Glasses or Contacts?

By Robert Isenberg

December 14, 2009

Dorothy Parker once said: "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses."

Is that still true? Should the visually challenged opt for contacts? Or in our enlightened age of Weezer and Tina Fey, is it better to be nerdy-chic and commit to a good set of specs? We've thought about the pros and cons for each:

Glasses

Some frames look awesome. The only trouble is, the Wall O' Frames at the eye doctor's can be daunting. Best to bring a friend, somebody with taste, to help you choose. (The fashions change fast, and parents sometimes aren't up to speed.)
It's a timeless truth: Glasses make people look smarter.
Nibbling on the stem of your frames is a noble nervous habit. Helps you think.
Your phys ed teach will never ask you to play dodgeball.
Rolling your eyes behind a set of glasses looks so much more intimidating.
On the other hand, jerks might call you "nerd."
On the third hand, today's nerd is tomorrow's CEO.

Contacts

Yes, sticking a piece of transparent plastic on your eyeball is really weird.
Yes, it takes a little while to get used to, and you might be tempted to use naughty language when you're standing in front of a mirror, stretching your eyelid open with two fingers as the contact keeps bending the wrong way. ARGH!
But really, you get used to it. A little saline solution goes a long way.
You get to see the leaves on the trees. People say this all the time. "I could see the leaves on the trees! With my eyes!" The novelty never wears off.
Contacts never steam up.
You can keep doing adventurous physical activities, like rock-climbing and spontaneous dance parties. Contacts almost never fall out (and if they do, you probably hit your head so hard you have a concussion, so this is the least of your worries).
Nobody can tell the diff. That's the point of contacts, after all.

What about you? Glasses, contacts, naked-eyed?