You didn’t like how you looked? To change the real you?
I’ve never felt that anything about my body defined who I am, but that seems to be a minority view. Probably has something to do with hard headedness in general.
As someone who wore glasses as a kid (along with a patch to help fix two lazy eyes – I looked like a mess), I can tell you Joyce that glasses are NOT part of your face – if you don’t like the pair you’re wearing, get new ones! (My pair looked ugly af, but for some reason 8yo me thought they looked really cool xD)
This is exactly what I was thinking. You get to change your face if you don’t like it, and you get to pick part of your face! How is that not a blessing?
I was so lucky – I wore my glasses for a year, maybe two, and once my lazy eyes were fixed I haven’t had to wear glasses at all since (I’m now 38). My dad, on the other hand, did not wear his prescribed specs as a kid and has paid for it with a lifetime of having to wear them (also it would’ve helped if he’d agreed to have the surgery to fix his squint, apparently it has to be done when you’re young enough to adjust).
Funny thing is, I was the opposite. Like, I wore glasses from age 13 to 25, and I never ever liked how I looked in glasses as much as I did without. It just didn’t feel like me. And contacts were mostly out, my eyes are too sensitive and it was uncomfortable (not a mental squeamishness, but they felt physically bad for the first hour or so of the day every day.)
I ended up being very fortunate enough to afford laser vision correction, which obviously isn’t an option for everyone, but I like how I look a lot better now.
Ditto too! I have the kind of eyes that squeeze shut the moment something comes near them, so contacts are right out for me. I’ve worn glasses since I was… 7? Maybe 6? Either way, a long, long, loooong time. Were it not for baby photos, I wouldn’t even remember what I looked like without them.
Also, I’m not sure if Joyce’s resistance to getting glasses is because she feels it changes a fundamental aspect of “her look”, but if so, I wonder how she’s going to cope as she gets older and one day looks in the mirror and sees a completely different person staring back at her.
For me, it was the annoyance of having to poke myself (gently) in the eye every morning and then pull them out at night. Glasses are easy to take off and put on quickly as needed. Contacts aren’t. There’s also the fact that my prescription is light enough that it’s no big deal if I go without, so it was often easier to just skip it than see clearly.
Exactly my thought process. “What about contacts? Oh wait wait wait nevemind.”
I remember when my wife first got contacts (also in college!) it took her… an hour (or maybe more?) to put them in the first time and she wasn’t nearly as squeamish as Joyce.
(Of course now it’s basically second nature to her and can pop them in and out super quick but I still find it pretty weird.)
I got my first contacts in 7th grade and cannot for the life of me imagine myself wearing glasses. Maybe it’s easier when you’re younger, but for me it was always just routine.
When I was at school one of my friends needed to leave and go to A&E because her contact tore as she was taking it out leaving half a glass lens against her eyeball 😬 She was fine but the idea of a jagged glass edge just balanced on an eyeball squicks me out quite a lot.
With soft lenses (which is what pretty much everybody has) it’s very, very soft and flexible plastic. If one tears, you just reach in and grab the other half. I’ve had it happen, it’s mostly annoying because you need a new lens, which you may not have handy.
According to Wikipedia: “Although Louis J. Girard invented a scleral contact lens in 1887,[13] it was German ophthalmologist Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick who in 1888 fabricated the first successful afocal scleral contact lens.[14] Approximately 18–21 mm (0.71–0.83 in) in diameter, the heavy blown-glass shells rested on the less sensitive rim of tissue surrounding the cornea and floated on a dextrose solution.”
A few other Google sources confirm the timeline and material as well.
My reply was more to Victor who said they didn’t think they’d ever been glass, rather than Miri. I was just pointing out that they really had been, originally. My mum has talked about glass contacts from the 60s-70s, but those may have been a hard plastic and just called glass, IDK.
I’m glad I missed the glass contacts, but my first contacts were hard plastic. They took some getting used to and could be a bit painful at times. Then I fell asleep wearing them. I have never felt anything as painful as when I woke up the next day. I got the lenses out, but all I could do was walk around blind, crying hard for hours. Had to take the day off from school, but couldn’t enjoy it.
