Supermodels are regularly seen in specs, millennials channel Harry Potter, and we have the first bespectacled Disney princess
G lasses are glamour’s last taboo. You can embrace silver-grey hair and be on the cover of Vogue, like Kristen McMenamy. Armpit hair with a party frock is cool, thanks to Julia Roberts and Miley Cyrus. At 84 and 76, Jane Fonda and Helen Mirren still reign on beauty billboards without having their crow’s feet airbrushed out. And yet, women are still expected to whip off their glasses when the cameras start flashing. Roberts, Fonda and Mirren all wear glasses off duty, but tend not to on camera. When Annie Leibovitz photographed Jill Biden for Vogue last year, the first lady wore glasses in a casual portrait used inside the magazine, but took them off for the cover. At the 2016 Oscars, the black spectacles Kate Winslet wore to present an award were nowhere to be seen on the red carpet.
But this could be the year all that changes. The post-pandemic take-me-as-I-am look is lending the way we have always looked behind closed doors – hoodie, scrunchie, glasses rather than contacts – a newly acceptable vibe, at least on Zoom. Remember Meryl Streep in her lockdown robe and glasses, straining her cocktail shaker into her martini glass? A total mood. This year, Mirabel Madrigal in Encanto became the first bespectacled Disney princess. Meryl is 72; Mirabel is 15. Glasses are not just a getting-older thing, nor only a teen fad. At the mature end of the scale, the visibility of glasses has a lot to do with the visibility of older women. Midlife women have main character energy on screen these days, and since wearing glasses is often part of the narrative of getting older, spectacles come with that territory.
From the first episode of Sex and the City sequel And Just Like That, the passing of time for Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte was marked by the fact that when they sat down to brunch, they took out their glasses to read the menu. In their real lives, too, women stay in the spotlight as they grow older and start wearing glasses. We’re used to Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston as de facto specs wearers – though neither wore them for last year’s Friends Reunion.
The latest crop of supermodels – Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, Hailey Bieber, both Gigi and Bella Hadid – are the first to be regularly seen in glasses. For a generation whose appearance is more ruthlessly curated and filtered than ever, this is not about a lack of effort. Authenticity is almost an Instagram filter in its own right. Adding specs to your selfies looks adorable, just like adding puppy ears or a flower crown. Millennials grew up with Harry Potter; generation Z with disposable contacts and laser eye surgery. Glasses are no longer seen as an unfortunate necessity, but a choice.
On TikTok, last year’s cottagecore has been replaced by Dark Academia, which (your correspondent writes, adjusting her specs to squint at the screen) seems to be about reading Donna Tartt while wearing glasses and preppy clothes from Depop, and having lots of candles burning while you do your homework. Go figure. A lot of us, of all ages, have skin in this game. A survey last year by the College of Optometrists found that a third of British people believed their eyesight had deteriorated over the pandemic. The go-to parental warning of screens being bad for eyes is backed by recent research. The good news is that the harm may be reversible. The welcome twist is that glasses don’t have to feel like bad news any more.