The Language Of Glasses
How people handle their specs will tell you more than they want you to know
Francis was a nerdy English professor with a scraggly beard and a sharp wit. Jenny was a Eurasian goddess with Audrey Hepburn looks and an ample breast of literary knowledge. At a recent party, I watched as they parsed nuances within Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Then Francis doffed his glasses and absentmindedly wiped them with his shirt longer than seemed necessary to clean smudges that may not have been there in the first place.
When Jenny excused herself to go to the powder room, I nudged him. "Why did you take off your glasses? To strategically reveal yourself to myfriend, perhaps?"
"No," he replied, smiling. "I did that when I unzipped my fly."
Ha ha. Except that Francis really did reveal himself, just not in that way (I hope; I didn't look). He also touched himself, but, again, not in that way (although, again, I didn't look). Rather, by removing his glasses and rubbing them with his shirt, he offered himself to Jenny while also lest she didn't return his interest comforting himself with his own touch.
"What someone does with his glasses sends a very powerful message that is understood on the very level from which it is relayed: the unconscious," says anthropologist David Givens, PhD. "Ask him what he's doing and he'll give all sorts of funny answers, because he doesn't have a clue." Gentlemen, prepare for some clues.
SEE THROUGH THE SPECTACLES
These days, millions of Filipinos wear eye-glasses, accounting for the equally large amount that are spent on lenses and frames. This despite the wide availability of LASIK surgery. With numbers like these, how is it possible that so few people know what they're saying when they wear and wield their glasses?
"People have an image in their minds of what glasses represent and how they want to look when they wear them, but they don't have the words to describe what they see," says Jamie Niblock, director of retail operations for eyewear designer Robert Marc in the US. "They don't know the conversation."
Not intellectually, perhaps. But instinctively, many people do. When Francis revealed his naked countenance to Jenny, he was obeying a very primitive social-sexual instinct. Think Clark Kent. Geeks in glasses don't get the girl; manly men who save the world with x-ray vision do even if they're the same guy. Many women insist they love men who wear glasses, because smart and serious is sexy. What they don't admit and may not even know is that while they may love men with glasses, they especially love men with glasses when those men take their glasses off.
"The brain is very sensitive to eye contact," says Givens. When gazing deep into your eyes, women, coworkers, and potential employers aren't considering the color of your orbs as much as they're trying to gauge your honesty, integrity, and sincerity. Glasses blur that.
For proof, ask Jenny. At first uncertain about Francis, at evening's end Jenny let him walk her home, then pressed her phone number into his hand. "He's smart and funny," she said later. Ah, but she knew that when they first met. What she couldn't know until she beheld his bare face, she imparted in a breathy aside: "He has beautiful brown eyes, kind of sparkly, like they were lit from the back. He seems really, I don't know, kind."
Behold, the language of glasses at work. Imagine what riches might come your way if you knew how to use those glasses for more than clear vision. Take these cues for a clue.
» Guy Wisdom archive
Men's Health Philippines - June 2005 Issue
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The latest props in your power play.
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What's In A Frame
You've got a treeful of shoes and a drawerful of drawers. Why do you have just one pair of glasses? "Glasses become more of a fashion piece with every single day," says Sheila Vance, CEO and designer of Sama Eyewear in the US. "A person can easily change his look just by changing his frames." What kind of cool do you want to project? |
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1. SEXY
Choose curved lenses with a smoky black or gray tint, says Vance. "To be mysteriously sexy, pair them with a black plastic frame."
2. AGGRESSIVE
For shades, we like a classic aviator look with dark or mirrored lenses. If you want to show a nice postmillennial anger (think Vin Diesel), Vance recommends thick, black plastic frames.
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