It must be Accessories Week here at BTFM, because you kids are positively CRAWLING out of the woodwork with fascinating questions about hats, eyeglasses and whatnot. What will it be next? PeaceBang lives for the suspense, and imagines that her next letter might be about watch fobs or suspenders! My heavens! For now, let’s consider this frantic inquiry:
Since I have crossed over into having to wear READING GLASSES even though my eyes still feel like they are 16, I am wondering what PB has to say about clergy reading glasses? Even though I blow what I can up into 16 point font, there are times I need the glasses in worship. I just saw a picture of me presiding during communion with my little granny peepers, and I thought, oh dear sweet Jesus, those glasses make me look 58 instead of 44, which is the last thing to be thinking about when celebrating the great thanksgiving…but I am thinking…there has got to be some cool options …well, you know what I mean. Help!
Honey pie, I know you and there is no way you look 58 EVAH, and if you did momentarily, who cares? By all means go ahead and invest in a pair of snazzy reading glasses if this is going to be part of your ministerial image (and let’s be honest, don’t our eyes generally get worse over time?), but consider also the rocking Emma Goldman and her fierce specs:
Check it out. Think of how brainy and rabbinical you can look with some old-school reading glasses! I say GO for it with dignified gusto. The only hideous mistake we can make with glasses, I think, is to get cutesy with them with frou-frou on the holders or to plop them on top of our head during formal events and treat them like jewelry. Also, Dame Edna. You don’t want to get into what she calls “furniture for the face” (bless her heart, how I adore her). But really. What would Harry Potter be without his big horn-rims? What would John Lennon have been without his granny glasses? What would that hot guy I saw at the coffee shop today be without his bald head and muscular forearms? Oops, PeaceBang is distracted again. Gotta run, darlings, there’s more mail to answer and a load of laundry to get to bed.
My recommendation is a nice pair of frameless glasses with neutral color on the wire across the bridge of the nose and around the ear, and with an attractive lens shape.
A friend uses a single bifocal contact lens which works very well for her.
I recommend EyeBobs- lots of designs. They are heavier (and more expensive) than the drug store variety, but also have a much more professional presence. I have 4 pair now- of varying degrees of ‘professionalism’- and love, love, love them!
As someone who wears glasses all the time – and really resisted glasses in the first place, I agree with Shelby. I’m on my second pair of frames with a very slim profile and no bottom rims. I find they add a little maturity without adding years. Avoid shiny metal even if going for completely rimless. And don’t settle until you found the right style. There are so many out there.
I have seen very cool clear readers with magnets at the nose that clip them shut and they hang on a rubber tube around your neck.
Extra nifty.
I went to monovision contact lenses to avoid the granny glasses in the pulpit effect. They are not going to last forever, but I hope at least until I am over 50.
I just had an idea: how about if she brings a huge magnifying glass with her into the pulpit and then reads with that, and she could look like Emerson’s big EYEBALL (from his essay “Nature”)looking out at the congregation!!
Just kiddin.
lol, PB. What about a monacle? (monocle???sp?)
That would be a vision, huh?
Give the bifocal contacts lenses a try! They are a miracle! I thought it was cute and stylish to wear my readers, but a seminary professor pointed out that we can appear a little forbidding looking out over our glasses at the congregation. And if you’re elevated at all in the pulpit, it becomes even more exaggerated. And, sadly, this is one of those areas where it seems to be more problematic for women than men. (Not fair, but true.) I couldn’t adapt to the mono-vision (a lens in one eye only) so I wear two bifocal lenses of different strengths. Hopefully your doc will be willing to experiment with you to find the right mix.