Why do I take my Glasses off for Photos?
October 14, 2021 | 2 minute readFrom the age of 4, I’ve always worn glasses. I have a lazy eye (which isn’t too noticeable nowadays), and when I was growing up my shortsightedness was bad enough for me to have to wear glasses all the time.
As I grew up – my eyesight improved. I still need glasses for reading and driving, but my eyesight is nowhere near as bad as it used to be.
But if you’ve ever met me in person, you’ll know that I like to keep my glasses on all the time. Having grown up permanently wearing glasses, I’ve always found it difficult to remember to take them off. Certainly, every time I have remembered to take them off, I’ve ended inadvertently morphing into Velma from Scooby-Doo as I tried to find my glasses a few hours later.
But something occurred to me the other day as I was out with my friends, and I’d never really thought about it too much before. We were just outside Blenheim Palace and decided to take a photo. We huddled in a group whilst we tried to get the best shot of all of us. And just before the camera was pointed in my direction, I whipped my glasses off.
You’ll be hard pushed to find any photos of me on social media with my glasses on, despite having them on from the minute I wake up to the moment I put my phone down and go to sleep.
But Why do I take my Glasses off for Photos?
Whilst I won’t deny, there probably is a deep-rooted vanity element to this, I don’t believe that’s the whole story.
Neither does the fact that in the back of my mind there’s that rhyme;
Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.
Source
I was never really a proud glasses-wearer. Whilst it was perfectly natural for me to wear glasses, and I was comfortable wearing them – I also never really thought of them as part of my ‘style’ (if I even had one…!). I particularly hated it when I took my glasses off and people exclaimed ‘you look so weird without your glasses on!’
As the practice of selfies was also taking the world by storm as I was entering my teenage years, it became apparent that it was much more difficult to take a selfie with your glasses on without the glare of the screen being reflected by your glasses. It, therefore, has developed into a habit, where my glasses simply don’t work when taking a photo.
I actually did a quick Google about this to see if any other glasses-wearers felt the same, and there’s a rather interesting Reddit feed, where most of the contributors seem to talk about their glasses masking their beautiful eyes. I’m not sure I align with these views necessarily, but it does at least help to understand that I’m not alone in taking my glasses off for photos.
So from this moment on, I’m going to *try* and stop myself from taking my glasses off – and actually start showing what I really look like in day-to-day life! Of course, I’m not a total psychopath, the photos I take will still require at least 30 takes in different lighting/angles to get the best one.
