Category: Let's talk
I'm not sure if a topic similar to this has ever been brought up, but I don't see the harm in offering it up as a repeat point of discussion in anycase.
I was wondering what the communities thoughts might be on the sunglasses, vs no sunglasses debate. Now this is mainly for people who's eyes are visibly blind, it might be that the corneas are white due to scarring, or they move around involuntarily due to nystagmus, or some other feature that lets people know right away that you are blind. Have you ever felt pressured to wear sunglasses as a means of putting people at ease with talking to you? Does it matter in the long run?
I was having a candid conversation with one of my roommates the other day and she informed me that due to my nystagmus she feels more comfortable talking to me straight on when I've got my tinted glasses on, as the movement of my eyes distracts her. Now I know that most people won't be so candid because of social norms/expectations that seem to dictate that (gasp!), you shouldn't talk about stuff like that as it's considered insensitive, but I found the conversation to be enlightening and I wonder how many other sighted/partials feel the same, but due to "manners" don't bring it up. I know back when I had full vision I honestly never had opportunity to hang out with or talk to a full on blind individual as there weren't any blind people at any of the schools I attended; so I'm not sure what my thoughts would be now.
So basically, do you wear sunglasses/dark-tinted glasses ever, or do you strongly object to the Stevie Wonder/Ray Charles trope and just go facially commando?
Not me. My eyeballs are falsies, but everyone says they look totally real.
Ok, well have you always had prosthetic eyes?
And this was really for people who's eyes don't look "normal" for lack of a better term. lol
I got my artificial eyes when I was 10, so at that age, I was too young to know about such things. I don't wear dark glasses now, but my eyes look pretty good and I can even move then left and right.
I'm unable to control my own eye movements - no optic nerves. Other than that, my eyes are fine, just dilated 'stoner' pupils, which was a convenience in my college days but that's a subject for another thread. I have never worn glasses.
I got my first ones when I was a year old.
I have prosthetic eyes, but even back when I had my actual eyes, I never wore glasses.
I tried to wear sunglasses, at times, and they did nothing but hurt my eyes/nose.
I'm not a normal case (go fig.) I was born with one real eye that didn't work all that well and one empty socket. I had a tiny little falsey for a lot of years, and we were supposed to graduate that falsey to make the orbit grow. My parents were somewhat lazy in this, so I ended up having a smaller orbit in my right eye than in my left. I had surgery when I was fourteen, lost whatever residual sight I had, and the eye looked rather abnormal until I had an enucleation proceeding almost two years ago. I did wear sunglasses for a while when I was sensitive to how I looked, which to some degree I've always been, but stopped wearing them when I was about 21 or so. Three months after having my left eye removed, I had a wonderful blue prosthetic. I still have an empty right socket, but someone asked me the other day if I had sight out of my left eye. I said my eye wasn't real. It shocked him. So, in short, I always go commando and have done for quite some time now. After all, if you're gunna be with a partner or lover, they're gunna see you eventually, so if you don't like me without my glasses, wy should I cater to you? And it couldn't have been that bad because I had a friend who kept hitting on me for months, and that was back in my early twenties. I didn't move on it because (a) I was clueless and (b) I think he had HIV, which I was right about, but it was flattering. But I've always had a problem with how I've looked coupled with the who gives a shit mentality. It's a conflict that I still haven't resolved.
Despite my inability to look straight due to only periferal vision in one eye, I have not, nor will I ever wear sunglasses for any reason but their conventional purpose, even though in my younger days I got teased for looking stoned. I do a few stereotypical things, such as rythmicly rocking at times (not quite sure why), but I have no desire to do that one.:)
I have one somewhat normal eye (my left) and my right eye looks pretty yucky. (That's what I've been told.)
For a while in college I quit wearing sunglasses because I figured that people could accept me as I was or not. However, a girlfriend of a friend told me if I ever wanted to go on a date, I'd better wear the glasses, so I did. However, when I did start dating regularly, the girl I dated was blind. (hahaha!)
