I’ve been wearing glasses since I was about 10 years old, and for many years I hated them.

As a teenager, I begged my mum to let me have contact lenses. I wore them even when they hurt my eyes, even when my outdated prescription meant that I couldn’t actually see what was going on in front of me, and even when squinting to read what was written on the whiteboard gave me a near constant headache.

I felt that if I was wearing glasses, nobody would ever fancy me. Science seemed to back this up, with studies from the early Nineties showing that those who wore glasses were viewed as less socially and physically attractive. So it’s hardly surprising that not wearing specs was more important to me than almost any other part of my frankly ridiculous scheme to be appealing to boys.

It was a pretty comprehensive scheme, too. I’d take my ‘uncool’ winter coat off at the bus stop so nobody would see me wearing it, preferring to stand shivering cold until the bus came than to dent my (completely non-existent) sex appeal. I’d spend all day in uncomfortable shoes that blistered my feet because I thought they looked good. Despite being incredibly slim, I’d still buy and wear control underwear – in hindsight, a completely ridiculous thing for a 15-year-old girl to do.

But at the time, it made sense. Being uncomfortable didn’t feel like something I could opt out of – if it had, I doubt I would have done so anyway. Wearing glasses wasn’t even an option – I’d seen all the films featuring the ugly-girl-in-glasses trope, all of which followed a predictable formula. It went as follows:

Teenage girl has frizzy hair and glasses. Nobody notices her, despite the fact that behind her specs she’s being played by a beautiful and preened Hollywood actress in her early twenties
For whatever reason, girl receives life-changing makeover that necessitates her taking her glasses off
She’s hot now!
Fin.

It was obvious: glasses were not sexy.

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