Getting glasses for the first time is dope; I remember looking at trees and seeing individual leaves. Going from low-res to high-res but… like… REALITY
I got my first set in 3rd Grade and I can still remember just boggling at the fact that street signs could in fact *be read from across the intersection* on the ride back home.
That was around twenty-five years ago. I don’t think I’ll ever forget, at this point.
But Joyce is not 40+, and we don’t know how long her vision has been … let’s say, ‘sub-standard’. If she’d been in a public or parochial school instead of being home-schooled, she might have been struggling to see the blackboard for years.
And for the record, I’ve been a four-eyes guy since roughly 3rd grade, when it turned out I was having trouble seeing the blackboard clearly.
While Tim was probably being self-referential… Compare the ratio of real life time to DoA time and extrapolate, and Joyce would have been born *does a lazy barely-trying calculation* about three and a half real life centuries ago.
They don’t like change…as someone who has two people who hate change to the point that they complain about new neighbors and new doctors it’s tough to live with them and tough for them to accept that things aren’t always the same even after just a couple of months!
I don’t get it either, but I’ve been wearing glasses since I was three or four. I consider my glasses part of my face, and it’s weird when I look at pictures of me when I was a baby and didn’t wear glasses.
I was about her age when I got my glasses. Thing is, I didn’t know I can’t really see. I was VERY rectulant to wear glasses. Until I got out of the shop, looked around and thought “wow. THAT’S what the world looks like?!”
Took me a week or so to openly admit it though. Teenager and pride and stuff.
I think it’s def more about not liking change and having dealt with so much change lately, her familiar reflection was one thing she had control over, and now she’s lost that too.
They would rather not *change*. They would rather not recognise that something was *wrong* with them. They would rather not have to accept the relatively minor inconveniences of dealing with this new THING. Once you are used to it, it will be no big deal, but it’s like accepting new limitations on how you can move and act and that this thing will be part of your life no matter what.
It is easier to accept getting glasses as a child when you haven’t fully formed a concept of your identity and what you look like. Glasses do change how you look and how you are perceived. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is different.
The new clarity can override all the other emotional stuff because ‘WOW, I CAN SEE SO MUCH BETTER!’ but you’ve got to actually try the glasses for that.
Well, for now she could just wear them in the lecture halls so she can see the board. But then being able to see clearly is addictive, she might be afraid of getting hooked.
Probably a conservatively styled thin wire frame, similar to Dorothy’s and Jocelyne’s but maybe a bit more rectangular instead of an oval. Joyce seems like she’ll lean toward the least noticeable frame that fits her.
Weird. I’ve worn glasses since High School, and never once thought of them this way. How are glasses any different from the clothing you decide to wear each day, or how you style your hair? Your face is your face, Joyce, unless you get horribly disfigured in an accident.
They’re phrasing it in a rather strong way, but I agree with the basic sentiment; after wearing glasses for so long, seeing myself in the mirror or a photograph without them just looks weird. Like it’s someone else.
I mean, if you see someone in uniform for decades, or they cut their hair short after having it long for ages, doesn’t that look weird for a while until you adjust to the new image? It’s the same sentiment, really; it just tends to be more pronounced with glasses for various reasons.
The last time I got my driver’s license renewed, they had me take them off. I found out that without them, and at the right angle and lighting (not what I usually see in the mirror), I look a lot more like one of my brothers than I previously thought.
It’s a good day to wax on from my arm-chair… gather round and chew the salt.
It seems like a common conceit to identify the image of the self most strongly with the perception of ones own face. (at least in modern times) Firstly there’s Pareidolia, which is heavily selected by evolution for face recognition. So we’re hard-wired to see faces everywhere and perceive it as important. This is of course because (secondly) we express a huge range of emotion and communication through our faces. Thirdly, our society places a huge stress on the importance of vision and appearance, so even if it was only a fashiin element, some people feel very strongly about changing how they dress. Finally, due to awareness of our id and conciousness being a phenomenon in our brains, we’ve also gained an increased sense of self being in the head. (this may also be emphasized by the cluster if sensors in close proximity as well). All of these factors individually can be enough to explain Joyce’s self image concerns. Given that they come as a set, well, I respect her concerns. There can be a similar struggle happen for those of who need to start medication for mental health.
Interestingly, apparently the ancient egyptians conceived of the self being in the torso. As a result they discarded the brain during mummification and this apparently also influenced how they viewed the world.