Anyway, I mostly wear them now.
Bob
So due to the chemo and radiation I had, if you look quite closely, you can tell that my eyes aren't totally normal. They're prosthetic though, both. One still has movement if I want it too, but the other has none. Usually people ask if I can see though, so apparently they're good looking prosthetic. Anyway, that being said, I used to wear sunglasses occasionally, but found that it just made me look too stereotypical. Since my eyes don't move involuntarily or look all that "yucky," I decided to only wear sunglasses on sunny days when it's kind of a fashion thing more or less. I've considered getting a ridiculous overpriced name brand pair to wear just to look classy, and to cover up my eyes, but think I"ll wait until I'm rich enough to waste that kind of money.
I do wear sunglasses all the time, and have embraced the Stevie Wonder look to some
degree. Hence, my user name.
I don't wear them because my eyes look terribly bad, my issue is RP as well as severe
keratoconis. If you look closely, you will see the bulging corneas but it is not obvious. I
wear them because I have light perception remaining, and no usable vision besides that,
so I actually prefer to keep things as dim and peaceful as possible. It helps me in the
transition to bright lighting, and I actually do find I feel more stylish with them on. Now
that I use a dog, it's not such a big deal, but when I used to cane travel and would be
sitting somewhere with my cane folded away, I found it was another cue to others that I
might be blind, much as an ID cane would be. I never viewed wearing sunglasses as
pruposefully trying to attract attention to myself being blind, though, but if somebody was
to stick out their hand to shake it and I didn't reciprocate, the glasses would be a indicator
of what might be the issue. I had so many situations where people didn't assume I was
legally blind from the way I look, and also, in my younger days I did have very decent
vision before the RP worsened, so friends, family and others didn't easily adjust to the
rapid changes and I felt the sunglasses were a reminder to them that things were
different for me now. No longer could someone toss me a ball, or pass me a picture to
look at, or offer their hand without giving me some other cue, so I suppose I embraced
the sunglass look. I will say though, that if it was not for the light sensitivity issue, I would
not wear them.
Hope this makes sense.
so, growning up media perception of blind people was uniformed. the dark shades, the stick or dog. so i grew up seeing the blind always wearing shades. naturaley when i lost my sight i navagated towards the sterotype or stock blind character. i tried not wearing my shades but i feel naked! i find they help me avoid some degree of ackwardness. since most people associate a stick and sades with being blind. my eyes dont look too bad. i have naturaly stoner eyes. so this helps.so yes shades all the way!
I ware shades only when I go out. I got shrinking eye-ball at my left eye and a little smaller than normal eye-ball in my wright eye.
I wear sunglasses because the glare is rough on my eyes, not because that is society's
stereotypical blind person. And if my friend said something like that, well, I'd tell them to
accept me with or without the glasses. Because you don't need to change the way you
look to please someone. It's not like it's some gross habit.
Like the last poster, I, too, have light sensitivity issues. I don't normally wear sunglasses when I'm inside, but always do outside.
I never actually thought of wearing them to cover up my eyes, though. I've gotten the bit about how it's disconcerting to look at someone whose eyes are constantly moving, as mine do, but I guess I also think that wearing sunglasses, even when one is inside a building, would be considered even more odd. It was drilled into me from a young age that, if a person can't look you in the eye for any reason, they think you have something to hide and are up to no good.
While I can't control whether or not this is what people think of me, nor do I particularly care anymore whether they do, it's something I've been curious about. Do many people actually believe this?
GT: That is a cultural phenomena. When I went to Japan, they drilled into us that looking
someone directly in the eye is abrasive, disconcerting and rude, kind of how we Anglos
feel about someone invading our space.
So many blind things and organizations are so narrow, bigoted and ethnocentric in their
thinking, though they may need to find a dictionary and look up that word "ethnocentric".
