Four Eyes for Love
(Illustration by Kim Rosen)Dig back into your '80s archive, and you may recall the ZZ Top video for the song "Legs." In it, a bespectacled young woman is rescued from her job at a shoe store and transformed by a troop of fishnet-clad women. She loses the glasses, feathers her hair, dons a pair of pink pumps, and rides off in a hot rod with the man of her dreams. That was my pop-culture fairy tale. I wanted a gaggle of hussies to come save me and turn me into the kind of girl whom a boy might follow around.
That's because, if you'd asked me what I considered my romantic liability, I'd have said it was my glasses (I already had the feathered hair). So when I finally reached contact-lens-wearing age, I figured my riding-in-cars-with-boys days were just around the corner. Not quite. But still I persisted with the contacts, despite painfully dry eyes and more hassle than convenience. I was a female Clark Kent – student by day and a barefaced supergirl by night.
Around the time I turned 30, I decided there were certain immutable truths: This is the body I was born with, the hair, the eyes. I won't ever be blond or blue-eyed or taller. And though a good stylist and makeup can work wonders, I will always look like me. And these glasses are as much a part of me as my hips or the size of my ears. They're who I am.
Plus, I realized that my glasses were far from a liability – they set me apart from the pack. So, I no longer surreptitiously slip off my specs for photos or pine for 20/20 vision. I've committed to this look – with interesting results in my love life. One being the discovery that my online dating profile gets far more hits spectacled than not, and not just from nerdy, bookish types, but from big, bearded men, several members of the armed forces, married cops who just want to chat, and 23-year-old man-babies with a thing for older women.
I proudly wear my specs out now on first dates. And while it made perfect sense to wear them when I met a tenured Harvard professor for a glass of sherry at Solea, it worked like a charm when I accompanied a handsome wellness coach to Kendall Square Cinema, where brainy glasses seem a prerequisite.
Somehow glasses impart a no-BS kind of presence, but they also give me just the bit of distance and perspective I need – particularly when I'm sussing someone out. Peering through them at a man, I can be flirty and self-effacing, demure and yet inquisitive in ways that barefaced women cannot. Glasses seem to say: I may not be all that accessible. But I'd love to see you try.
On the rare occasion when I've worn my contacts, I believe my judgment has been impaired. It wasn't until I slipped on my trusty frames at a party recently that I realized I'd mistaken a self-centered twit for someone resembling a gentleman.
Never underestimate the effect glasses have on the one being observed, either. I find that men thrive under this kind of focused attention. Because what you're telling them is that you're taking them seriously, at least for the moment.
The only tricky thing I have yet to master is that ill-defined point when the glasses must come off. This is a particularly vulnerable moment. Keep them on, and you risk your date smashing against them, leaving an oily smudge. But take them off too soon in a preemptive gesture, and you might find yourself in an equally awkward predicament. Not to mention fumbling around for them afterward.
Something happens, though, when you slide them back on: Things that seemed fuzzy regain their clarity, the world clicks back into place. Nearsightedness, by its very nature, implies that you need things closer to appreciate them, which, to me, is pretty much what intimacy is all about. I'll even go so far as to say that we myopic types have a natural gift for it. Because we're already aware that the only way to know what's worth getting involved in is to take a good, long look at what's right there, in front of you.
Terri Trespicio is a senior editor at Body + Soul magazine in Watertown and lives in Waltham. Send comments to coupling@globe.com.