I can understand where she’s coming from here. I had to get glasses when I was 13-ish and stuck with them for about a year before switching to contacts right before starting high school. I didn’t have an issue with the way I looked with glasses, but it didn’t really feel like me when I was wearing them, and the idea of starting a new school where I’d meet a bunch of new people who only knew the version of me with glasses didn’t sit well with me because on a certain level it just didn’t feel like that was what I looked like. I wasn’t as intense about it as Joyce is, but I also hadn’t recently had to go through a massive amount of change in a very short period of time like she has, so the prospect of change wasn’t as loaded a subject for me as it is for her.
I’ve been displeased with mine (not a Malaya fan) but also I got one of the only potentially transmasc characters so I’ve been going with it, but hey, might as well try
I’ve worn glasses since I was 9 years old. Now I can’t even go to the bathroom in the dark without them. *eye roll* Someone tell Joyce that change is part of life and without it we grow stagnant.
Where are everyone’s favourite places to buy glasses online?
I got some that are really minimal from zenni, but now I want more faces. A different face every day of the week!
I’d suggest glassesshop. The lenses I got from them are better quality than what I got from the actual doctor’s office. They have really cute styles and a bunch of coupons which can help you get a full pair for 20-50ish dollars (there’s even a first time free coupon for some frames that’ll let you get the frames and basic lenses for free). It’s also super easy to get store credits which you can stack with coupons. I’d recommend having honey installed when you use it so you can see all your coupon options.
(Also really good for cute prescription sunglasses c:)
Sure is! And it’s this mild body horror where we see Dorothy pushing Joyce more, which is a lessen learned after Sarah resolved the toenail incident. Will a hand be next? Revenge of the uncomfortable hangnail? We’ve already seen some evolution around Joyce’s clothing choices
On the plus side it now means Joyce can have two identities like Superman!
*Joyce puts glasses on*
Everyone: Where did Joyce go? Who is this new person that in no way looks like Joyce because they are wearing glasses?
Also glasses add a +1 to intelligence even if you haven’t gotten any smarter!
That said I am also of the firm belief that Glasses make one at least 40% more attractive/cuter and I say this both about my own self-perception and outwardly.
So come on Joyce. Join the Hot/Cute side of the Frames.
Back in my dating years I managed to pick out, 3/4ths of the time, women who wore glasses. At some point what may have been random became a preference.
The best part? This ended way before the “getting old, needing glasses” phase, with yet another bespectacled babe, and we’ve been together, then married, for decades.
I feel like a better route would have been “you only have to wear them during class and when you’re driving, and no one’s really looking at your face at those times anyway,” and help picking out a fancier case and maybe even a glasses chain
Sooner than she’d expect she’d be wearing them all the time because it just makes more sense to be able to see all the time, but it would probably mitigate her initial stress.
I didn’t have Joyce’s hangup but that’s how I started. Only got glasses to get my license. Then I found I needed them in grad school classes if I wasn’t sitting at the front. Then noticed that if I left my glasses on I could see leaves and grass. Then eventually did leave them on.
Of course, my vision getting even more nearsighted probably had a role.
Same, except I got them at twelvish, so no driving. It didn’t help that I kept being told that it would make my eyes worse to use them for reading and other close-up things (pretty sure that’s a myth, but even it it’s not, it’s a huge inconvenience)
I’d also advice half rimmed glasses, considering her concerns, especially if she needs wider lenses (I know it can be an annoying adjustment going to a much thinner field of vision). My dad literally didn’t notice that I was wearing glasses the first time I got half rims.
It is a myth that using glasses makes your eyesight worse. It is also a myth that sitting too close to the TV damages them (you sit closer BECAUSE your eyesight is bad, it is not bad because you sit closer) as well as that reading in the dark damages them. It can strain your eyes to look at a screen all day or to try to read in the dark, but not like in a permanent damage way, more like in a when you get a muscle ache after overexerting yourself for 10 seconds which goes away after some rest way.
People who say ‘wearing glasses makes your eyesight worse’ are correlating the fact that eyesight gets worse in people with glasses and the wearing of glasses and assuming the glasses are the causation of the continued degradation. Instead of you know, people with already poor eyesight already being prone to eyesight degradation to start with considering their eyesight was already faulty and that age can make things that already don’t work well, worse.
