David King Dunaway

This began to change when the church elders themselves aged to a point where they needed them.

But glasses initially were expensive and, as I say, handmade one at a time.

Optical professionals, amazingly enough, as late as the 17th century, were denouncing the use of eyeglasses and saying that patients shouldn't be able to choose them.

In the...

19th century, it became quite common for people to stereotype glasses wearers, and in particular women.

And to me, this is a feminist issue because feminists

For centuries, women and girls were told glasses make them unattractive and might drive away their suitors.

It revealed their age.

It revealed a physical weakness on their part.

Humorous Dorothy Parker wrote, men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.

Things have changed, but one newspaper commented a century ago that wearing glasses was a bit like brandishing your wooden leg in public.

Well, I haven't yet

been so bold as to walk up to people and pose that question to them.

It's the legacy of centuries in which people have been told that glasses might help them see, but they certainly don't help their visual appearance.

We see that there have been stereotypes that are well documented in science about how people rate, evaluate, judge people for wearing glasses.

Generally speaking, here are the positive and negative perceptions of those behind lenses whom I call glassers, those people who walk around with a lens between them and the world.

They're usually judged to be smart, efficient, effective, and some people want that look and so they wear glasses with plain lenses.

On the other hand, they're generally considered to be socially awkward, perhaps in some cosmic sense defective.

People who are shy, even religious, religiosity is associated with wearing glasses, believe it or not.

They have.