Glasses

As a child I played with the idea that wearing glasses made you look smarter, so I was impervious to the “four-eyes” taunts. But, in my teens, the saying,  "Boys don’t make passes with girls who wear glasses" had me searching for ways to correct my myopia. For years I suffered with contact lenses; even tried orthokeratology, a process of fitting special contact lenses to reshape the cornea. Now in my ”Golden Years’ I wear glasses when I need them for distance but for reading and work at the computer I see better without.

We know that just wearing glasses is considered to be funny…then, when paired with a nose, mustache and bushy eyebrows and voilà, it’s super funny. Putting on N&G is an easy way to evoke a laugh plus they are a direct reference, shorthand for funny man Groucho.

Over the years I’ve collected hundreds of images — books and photographs that have used the N&G to denote something humorous. As the N&G became the defining trope for my portrait study, research led me deeper into their history. It never crossed my mind that they might represent a Jewish stereotype. My use was not intended to be derogatory or anti-Semitic. 

Mask or no mask, glasses or no glasses making assumptions about someone based on looks or skin color or racial profile is not OK. Snap judgments are short-sighted. Time for some corrective lenses for that.