Framed! Germaine Greer

Last month I watched Germaine Greer and her exploits on Big Brother. Greer has given me a lot of ideas about spectacles making you look older than you actually are.

It's not always the choice of frame that is the problem, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the veteran feminist's choice of glasses (I think she has an Air Titanium).

But there are several eye furniture crimes which Ms Greer is committing on a regular basis that are nothing to do with product and these are crimes of her generation. If I'd been in the Big Brother house with her, here's what I'd have told her:

First off, burn the neck chain. You have a lightweight titanium frame with a good varifocal lens.

It should sit nice and comfortably on your nose and should remain there; there is no need to do a Miss Marple and have it hanging round your neck on bright red string.

Spectacles have come a long way since the standard reader and you have been given the correct frame and presumably the correct lenses, so why do you walk around the Big Brother house with a medallion round your neck? 

Do you not look at John McCririck and think, 'he's got a neck chain like mine, something's wrong'.

Nowhere to hide
The next point is the lens shape - it's too big. It's making the frame too heavy at the front. Its soft rounded shape makes me think you are embarrassed to be wearing spectacles and are trying to hide them.

This leads me nicely onto my last and main point: stop looking over the top of your spectacles! There is nothing more certain to ruin your appearance and add 15 years to your look than peering over a pair of glasses. 

I know you're probably doing it without realising it, but I am seeing this crime on a weekly basis from not just yourself but all your peers.

Germaine, I think the problem comes from you not being comfortable in your glasses. I don't think you like wearing them so you take them off at every opportunity, hence the neck chain.

You think that rimless means you can hardly see the frame? Forget it, it doesn't work. We can all see them. Looking over your frame even though it's a varifocal? A common crime.

In this case it's not what to wear, but how to wear it. Don't get stuck in the old ways, embrace the lens technology and liberate yourself!