"your glasses are sexy"

.... {insert male name here}.

I get this all the time. Never cute, often cool. But sexy. Sexxxxy. That's pretty damn specific. Not everyone is sexy. And my glasses, these big, round plastic things I wear over my face every single day, make me sexy. Hearing this so often really makes me laugh.

So I am trying to analyze how and why this came to be in a world where, growing up, the adage "boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses" was totally true. I mean, come on. Glasses?

I have come up with a few benchmarks that explain the relative sex appeal my glasses give me (and countless other ladies, and dudes for that matter, as well).

1. Slutty Smart Girl Fetish

Nerd porn. Fucking in the chem lab fantasies. Being spanked by your stern boss lady staring hot sex daggers through her spectacles. I get it. Some dudes really get off on that kind of thing. In my research, that is, noticing what happens to me in my daily life, most of these guys are nerds, scenesters, geek chic types. Kids that jam on guitar in their room for 6 hours a day writing songs about the glasses girl he just can't have. Or, as a perfect example, Taylor Swift in her music video. My dear friend Andrew was straight up about it with me one day at a party. Andrew is a caustic, highly intelligent and handsome young man looking for a match. He says to me, "Boots. Do you know that girl over there?" He points to a pale, sweet-looking blonde with killer thick tortoise shell frames on her rosy face. No, I did not know who she was. Why do you ask Andrew? Are you interested? He replies, "I just saw the glasses and and thought 'Yes, a cute girl nerd!' " Need further proof? I had a sexual rendez-vous with a punk rocker I knew in high school. He was highly attracted to me, and he made it very clear.

NOTE: I guess at this point I should talk about what I look like, because this whole post is about looks and being called sexy and the glasses, etc. So, ya know, I don't put pictures of myself up here because I really don't think it's necessary, it's not about what I look like but what I have to say and how I'm saying it.

So what do I look like, for the sake of this argument? I'm pretty. So I've been told. I've been called some adjectives that are very flattering, regarding my appearance. Needless to say, I am confident that I appeal to a reasonable percentage the opposite sex, and YES, my argument is contingent upon that opinion. So take from that what you will. I'm not saying putting cool glasses on a shovel-faced girl is going to make you want to fuck her. I'm saying that something about glasses just gives us a mysterious extra...je ne sais quoi.

ANYWAY, this punk rocker told me to never wear contacts, because the glasses were his favorite thing about me. He just "likes girls with glasses." I thought back to high school and all of this guy's girlfriends... were cute girls with cool glasses. Ah hah.

And you know what? Even those brotastic, sporty, preppy guys who would never associate themselves with a "nerdy girl" sometimes make exceptions for the right girl in the right pair of glasses.... it's something they've thought about. Trust me. I dated a lacrosse playing, beer guzzling party dude in college and I was his first "smart" girlfriend, and he loved, LOOOOVED, my glasses.

2. CONFIDENCE

This one seems simple, but it actually didn't register with me personally until someone pointed it out. "You have to be confident to wear glasses!" someone told me. I thought, well, I don't like touching my eye and these glasses take 1 second to put on and take off... I wear them because I'm lazy.

Such is not the case. I bet you'd be surprised how many glasses-free people wear contact lenses instead. Some, not all, contacts wearers just don't like the way they look with glasses, but I'm apt to believe that as far as young ladies and gents go, they don't want to look like a nerd. They might be worried that wearing glasses will make them look like a douchebag.

But the confidence to wear the glasses, the confidence to rock some trendy frames, to commit to a look, to wear it every day and still go about your life, that makes sense too. My newest pair are kind of extra large, dark brown tortoise shell outside, white inside. People constantly compliment me for them and say things like "I could never wear those. But YOU pull them off." I hear this A LOT. I say, of course you could wear them. You could just put them on and then you'd be wearing them. No one is going to say "WHY IS THAT GIRL WEARING THOSE COOL GLASSES???" And if they do, they're not going to stop you and shout it in your face. That's what I think, anyway. But that's because I have this "confidence" thing.

And that, my friends, is appealing. Sexy, even.

3. Style/Irony

Pretty self-explanatory, right? In the ironic sense, that glasses give a caricature-like look of style and intelligence. That's why so many scenester assholes have been wearing big, dramatic plastic frames with fake lenses in them as of late. If I wear glasses, it's not because I'm trying to pull off a "look," it's because I'd kill people in my car if I wasn't wearing them. In some circles, a cute girl in a pair of attention-grabbing eyewear (see: dark thick frames, never EVER wire-rimmed or otherwise) will set of boner alerts. Based on pure, shallow iconography alone. It's a fashion statement, like Yves St. Laurent's classic frames or Miranda Priestly in film fiction. Or, it's just a fleeting attempt to copy that same accessorized intelligence.

