There was an article on the BBC News app yesterday that made me quite angry when I read it. I read that in Japan, some companies are banning their female employees from wearing glasses. It was also stated that in the Japanese retail sector, female shop assistants who wear glasses give off a ‘cold’ impression.
So how about Japanese men who wear glasses then? I take it they get to keep theirs on while the female staff suffer headaches and bump into the furniture if they don’t want to wear contact lenses? This just goes to perpetuate the sad predominantly male idea of women as sex objects to be ogled at and not taken seriously; a kind of walking (but not talking) vagina. Hundreds of thousands of creepy men slavering over pornography through the decades has only helped to intensify the misconception that women are air-heads. This ban will do nothing to help teenage girls and young women, who through some men’s warped views of what women should look like, magazine air-brushing of ‘celebrities’ or on-line bullying, obsess about their body image and become over-conscious about their appearance.
I’ve worn glasses since I was 17. I could no more put a contact lens in my eye than fly to the moon. So what if women wear glasses? So do men, and they wear them for a reason – because they can’t see very well without them.
Do women have the same problem dating a man who wears spectacles? My eldest son, his wife and their two children all wear spectacles, so obviously glasses do not matter to them. I’d been wearing glasses for 3 years before I met Sam. My glasses are part of me – I’d feel quite peculiar without them. I know that my daughter-in-law would say that if anybody has a problem about her or her daughters wearing glasses, then it’s their problem and not hers.
Whenever you see any woman on TV wearing glasses, she’s either a newsreader, or acting the part of a lawyer, a scientist, or somebody who is very brainy in another sphere; she always takes them off for her close-ups or if she has to talk. The only time she doesn’t take them off is if she is advertising the spectacles themselves. Dorothy Parker once said that ‘Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses’, but another way of interpreting this is that men consider girls who wear glasses might be cleverer than they are, and therefore to be avoided.
Why can’t a woman be cleverer than her partner? Why does the male of the species think that he has to dominate all the time? Okay he may be physically stronger, but that does not make him superior. Sorry for the rant, but this is a real backward step in the fight for gender equality.
dgkaye said:
You can say that again Stevie. Seems the whole world these days wants to go backwards instead of moving forward. 😦
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suzan khoja said:
People are going crazy. This is a kind of body shaming, just because they have glasses they can’t work, what rubbish. That’s why I started this campaign. 😔✌
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Stevie Turner said:
Too right. It’s shameful to treat women this way.
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suzan khoja said:
It’s right and shameful too but who cares as long as they look less strict. Humanity is dying. 😔✌
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Stevie Turner said:
Yes indeed.
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franklparker said:
I was at an event last evening featuring a couple of Irish literary “stars”. At one point Joseph O’Connor walked from the lectern to his seat then walked back again to retrieve his glasses. Apropos of which he told the story of someone in the queue at the university of Limerick refectory who was overheard saying “I’ve reached the point in life where I can manage without sex but not without my glasses.”
Sorry, off the subject, but could not resist!
I agree it is appalling that managements make rules about how women dress/look but never about men. On the other hand, I know women who would not leave the house without make up and hairspray. They can be their own worst enemy and critic.
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jenanita01 said:
Sometimes I have to remind myself that we are actually in the 21st Century!
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Stevie Turner said:
I think some people have suddenly gone back to Victorian times!
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robertawrites235681907 said:
I don’t believe there is any real gender equality anywhere, Stevie. Women in corporates still struggle to prove themselves in a predominately male dominated corporate leadership. They have to work harder and push themselves forward far more than their male counterparts. Having a baby is fine so long as it doesn’t interfere with your work hours and delivery in any way which can be difficult for a lot of women who are largely still the primary care givers and the ones who run the home. All that gender equality seems to have brought for women is that we now have to work and earn a salary as well as doing everything else unless we put our children into the care of others and essentially pretend they don’t need us. A rant, but this is something that I feel strongly about having been on the receiving end of “gender inequality” for the past twenty years.
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Stevie Turner said:
You’ve said it all there, Robbie. Agents want us to write about strong women, but in reality there aren’t that many. Those women told not to wear glasses should not be passive and instead should start to assert themselves. However, reality will step in again and they’ll probably end up doing as they’re told by a man who gets to keep his glasses on. I know I should write about a strong woman climbing the corporate ladder, but I’m a realist. The boss’s son is already there somewhere near the top anyway, and he didn’t pass her on the ascent…
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jwebster2 said:
seriously it is a stark reminder that the Japanese (and Chinese and others) may superficially share our culture but it is very superficial
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Stevie Turner said:
Why don’t these women complain? Arrgh, it makes me so angry!
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jwebster2 said:
cultural, it’s probably only a proportion of the younger generation who have been more exposed to mainly American influences who would even think to complain
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Stevie Turner said:
More fool the ones that don’t.
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jwebster2 said:
We forget how tightly our culture blinds us into accepting what is ‘normal’
That’s probably why, in a fast changing culture, the elderly struggle to understand so much of what is going on
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By Hook Or By Book ~ Book Reviews, News, & Other Stuff said:
I just read about this earlier tonight on BBC and couldn’t believe my eyes. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist). Seriously though, what the heck!
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Stevie Turner said:
Yes indeed, what the heck… why the heck do these women put up with something like that?
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