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“Spectacles have been around for about seven centuries,” notes one historian, “but early versions were only worn by monks and scholars. It wasn’t until the invention of the printing press in 1452 and an increase in literacy that demand for eyewear grew as well.”
Though it was hardly a case of “women and children first,” centuries later the fair sex was permitted to partake in reading and education…and eventually eyewear. Clearly, the results were real – and spec•tacular!
In 1937, acerbic author and wit Dorothy Parker penned those famous words: “Men Seldom Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses.” Pretty Parker preferred glasses with highballs to those for eyeballs…
…and battled alcoholism and depression for much of her later life. When a bartender at a speakeasy asked the authoress, ‘What are you having?’ she reportedly replied, ‘Not much fun’…and left us with this limerick: “I like to have a martini/Two at the very most/After three I’m under the table/After four I’m under my host.”
Though Dorothy may have “surrendered,” her words live on today—as em•bodied by popular plus-size model London Andrews:
“Dorothy Parker might be glad to know that men frequently make passes at girls (and women) who wear glasses nowadays,” notes Everything2.com. “In at least American culture, glasses tend to connote intelligence and often a certain degree of nerdiness to the unwary observer, and fortunately nowadays intelligence is more accepted, even valued, in women.”
Two of the most desired damsels of the day just happen to be bespectacled redheads with big boobs! Conservative commenter S.E. Cupp has caused interviewees to forget their lines…yet says she feels “disgusted” at men lusting after her: “It gives me the creeps.” Perhaps she should tone down the bright “blowjob lips” and on-air orgasms with the erect Capitol dome in the background?
But perhaps the Number One Nerd Fantasy Figure is YouTube sensation and “Cosplay Goddess” Meg Turney, who often makes a spec•tacle of herself in selfies and photoshoots.
Asked if she would ever consider posing for the now non-nude Playboy, Meg mused: “They’re nude, but they’re doing the cheeky nudity, like ‘Oh, my hands are in my vagina and you can’t even see it’ {in girlish voice}. Which I would be totally open to!” Turney’s also open to admitting she’s totally “bi”—and we don’t mean bi•focal.
Though when she wore this cleavage-baring costume in a video to promote the Assassin’s Creed III release, fanboys flooded her “in box” with protests that her mams distracted from her message! “I wanna talk about my boobs,” the buxom History major began an online video rant. “First and foremost, they’re my boobs. I like the way they look. The idea that nobody could possibly be listening to the content of my message because my tits are showing—I wasn’t wearing nipple tassels after all—that’s ridiculous to me. I think you can have a valid opinion and a great rack at the same time. I just think the people who were clicking on the video just to see my tits probably weren’t going to listen anyway. So Spoiler: I think they can suck it.” We 32C her point…
Speaking of which, though we’ve chosen to celebrate June 6th as National Eyewear Day…because, frankly, the optics are hotter…we should pause to honor today’s far more important national holiday: D Day.
And doubling down on that notion, the Double D that initially caught Sleuth’s eye—and entire generation’s—while cementing the concept of ‘Specs Appeal,’ was the very first Playboy centerfold depicted in glasses: March 1967’s 39DD-24-36Fran Gerard.
“I was thinking today,” wrote the creator of The Eyewear Blog in 2014, “who was the first woman in glasses I can remember that struck me as deeply sexy? I almost immediately recalled a Playmate from the 1960s—smiling, bookish looking, hair piled atop her head, white negligée forming a filmy canopy over the body of a fertility goddess. Who was she? And whatever happened to her?
Alas, who could have seen the future for the ‘four-eyed’ fox: Born Frances Anna Camuglia, she married 37-year-old Jack Cavender at age 17before graduating from Granada Hills High School in 1966. They divorced a month before she appeared in Playboy…and after a second failed marriage, “Fran Gerard basically disappeared.”
Sadly, Sleuth must report that ‘Frances Cavender’ died in Fountain View, California on May 30, 1985, at age 37. Much like her pert profile, her death is shrouded in mystery, but she seems to have taken her own life.
