LeBron James and Justin Bieber are donning glasses as fashion statements. Not me! | Opinion

I’m not going to name names, but someone I know, someone close to me, has started to wear eyeglasses. Randomly, occasionally, and not because she requires them. In other words, she wears them for special events or to top off an outfit. They’re thick-framed and black, oversized, not particularly pretty but certainly striking. Nevertheless, I’m baffled.

I wear glasses, and if I didn’t need them to see past my nose, I’d discard them as quickly as used toilet paper. My eyesight is so bad that I tell people I can’t hear them if I’m not wearing a dang pair. Few believe me when I say this, but it’s the absolute truth. I put them on first thing in the morning so I won’t trip or run into something — like a wall or a large dresser.

I’ve been wearing glasses since late elementary school, when a teacher told my parents I couldn’t read the blackboard. Until then I had held my own (or thought I did) by squinting, but I apparently fooled no one. Photos from those formative and awkward years show me wearing blue cat-eye glasses as well as these tacky bright-pink square-framed ones that overwhelmed my face.

In high school, I moved on to contact lenses, though I continued to squint, for comfort and out of habit. I lost count of how many of those tiny discs I lost in the decades that followed.

Still, I remained stubbornly devoted to the dang contacts, first the hard ones and then, when they came on the market with much fanfare, the soft lenses. I wasn’t a fan — too much cleaning, not enough correcting — but at the time no one accessorized their wardrobe with any kind of facial add-ons. OK, maybe eyeliner, but certainly not glitter.

Eyeglasses weren’t something you wanted. On the contrary. The name-calling associated with them, particularly at school, could be pointed and cruel:

Four-eyes.

Boys don’t kiss girls who wear glasses.

Blinkie. Mole. Nerd.

Eventually, though, I gave up contacts and returned to full-time glasses. Now, more than a half-century after the purchase of my first pair, they’re an absolute necessity, a constant. Without them I feel naked. But I still wish I didn’t need them to recognize faces across a room.

Which is why I don’t understand this trend to wear non-prescription glasses. And it’s most definitely a trend, by the way. I checked with my circle of friendly fashionistas, who promptly schooled me on the many ways non-prescription glasses have become a go-to ornamentation for those who want to make a statement. Fake glasses are such faves that you can now purchase them at discount stores without forking over serious bucks.

Of course, you can also pay a premium price, which, I suppose, is what LeBron James and Justin Bieber did when they were photographed wearing a pair, or two, or three. (Not at the same time, of course.) In fact, the singer-songwriter is featured in a story about his top five glasses. Five! I own one pair and paid through the nose for the privilege, even with vision insurance.

Maybe my lifelong resistance to eyeglasses could be tamed with a little variety. Maybe I need to think of them in a different way. See them in another light. (Haha, Get it? SEE.)

For example, a close friend has had the good luck to never need eyeglasses. To me, this is nothing short of a miracle, since everyone in my family is diagnosed, sooner or later, with astigmatism or myopia. In midlife, when my friend could no longer read offerings on a menu, she made it a point to buy several reading glasses. All are loud, zany, eccentric. Way out there. You would never miss them on her face.

If I only had that kind of confidence.

Ana Veciana-Suarez writes about family and social issues. Email her at avecianasuarez@gmail.com or visit her website anavecianasuarez.com. Follow @AnaVeciana.