So many things are culturally and regionally subjective.
Wow, thanks to all who responded to my question.
To the poster named Shades, I have a friend with Keratoconus and I've always thought it sounded like a magic spell from the Harry Potterverse lol "Keratoconus leviosa!"
Anyhow, I think my dork is showing so I think I'll shush on that point.
I was doing research online the other day, looking for a good Halloween costume and I came across holographic glasses. Some had the traditional spooky googly eyes, but others had other more normal looking eyes. I thought that was a pretty neat idea, sorta like having prosthetic eyes you could change out, like some people do with colored contacts. I also wondered, if someone might someday create digital glasses, where through your phone or some other electronic means you could swap out your holographic eyes with the press of a button.
Ps: I'm totally copyrighting that idea if it isn't already in existence. :D
That holographic idea could pose some rather serious domestic security concerns, as the eyes are an important part of facial recognition software, either wetware onboard most humans and other primates, or software created by humans.
Again, interesting idea though.
I was born with two empty eye sockets; so for the first six years I didnt' wear anything. I imagine I looked pretty scary and or funny to some, but I cant' really remember that time of my life enough to be scarred by it. lol. Then, at six, I got my prosthetics. They weren't the perminant implants, just the temporary kind that you exchange as you grow. I had them in for over 12 years and they looked fantastic, I'm told. I've been able to fool quite a bit of people into thinking I coud could see, actually, at least till they saw the cane or the dog, lol, so I'm pretty sure they looked grate. I never wore glasses back then. Then I got an infection in one of the eye sockets, I got careless and never really took care of it properly (my bad, not proud), and I had to take them out and keep them out. I've dealt with one thing or another since then; I was going to go get the perminant implants but I couldnt' do the surgery since first I was pregnant with my son and then I breastfed for a year and a half;. Just now, in fact, I went back to the ocularist to talk about new prosthetics. because I'm sick of wearing glasses when i do go out. And so yes; now that I no longer have my prosthetics, I won't be caught dead without my glasses when I'm out. But hopefully I can ditch the shades soon once more.
I only wear sunglasses because I am extremely light sensative, though my problem is that my central vision is virtually gone. I only see shadows, but it is much better in my periferal vision and I find that sunglasses blocks this. So I have to decide if I want my eyes to hurt or see a little, my choice varies.
I have some eye movements that are involuntary, it's mainly a problem when taking pictures, but it's not as bad as some people at all so I don't wear glasses to cover that up.
I was diagnosed with keratoconus about 2 years ago though, so as that worsens perhaps I will, if it really starts to affect the way I look to people.
No, it shouldn't matter what someone looks like, but there are some times when the damage to my eyes becomes more visible I might choose to cover it.
I am extremely comfortable with myself. especially when I was younger, some may remember. However, I tend not to be rather sensitive to how others may feel about my appearance in terms of features I possess. I do not see the point in sunglasses, so I tend not to ware them. It is somewhat shallow and superficial to judge an individual by there eyes, as there are quite deeper aspects to an individual than one's eyes. For this reason, I do not tend to ware makeup either.
I figured I would throw in my two cents here for what it is worth. A few posters seem to
have the same experience as myself. I wear sunglasses when I go outside to help combat
the effects of glare. I do have some usable vision, and I find that lower levels of
background light help me to see better.
Now to approach the subject from the cosmetic point of view. My eyes look relatively
normal compared to some, they do move around quite a lot. I wouldn't consider wearing
shades to cover them up, because I don't believe they are offensive for other people to
look at. To post 22. I am really not sure how you can equate one trying to hide deformed
eyes to wearing makeup. while you are right in your assertion that it would be shallow to
judge somebody by the way their eyes look, unfortunately, you have to except the fact
that if someone looks significantly different to others they are going to be noticed straight
away. wearing something like sunglasses to cover deformed eyes is just that. Someone
choosing to wear makeup is to accentuate certain features of the face. Massive difference.