Journal

Mon 18th Feb 2008

As I'm sure most of you know, I've long been a fashion trailblazer. (I told you those really tight black jeans would come back in!) So it was lovely to read in the Guardian that the rest of the world is finally beginning to catch up. I've copied (without permission, sorry) this response to a fairly idiotic question by a clearly confused reader from the devastatingly incisive, perspicacious and in all probability exceptionally attractive Hadley Freeman about speks. She'll no doubt win a Pullitzer or somesuch soon.

Here's the link, for as long as it lasts:
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/fashion/story/0,,2257680,00.html

"Glasses or contacts?

Martin Davies, by email

Glasses, every time. I really don't understand why any of you bother with contacts at all because, contrary to popular opinion, glasses always improve a face. Always! Just think of the most famous example of glasses-in-a-movie: Clark Kent - bespectacled, dashing, ever so handsome; Superman - too smooth by half, wears a bodystocking. I think you get what I'm saying here.

Obviously, some glasses are utterly unacceptable: Dame Edna Everage ones, to take an obvious example, or anything ever worn by Su Pollard or Jimmy Savile. But a nice, normal pair, ideally dark of rim (I hate those ones with an apologetic wire frame - why hide your glasses status? Embrace it! Shout about it! Preferably just via the frame and not vocally) and normal of shape, will give a smashing structure to the face, boys and girls alike. Plus all quality people with a well-cultivated fondness for 80s movies in which the school geek ends up getting the girl will have a soft spot for a spectacles sporter.

Whereas contacts ... well, I have to be honest: for those of us who don't need them, they just seem a bit creepy. I mean, you are literally sticking bits of something in your eyes. That is biologically wrong, no? Also, it suggests something inside that goes against human nature in an almost psychotic way, I've always thought. I used to have a history teacher who would preface an announcement that he was giving us a surprise test by saying it was "better than a poke in the eye". You people, on the other hand, pay good money to poke yourselves in the eyes daily and therefore endure something (arguably) even worse than a history quiz every morning.

What is wrong with you?

If you are still not convinced, take a tip from one of my favourite wearers of glasses, my friend Charlie. As Charlie once explained to me, glasses are much sexier than contacts because they make your face a bit of a secret and therefore "become one more thing to take off for someone". I tell you, when he said that it was so seductive I nearly started taking everything off for him, even though I think it is probably safe to say that I am decidedly not Charlie's taste, being the wrong gender and all. But that, if nothing else, proves the power of glasses."

I rest my case.