Glasses are seen as taboo, especially for young women – but this specs-hating culture is sadly short-sighted

People who refuse to wear specs or overly rely on contact lenses may go on to regret it later in life, says Jenny Eclair

Women wear glasses on TV either to show the character is plain or clever. Ugly Betty, for example (Danny Feld/Abc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock)

On telly very few people wear glasses unless they’re advertising specs, in which case, “look at all the happy glasses wearers”. In real life, loads of us need our vision correcting and, personally, my glasses are the first thing I reach for in the morning and the last thing I take off at night. Most people I know, even if they aren’t full-time specs wearers, need some for reading or driving, but this is never reflected in dramas on the box. No one ever opens a letter and then has to scrabble around in the fruit bowl for their reading specs. Similarly, the baddie fleeing the crime never has to reach in the glove compartment for his getaway driving glasses. On screen everyone has 20-20 vision, especially women, unless they are cast as plain or clever.

Apart from being madly short-sighted, I also suffer with a boring syndrome called dry eye disease. This condition, which is especially prevalent amongst post-menopausal women, has begun to strike much younger folk of both sexes, mostly due to lifestyle choices – and the pandemic is making it worse.

Before we get onto that, let me just put you straight about dry eye disease. It’s one of those conditions that once you’ve got it, you can’t get rid of it. It’s treatable but not curable. For me, this means hot compresses, drops and sleeping with cling film patches over my eyes. This last fact is something most people can’t get their heads around, that every night, once my eyes are loaded with lubricating ointment, I cut two squares of cling film, close my eyes and attach the patches to my face. The cling film helps to form an overnight moisture chamber and ensures my eyes feel comfortable for most of the next day. Around 7pm, they’re dry again and I start to reach for my preservative-free drops and microwavable hot compress. All this is doable, until it isn’t.

Recently there have been days when it’s become more than just a bore and eventually I treated myself to an appointment with a private ophthalmologist who promptly gave me punctal plugs and a session of lipiflow.

Punctal plugs, which are available on the NHS and made of silicone, are inserted into your tear ducts (in my case just the lower ducts), thus preventing your natural tears from draining away too quickly. It’s a 30-second miracle procedure and an enormous help.

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Lipiflow is weirder and not available on the NHS. Essentially your eyelids are attached to a machine which pumps heat around them, thereby unblocking your meibomian glands. These are the tiny glands that secrete oil over your eyeballs with every blink, a natural lubricant that stops your tears from evaporating too quickly. Blocked meibomian glands are the biggest cause of dry eye. This treatment is expensive, I paid a grand, but the last time I had it done was three years ago, so possibly cheaper than Botox?

It’s not a cure, as I’ve said, there is no one-off cure for dry eye, but you can try to prevent it by taking regular screen breaks and blinking more. Everyone, particularly those who have a serious mobile phone habit, should blink more. Blinking is the mechanism that oils the surface of the eye and keeps them in good nick. Lockdown has been terrible for eye health, with most of the population staring at screens for hours on end, and millions of us are potentially storing up trouble for the future, because we’re forgetting to blink. If you don’t believe me, watch any teen immersed in an online computer game or social media.

Before lockdown, I was regularly lecturing youngsters on the bus, obviously they thought I was mad, but genuinely, blink kids, blink and blink properly, really get those eyelids moving. If you get sloppy with your blinking, the muscles in your eyelids will become slack and eventually when you close them to sleep they won’t shut properly and you’ll wake up feeling gritty.

Another dry eye trigger is contact lenses; people are wearing them too frequently and for too long. People who wouldn’t dream of drinking every day are wearing their lenses every day. Well don’t, because once you are diagnosed with dry eye you probably won’t be able to wear them ever again. Now this shouldn’t be a big deal but sadly we still live in a culture where wedding magazines seldom feature brides wearing glasses and so the vicious cycle is perpetuated. Glasses are seen as taboo, particularly for young women.

As for corrective laser surgery, I’d think very carefully before signing up, as evidence suggests that this procedure may cause dry eye, especially if you have it done in middle-age.

Sorry to be so doomy, but as someone who now regrets excessive contact lens use in the past and has had to learn to be a proud glasses wearer, I just wish we could send out a more positive message to those who “hate their glasses”. Believe me, you don’t, the alternative is much worse. Now blink.