{"id":83429,"date":"2015-03-09T16:11:32","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T20:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=83429"},"modified":"2015-03-10T12:23:44","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T16:23:44","slug":"2020-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/09\/2020-2\/","title":{"rendered":"20\/20"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"sadieglasses2\"<\/a>

The offending glasses.<\/p><\/div>\n

My grandfather liked to talk about how much uglier Americans used to be. \u201cPeople were ugly<\/em>!\u201d he would say with relish. \u201cYou have no idea<\/em> now!\u201d As children, we would always try to refute his claims, citing examples of modern celebrities we considered unattractive. But he would have none of it. \u201cYou don\u2019t know,\u201d he said darkly. To hear him tell it, the bit of Arkansas where he grew up was straight out of a Carson McCullers novel\u2014which, I suppose, makes it sort of noteworthy that when a circus came to town, it was my grandfather who was considered such a dead ringer for the sideshow attraction Moe-Joe the Dog-Faced Boy that he bore this name for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Grandpa Moe was thinking of\u00a0improved dentistry, malnutrition, or various dermatological conditions; maybe a combination. I can\u2019t help wondering if, also, some people just couldn\u2019t see themselves, so they cared less. After all, regular, exact prescription updates are a modern luxury, too, to say nothing of contacts and laser surgeries. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve only worn glasses regularly since I was about twenty-one, but like many who rely on correction, my eyes have deteriorated rapidly since then, and at this point I am completely dependent on them. I\u2019ve never worn contact lenses. Those of us who don\u2019t see well don\u2019t really know what we look like. Either our faces are framed\u2014distorted, depending on the prescription\u2014by glasses, or we can\u2019t see ourselves clearly. And while it\u2019s true that this can have an effect on practicalities like makeup application, the larger issue is psychological. When you can\u2019t see the world well, it is nearly impossible to believe that the world can see you.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, I broke my glasses. It\u2019s not the first time; it happens. I\u2019ve done my time in airports holding single halves up to my eyes like Mr. Peanut, or standing two inches from TV screens\u2014haven\u2019t we all? But that doesn\u2019t mean it isn\u2019t always kind of jarring: to lose the luxury of taking something so fundamental for granted is strange.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you wear glasses, you know that an across-the-bridge break is fatal, but I was away from home and didn\u2019t have a backup pair with me, so I attempted a number of fixes involving every material I could find: floss, gum, Krazy Glue, string. For a while, a sort of plaster made of epoxy-soaked cheesecloth worked well enough to allow me to watch a movie. After that fell apart, I reinforced things with a sort of copper-wire cantilever and a large Band-Aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Later in life, when my grandfather had lost a couple of front teeth and had to go out socially, he would superglue\u00a0the teeth into his mouth. And staring at the not dissimilar contraption I\u2019d put together, it was hard not to feel an alarmed chill. The good news was, I couldn\u2019t really see myself.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2018s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My grandfather liked to talk about how much uglier Americans used to be. \u201cPeople were ugly!\u201d he would say with relish. \u201cYou have no idea now!\u201d As children, we would always try to refute his claims, citing examples of modern celebrities we considered unattractive. But he would have none of it. \u201cYou don\u2019t know,\u201d he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[12528,17314,8226,11631,17316,17315,17317,17313,17312],"class_list":["post-83429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-accidents","tag-contact-lenses","tag-family","tag-glasses","tag-mirrors","tag-seeing","tag-ugliness","tag-vanity","tag-vision"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSeeing the World Through Broken Glasses<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My grandfather liked to talk about how much uglier Americans used to be. \u201cPeople were ugly!\u201d he would say with relish.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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