Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling: The Novel Cure for needing glasses
The skinny boy with the glasses is the kid everyone wants to be seen with
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Ailment: Needing glasses
Cure: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
Having to wear glasses is one of those mixed miracles of modern life – yes, we are lucky to have the world snapped back into focus, but now we have a Professor Branestawm accessory squatting on the bridge of our nose. But since the advent of a contemporary role model, the bespectacled are no longer relegated to the ranks of swotty types.
When we first meet Harry Potter, he's living in the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursleys, a small, skinny boy with sticky-up hair, little round glasses and a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. His glasses are "held together with a lot of Sellotape"– a result of being regularly beaten up by the awful Dudley. All in all, Harry is about as miserable as an 11-year-old boy can be. But once Harry gets to Hogwarts, and realises that he's not just a wizard, but a famous one, having survived an attack by the Dark Lord as a baby, his appearance takes on new associations. Suddenly the skinny boy with the glasses is the kid everyone wants to be seen with.
Harry's life at Hogwarts is not plain sailing. He has 142 staircases to navigate – some of which lead "somewhere different on a Friday", prankster ghosts such as Peeves the poltergeist to dodge; and the hostility of the Potions teacher, Professor Snape, to contend with. He finds Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration classes, frankly, difficult; and the slippery Draco Malfoy would do anything to see him fail. But when Harry plays Quidditch, plunging fearlessly into a 50ft dive on his broomstick for a ball thrown by Malfoy, grabbing it a foot before it hits the ground (his glasses somehow staying glued to his face all the while), he knows he has found his forte.
By the end of the book, his name is on everyone's lips. Harry has not only stymied "He-who-must-not-be-named", but he has dispelled for all time the uncool connotations of glasses.
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