So, what have I learned? It's saying something to wear glasses in this day of Lasik and Acuview Dailys. And something about that has sex appeal. It's dominance, it's authoritative, it's geeky, it's trendy. It's hot.

Apple Training: The Night Before

I was very recently hired at the local Apple Store. A position that is not easily acquired, it turns out.

Tomorrow, EARLY, I embark on a voyage to Boston where I will being Day One of my Core Training, as they call it.

I've already been sworn to secrecy about delicate and private matters of Apple Inc. I will probably be able to write very little of what I learn tomorrow and over the next two days in Boston. Seriously, though! I could be fired or sued if I divulge details. So I'll have to be vague.

I'm not really scared. I sort of thrive on going into things blindly. I'm not scared of doing things alone or following directions or meeting new people. I just feel anxious, because it's going to be quite a production: waking up early, driving to the mall, parking, walking to the train station, meeting up with the other new hires, getting on the train, the ride, then the curious two block walk in God knows what direction to the training premises . In the very basic directions sent to us by the manager, all they tell us is when we enter the building ,we're to look for a "huge waterfall."

It is just daunting, that's all.

We're going to be there for 9 hours. Well we have 1 hour off for lunch, so 8 hours of Apple training. What on EARTH could they do with us for 8 hours? And three days? I seriously can't even imagine it.

I just have a vision of a huge, high ceiling hall filled with people and Steve Jobs' huge face on a screen saying WELCOME.

Indoctrination begins tomorrow.

UPDATE: So now I know. Three long days! Fun though, if not a little daunting (ftw). And no deets. Sorry. Who cares? No one not even you.

auto

This is the kind of car I drive. It's a 2002 Hyundai Accent GS, bright ass red, two doors, hatchback.

JEALOUS?

It's kind of a chick car, it's cute, it's very compact. It's Boots sized, for sure.

I have an unusually significant attachment to my car, but -- then again -- a lot of people do, no?

I didn't get my driver's license until I was 20 years old, as a soon to be junior in college. I had been terrified of operating a motor vehicle for much of my youth. I had nightmares as a child about being abandoned behind the wheel of a moving car. Yes, the thought of driving was horrifying.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I know that I HATE dangerous thrill-seeking type activities. No roller coasters, no horror movies, none of that panicky shit. I have enough panic in my dumb life as is.

Driving was, however, a necessary part of life. Something I entrusted others to do, but not me. I didn't trust myself. Too scary.

I had a borderline traumatizing situation when I was about 15 years old that involved my dad allowing my untrained ass to back my mother's 2000 Nissan Maxima, standard, out of the garage. I had no idea what to do with a clutch and an accelerator and I sent the car speeding in reverse a little ways down a hill into woods and slamming the back end into a tree trunk. It was a bit mangled, but no one was hurt. We did have to tow the car out of the mess I had made.

It was definitely a marked moment in my life that I experienced real danger, real lack of control and high intensity panic. I had been very, very weary to get behind the wheel of any car from that time on.

I finally pulled my shit together and got my driver's license in the summer before my junior year of college, after two years of having my ass carted around by friends to parties, never the sober one, feeling really pathetic that I wasn't independent, that I still politely begged for rides, that people were starting to resent my handicap.

It's coming up on two years behind the wheel, and I am obsessed with driving my car. The feeling is blissful to be in control of a speeding machine and in control of where I'm going and when I'm getting there. But you all know that.

However, I did get into my first real accident. It FUCKING SUCKED. It was totally my fault, too. I was talking on the phone with my dad about important stuff (seriously) and I was going way too fast on Rt. 4 south, approaching a stoplight. Long and short I crammed the front end of my car into the back end of another. The lady was fine (but a bitch) and my car was mashed up badly. The cop made me cry (of course). I drove a rental for two weeks (dope). Now my car is mine again. I felt so bad that I had hurt her. My dad's repair guy pulled massive strings to prevent my darling Accent from being totaled.

+++

My favorite thing to do in my car is sing. It's weird. I'll start by listening to music on my iPod, then I'll come across a song I really like to sing, and before I know it, that damn song is getting the way of my vocals. I get antsy and I want to hear what I sound like. So I'll turn off the stereo and listen the sound of my own voice.

I'm not the best singer. I'm pretty good, though. I can definitely carry a tune, but my chops are shaky, not very strong or controlled. I love singing. And in my car I find myself belting out songs like a fucking diva. It's really, really great. Being able to have that alone time, moving fast, flying down roads, in control. And I'm not scared anymore, not at all. Another irrational fear dominated.