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I'm fortunate to have had a relatively unremarkable eyewear prescription history for most of my life. I wore reading glasses in elementary school to help thwart headaches, and early on in my adulthood, I was always just nearsighted enough to justify a sizable wardrobe of inexpensive eyewear full of -1 lenses—one that's becoming more of an art installation than anything else now that my prescription has started creeping down as my age is creeping up. I even have cataracts. Cataracts.
Concerned that something I've always taken for granted—the ability to put on my makeup—was in peril, I consulted my sister; I can't remember a time when she wasn't wearing either contacts or glasses with lenses so strong that they appeared to shrink her eyes to the size of beans.
"Can you even put on makeup without wearing contacts?" I asked her recently.
"Hell no!" replied my sister, who recently started wearing newfangled multifocal contact lenses. (It's the future.)
All these years I had thought she was just taking an educated guess as she sort of steered makeup in the general direction of blurry facial features. (Which is not to say she looked like she'd been applying makeup with compromised vision. Your makeup always looks great, sis!) It never even occurred to me that those with worse eyesight than I'd become accustomed to and who, like me, don't want to or can't wear contacts pretty much have to do that when applying their eyeshadow, liner, and mascara. And yet it appears my unwitting membership application for this club is being expedited, leaving me looking for ways to keep my vision sharp as I make my cat eye sharp.
My mother has relied on reading glasses for way-up-close stuff for a while, so when I mentioned my concerns to her—I swear, I talk to my immediate family about more than just eyesight—she asked me if I'd ever heard of "makeup readers." Nope, I had not. Soon I learned they're designed with a special swivel and flip-down lenses to magnify your vision in one eye while allowing you to apply makeup to the other.
They sounded like exactly what I didn't know I was looking for. One problem: They look goofy AF. But not so much that I wasn't willing to give them a fair shot.
First, I tried on the Carrie readers, which come in five lens strengths and five different colors—I'm wearing the purple frames, above—for $16 each. As you can see (if you're wearing any requisite eyewear of your own), there's only one lens. It's meant to pivot from one eye to the other, which, ironically, can delay your makeup routine if you're anything like me and can't resist spending a solid five minutes shifting it back and forth. Not gonna lie: As weird as they look, it was really easy to apply my eyeshadow, mascara, and even a super-precise cat eye with a liquid-liner pen. And I knew it was super precise because I could actually see it.
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The second pair I tried, called the Magnolia readers (also $16), come in a very art-teacher-y, abstract yellow, pink and purple pattern, and they looked almost like normal glasses—almost. They have two lenses, but they're both hinged at the bottom of each oval so they can be flipped down one at a time, allowing you to put makeup on one eye while seeing clearly with the other. This pair can actually be used as reading glasses when both lenses are upright, and you can also flip down both at the same time for absolutely no discernible purpose.
Look, are these something I'd wear out of the house? Absolutely not (says the woman who just put pictures of herself wearing them on a major website). They're not exactly my style—are they anyone's? But if wearing a silly-looking pair of glasses for a few minutes means better-looking makeup for the rest of the day, by all means, take my money.
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