It was the glasses that really did it. They had thick, transparent plastic frames and cheerful contrasting arms the colour of the boat on a Blue Peter badge. They were the worst possible accessory for an eleven year old girl to have in 1992. A girl who suddenly realised that, for the first time in her life, she was going to have to try to fit in.
No amount
of being good at drawing cartoons or spewing forth hilariously witty banter could
save me from being mercilessly picked on in that first year. Come puberty, I was
written off as an asexual boffin while everyone else was getting off
with each other behind the bike sheds (no cliche - we did have them, and that's
where people did it). I was at a disadvantage. Because the fact of the matter was - if you wore glasses in the 1990s and you were under the age of 30 then you were about as far from trendy as you could get. You would need extra glasses on your glasses to even be able to begin to see the letter F in the word Fashionable. You were screwed.
It's too late for me now (too old for the current vogue, too young for the awesome Molly Ringwald-style charity shop granny glasses in the 1980s), but it does make me feel relieved for the short-sighted teens of today. They might actually get their first kiss before the age of 42.
Maybe people get taunted now for not wearing glasses. Just think!
Sometimes i think we might actually be the same person. Except my worst specs were white with yellow and pink thick stripes going around the lenses like sunbeams. I had them until i was 14.
ReplyDeleteThey sound beautiful. We should have a childhood photo amnesty and compare! (They would be so hipster now)
DeletePx
My worst specs were nasty Deidre Barlow style plastic frames. Pale blue with peach 'accents'. *shudder*
DeleteWOW. I want to collect all our old glasses and make them into art.
DeletePx
I'm pretty sure if I search around at mum and dad's long enough I'll be able to find them. These would never ever be hipster, they were just absolutely horrid.
DeleteMy other pairs weren't that terrible, the ones I had from 5-10 were nice - gold and pale pink, 14-16 OK - tortoiseshell, 16-21 not too shabby - thin grey rectangular, bought some amazing purple Miu Miu ones when I got my first job, they got nicked, then went black plastic with some cool blue bits (they're now my back ups) and got current ones free (with a specsavers voucher I got from a work event!) just before Xmas. I love wearing glasses, just those bloody timmy malletesque ones I want to forget!
I have just sent you photo evidence of my second best glasses. Having needed specs since age 2, I have had creepy PE teacher-esque square wire rims, (which look even MORE creepy, if that's possible, on a 5 year old with a bowl cut) and plastic hypercoloured purple ones, but the ones that took the biscuit had 3d owls in the corners. owls the size of a 5p piece. So yeah, as if you weren't clever enough to associate a speccy child with an owl ANYWAY, we're going to beat you over the head with the link just to ensure it sinks in. The worst of it was that I had impressionable younger cousins who lived in a very isolated part of Australia, a small island off the coast of Tasmania, and one of them needed glasses a couple of years later and had her heart set on owl ones... when she couldn't find them she had to make do with ones with 3d apples.
ReplyDeleteBut interesting, there's a guy in Glasgow who is a 'normal' optician through the week, and then on the weekends he goes to vintage fairs with a massive collection of old second hand frames from the 60's to the 80's, and he will actually put your prescription into the creepy PE teacher wire rims for you!
3d apples! Apples don't even have eyes. That's sad.
DeleteI love your second best glasses look. I want to send it to ASOS, they'd be all over it.
Px
My worst glases, the ones I had to wear to move to big school - were turquoise and plastic. It was a mottled/ mosaic effect with different shades. Bad glasses.
ReplyDeleteI do wear the kind these kids are sporting though - I reckon late twenties (just!) is an okay time to still pull them off, and I have been wearing dark plastic frames for about ten years now so I reckon it works. My new ones are going to be abit depper and a bit geekier and I love them for it.