" (as Miss Manners puts it) on the way. And, in the process, I fulfilled one of my birthday horoscopes from last year.

Overall, it was very much a learning experience. I went in not trusting my fashion instincts because my previous pair of glasses (which I love) were counter to most of my fashion instincts at the time of purchase. But from wearing the ugly glasses and then going back to the ones my instincts first wanted me to wear, I learned a lot about which of my fashion instincts I should trust and where I should and shouldn't follow trends (which is something I consider an essential adult life skill, but I haven't yet perfected it for glasses as much as I have for clothes). The energy and body language skills I developed trying to appear confident in the ugly glasses will serve me well as I work on Entitlement. I've developed a much better sense of where I'm comfortably willing to spend money on glasses, and I've gotten better at working with opticians to find something that suits me. Lots learned, good life experience. All of which is very easy to say now that I'm not stuck with the ugly ones for a whole year.