“I’d simply wanted to write about a sexy woman in eyewear,” laments the author of The Mysterious Life and Death of the First Playboy Playmate in Glasses. “Instead I find myself pondering a gloomy enigma.” With little to “in fur” and much to spec•ulate…
Today, Fran’s ‘fetish’ is downright trendy: “If the phrase ‘Guys Don’t Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses’ makes you sick with its untruth and misogyny,” writes The Fashion Spot in its Geek Up Your Glam feature, “here’s the cure. Check out some of the coolest eyewear for Fall, and some of the hottest bespectacled babes modeling them. We’re willing to bet these girls have fended off their share of passes. Since we don’t live in the 19th Century, they probably even make passes themselves. You know how brazen girls in glasses are” (below left). Now there’s an idea we can get behind (below right)!
“Topless girls are hot enough on their own,” observes Sweet Ass Angels.com, “but they earn bonus points in sexy when they are wearing glasses. We dig adorable four-eyed babes who look like sexy nerds.” Even performing everyday tasks—with tan lines—it’s little ‘Wonder’ this pair bread our undivided attention!
And it’s not just amorous amateurs sporting specs anymore: “Glasses have become a popular trend,” notes Ranker.com, “and more and more celebrities are wearing them instead of reaching for the contacts. Whether necessary for vision, or just as a fun accessory, these gorgeous celebrities are making glasses look hot. And there’s also the connotation of intelligence that comes with a pair of glasses—why do you think so many men have teacher and librarian fetishes?”
Adds comedienne and writer Tina Fey: “I think people fetishize glasses in general. You could put glasses on a rotting pumpkin and people would think it was sexy.”
Orange you glad we chose Fey to front our focus on Famous Frames on Famous Dames?
TINA FEY – the ‘poster child’ for horn-rimmed hotness
LISA LOEB – her musical counterpart for gals with glasses…and great asses!
ALISON PILL– the Newsroom nerd accidentally posted a topless pic of herself on 9/11/12…
…deleting it with horror minutes later and tweeting:
AVRIL LAVIGNE – wearing glasses on her face and shirt…then no shirt
DEBORAH HARRY – long before selfies, the Blondie bombshell took, and partook, in lovely lens poses
KATE BECKINSALE – the Underworld beauty is ‘blind as a bat’…and X number of men might go blind at the sight of her topless in the 1994 film Uncovered {directed by someone named Jim McBride!}
ABBEY LEE KERSHAW – the face of Tom Ford Yves St. Laurent eyewear, the bisexual Aussie supermodel says “women are better lovers than men”
AMANDA PEET – the shy ‘tortoise’ came out of her ‘shell’ to show The Whole Nine Yards in that year 2000 film
TERA PATRICK – Boise State-trained nurse Linda Ann Hopkins, she had to spell her nom de porn with an ‘e’ when Tara Patrick {renamed Carmen Electra by lover mentor Prince} threatened to sue
HELEN FLANAGAN – when FHM’s Sexiest Woman in Britain arrived at the 2012 Spectacle Wearer of the Year Awards, the Daily Mail headlined: “No One is Looking at Your Glasses!”
EVA MENDES– “I’ve wanted glasses my whole life!” declared the spokeswoman for Vogue Eyewear, “and now I really need them.”
PATRICIA FORD – five-time winner of the Internet Bikini Open, she retired to get married in 2001 and now works at the Disney-owned Spa at Aulani in her native Hawaii where she “does nails and facials, but not massages”
That will ENDour Delightful Dozen ‘Visions of Loveliness’ …
Butt let’s “finish off” with Sleuth’s selection for the Prettiest Woman in Porn…and XBiz’s Female Performer of the Year for 2015 and 2016, dishy Dani Daniels. An aspiring artist under her real name of Kira Orsag, she can’t see a thing without her glasses. Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those …