Thanks for confirming this for me. It was specifically about using distance glasses for close reading and that sort of thing, rather than wearing them in general that I was warned about, but it seemed fake and I’m pretty sure it was just family telling me that, not my optometrist.
I got my first glasses around 9-10 years old. I’m nearsighted, and the optometrist at the time suggested bifocals with no strength to them so I wouldn’t try/have to force-focus on close objects through the distance prescription. I’ve had bifocals with zero-strength readers ever since, but it’s getting harder to focus on the dashboard and now I’m sometimes “playing the trombone” to read things, so it might be time to switch to progressives.
Apparently the theory was that exercise is supposed to be good for you and delay the progression of your eyesight getting worse? I don’t know if that actually holds water, but anecdotally it does. (My little sister needed glasses at around the same age, and didn’t want bifocals so she got plain flat lenses. Now her vision’s worse than mine.)
A few years back, Joyce was driving her parent’s vehicle. But supposedly she is near sighted and has trouble seeing in class. How was she able to drive a vehicle safely?
Eyesight can deteriorate over time. And depending on her visual acuity she could still pass the necessary requirements to drive. She went down to line seven unaided if I recall. That’s better than I can do even with corrective lenses but that’s not saying much since I’m legally blind.
two things: she likely earned hers two years before and in a few months your vision can degrade enough to require corrective lenses. My nephew passed his learner’s permit exam and vision test without need for glasses six months ago, now he needs them to drive. It can happen in just one semester.
Another thing: her prescription could be within the threshold for vision impairment so doesn’t require correction for driving. She might need glasses for class, but not for driving.
Cars are much much larger than an eye chart and Joyce can see fine in her SMALLER classes. So she isn’t EXTREMELY nearsighted and cars would still visibly exist even if details would be difficult to make out if they were far away. Plus, depending on when she got her driver’s license, her eyesight may have degraded slowly, but it is probably still passable enough that she can still see enough to not crash into anything.
If she’s only a little nearsighted, she can make out distant objects fine, she just loses fine details. That also doesn’t affect your depth perception.
I’m nearsighted and my prescription’s a couple years out of date (too weak), so my corrected vision’s drifted to the point Joyce’s probably is uncorrected. I can see objects fine, but reading street names is difficult until I’m right on top of the signs.
By “see distant objects fine” I mean “recognize there’s something there”. You might not be able to read a distant license plate, but you can tell cars from pedestrians and discern movement. Lights are no problem either.
It’s not like the fog in old 3D games, or a sudden gaussian blur coming on at a given distance. For me it’s like looking through those “X-Ray glasses” from the back of old comic books, there’s a few ghost “copies” of everything that won’t converge into solid objects, and their apparent distance apart grows with physical distance.
It’s like Dorothy is intentionally missing Joyce’s point. And I say this as a glasses-wearer-since-third-grade. I don’t look like me without my glasses, and I can understand Joyce not wanting to feel the same way having not grown up with them.
She didn’t miss it, she’s trying to make Joyce see that nothing changed about her, people won’t change how they see her. Joyce is trying to find any excuse not to wear glasses, she’s running out of valid ones.
I disagree. Joyce was literally trying to say that she is scared of seeing herself with a different “face” and Dorothy just affirmed that she would end up doing exactly that.
Agreed, and there are lots if reasonings that would actually work (such as what I said below- that Joyce doesn’t have to wear them outside of lectures and driving)
“Well, if you’re worried about that, we can get you contacts. You’d look no different, all you have to do is stick your finger in your eyes each day to put them in, then at night to take them out”
“…So any brand you like, Dorothy?”
It’s amazing what you can get over if you want contacts. The first time I tried to get them was a complete disaster. About a year later I tried again and it was easy. Plus with contacts, unlike the puff test, you’re completely in control.
