I have never been hired for a job when I wore eyeglasses to the interview. I have always been hired when I wore contact lenses instead.

The same statistics apply to my dating life.

Glasses = no date or girlfriend. With contact lenses…perhaps success was not guaranteed, but at least there were successes.

When I was growing up, my younger brother was popular and well-liked by guys and girls alike. I was an outcast, and the god’s honest truth is I spent much of my time hanging out with my brother’s friends because for the most part, I didn’t have friends of my own. My brother was regarded as good at sports, whereas I was picked last for every single team event gym class had to offer. My brother never needed glasses; I did.

When I was in high school, a girl once asked me:

Your dad and your brother are really cute! …what happened to you?

(If you’re wondering, my father does not wear glasses.)

One is tempted to blame my classmates for the way I was treated, but I submit to you that my classmates are blameless. They were taught to view glasses-wearers a certain way.

Stuttering, nervous and insignificant news reporter Clark Kent wears glasses. His alter ego, Superman, who rescues women and stops bullets, does not. Downtrodden and clumsy Peter Parker, who slouches his shoulders and becomes tongue-tied around women, wears

glasses. The hero Spider-man, who can win a high school cafeteria fight without throwing a single punch, does not.

Quiet, unassuming watchmaker Gabriel Gray of the Heroes ensemble wears glasses. The villain Sylar, who is nigh unstoppable and takes what he wants without asking, does not wear glasses.

Jerry Seinfeld, the hero of his own iconic sitcom, does not wear glasses (at least not in the show). His loser friendGeorge Castanza, who deliberately or accidentally sabotages every single job or relationship, wears glasses all the time. Mutual friend Elayne Benes, who is sometimes socially awkward and sometimes relatively normal, sometimes wears glasses. (Go figure.)

I think these women would be pretty good looking if they weren’t wearing glasses.

–Jerry Seinfeld, “The Glasses“, Seinfeld, NBC, aired May 30th, 1993.

Do you think perhaps that glasses are a sign of intelligence? I urge you to reconsider. Jimmy Neutron, boy genius, does not wear glasses. His sidekick Carl Wheezer, wears glasses though, and is described as “nervous, timid and suffering from hypochondria”.

One major annoyance wearing glasses is that one cannot also wear sunglasses — at least, not and retain some shred of dignity, unless you shell out major money for prescription sunglasses or eyeglasses which change shade to match your environment.

And I confess to you, my biggest concern when putting on a pair of sunglasses is not protecting my eyes from the sun (although that is also a factor, particularly with eyes as light as mine), but vanity.

Someone in sunglasses is much cooler than someone without them.

For your consideration, I submit to you Ahnold in the glory of his Terminator 2 days, complete with motorcycle, leather jacket, and shotgun, while “Bad to the Bone” plays in the soundtrack. This objet d’art would not be complete with a dark pair of sunglasses, even in the dark of night.

Just imagine this fearsome terminator wearing a large pair of spectacles instead and see whether he inspires the same fear and awe — I think not.

So far I’ve just been citing examples and letting you make up your mind. But does the issue go any deeper?

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Perhaps part of the reason sunglasses make you look “tougher” is because they mask those windows.

In behind-the-scenes footage, actor Lawrence Fishburne admitted to deliberately removing his sunglasses for the semi-truck fight scene with an Agent in The Matrix: Reloaded. His reasoning? He wanted his character to appear more vulnerable, in part to reprise his near-fatal beating in the first movie, for which he also lost the shades.

If showing your eyes makes you appear more vulnerable, and hiding them less so, what does that say about prescription glasses? They have one of two effects on your appearance:

They can make your eyes look tiny and distant, or larger and bug-eyed. Next time you’re chatting with a friend in spectacles, take a moment to see how his or her appearance is distorted.

Either way, it makes you look more vulnerable.

Before we conclude, take a moment to glance over this article. Look at each pair of pictures. In each pair, you’ll find a bumbling doofus and one suave hero. Which is which? And what’s the most obvious difference between them?

If you wear glasses, you’re a nerd, dork, dweeb, loser, or victim. You can’t wear sunglasses to be bad to the bone like the terminator or the savior of two worlds like Neo.

Heroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-man don’t need glasses to save lives. Geniuses like Jimmy Neutron don’t need glasses. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld don’t need glasses.

If you want to play the part of the bumbling sidekick, though, be prepared to don a pair of onerous frames.

And if you’re forced to wear them in reality, be prepared to be relegated to the part of bumbling sidekick.