Supermodels are regularly seen in specs, millennials channel Harry Potter, and we have the first bespectacled Disney princess
Glasses 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.