My 10 year old has become obsessed with eyeware in the last couple of months, not because she has needed glasses but solely because for some reason, some in her age bracket think glasses are cool? As a long time ‘four eyes’ I have been baffled by this attention to the subject she has had, that has even mandated me buying her ‘cool’ $1 glasses at the dollar store for her wardrobe. But this week she was asking me about contact lenses instead.

Basically, I told her, that there were 3 options available these days for us visually challenged, the ‘four eyes’ amongst us. Surgery, contact lenses, or glasses. Girls unfortunately seem to opt more for the contact lenses I told her, principally because they have traditionally seemed to think that glasses make them unattractive to boys. But then I confessed that as a boy I had never come to be able to want to put these damn little things in my eyes, poking around with my fingers on my eyeballs daily, and that I thought that contacts were way too dangerous anyway. As so do I think surgery still is.

And Lo and Behold, here crops up the latest contact lense caused epidemic into the news! Eye fungus outbreak is causing severe eye damage up to blindness, in hundreds across America. And it appears mainly that this epidemic is hurting women (higher percentage of contact lense users than men), making it yet another way that women searching for ‘beauty’ oftentimes endanger themselves while doing it.

This is a shame I told her, because I have always thought that women with glasses can be quite cute anyway. So lesson? Don’t go chasing shadows that aren’t even really real. You’ll still be attractive with contact lenses, or without.

Oh. And don’t let the corporations make it legally impossible to sue them for damages if they tempt you to blind yourself with their product. It’s a dangerous world out there, so be careful with the choices they try to get you to make.