Is Damn You Willis confessing to some history with glasses face? When I was growing up, my father wore glasses, my mother wore reading glasses, my older sister got glasses when she was 7 or 8, my younger brother needed glasses when he was 7 or 8, and when they finally decided I needed glasses when I was 10, I was “well, it’s about time!”
it’s still wild to me that people can just,, see things without any assistance. I didn’t get glasses until grade 7 but I probably needed them at least six years earlier. I remember going to the zoo and not seeing most of the animals thinking they must camouflage really well. I remember people pointing out things on road trips and thinking I didn’t look fast enough. one time a teacher brought in mario kart the day before christmas break and put it up on the projector and I couldn’t stay on the track bc I couldn’t see where I was going even though I was sitting in the front row looking at this massive screen. the only reason I finally got glasses was because I had a teacher that graded notes and even in the front row I couldn’t see a damb thing. up until that point I’d been getting As in all my classes by just remembering what the teachers were saying in class so nobody had noticed
a few years later taking the eye exam for my driver’s license I genuinely thought they mixed up the chart with one with chinese symbols?? I was like why do you have an eye chart with chinese symbols on it are there really that many people who can read chinese in this part of canada???
also trying to find new frames is fun when you have to put your face only a few inches away from the mirror to even see what you look like. shopping online with digital previews was great because I could see them!
Yet another reason, as I have said before and will say again, that every child of school age should get their eyes checked every single year. By the optometrist, not the school or the pediatrician.
why would a pediatrician check eyes unless they’re also an optometrist? This is just plain ridiculous…the school thing I can understand, there’s no way that’s a full test and there’s a bunch of issues that are easily missed by them that the trained optometrist would see easily
It’s not ridiculous, pediatricians do simple eye exams with a chart. So do schools. Every single year, my kids get their eyes checked with the ped unless they’ve already had their visit to the eye doctor, and every year the school checks their vision too.
are eye tests in school a real thing or are you just saying that a school wouldn’t be qualified for a full proper eye exam? I’ve seen school eye exams on tv but I never had one. I feel like the bare minimum they could’ve done would be to have us read off some letters from a chart, then maybe my nearsightedness would’ve been caught sooner lmao
There were eye tests in school when I was in primary school. An optometrist employed by the Department of Education came around. Also, there was a Dept of Ed dentist with a dentist’s room in a trailer.
I remember that one girl in the class a year ahead of me turned out to be very short-sighted, and was issued with dark-framed chunky public health glasses, which got delivered at school and a teacher gave them to her on the verandah outside the 1st grade and 2nd grade classrooms. She put them on, looked out into the playground, and said “Oh! It’s all in little pieces.” First time she saw that trees have leaves.
They are a thing, and I agree that they should be done routinely by the schools as an important health measure, simply because not everybody goes to the eye doctor yearly like they should.
But you can’t simply rely on it. They just do the chart and then send a note home if the kid fails.
I’m guessing this is just subtext to her overall fear of change, but she’s being a bit mean about glasses, like having them be a part of your appearance is just automatically a bad thing. Like if she had gone to public school as a kid, she might’ve made fun of kids wearing glasses.
As someone who has struggled with anxiety and issues with change my whole life I did not read it that way at all. She’s not freaking out because she thinks it’s a negative to wear glasses, she’s freaking out because she did not previously wear glasses and now she does and has no control over this change. It’s like if she suddenly woke up with a different hair color. It’s not about aesthetics, it’s about anxiety over change and lack of control. It’d probably be equally distressing if she’d worn glasses her whole life and suddenly got contacts or laser eye surgery.
She’s lost control of so much of her life, experienced so much change, and a person’s own appearance is generally something consistently familiar that they can exercise a certain amount of control over, and now even that is being taken out of her control.
Depending on how nearsighted she is she may very well need to wear them all the time. Once you get used to being able to see clearly it becomes frustrating trying to navigate the world without that, esp if your vision is bad enough.
I can *see* without my glasses but once I started wearing them i became hyped-aware of how blurry everything was without them and started to find it difficult to walk around without them even when I didn’t have to read stuff from far away. I basically only take them off when I’m looking at something way up close and not walking around.
While I only wear glasses to read what I hate is most glasses available seem to be made for people with tiny heads and I end picking not the ones I want to have… but among the 2 that fit me :/ If I saved enough for fancy designer shit would I get more options… or am I doomed forever?
I sympathize…my ears are uneven and I like narrow rectangular frames so it’s really hard to find ones that actually properly cover both eyes and sit properly on my face even when adjusted.
As someone who has had lifelong issues with change that I have had to work to overcome, I really sympathize with and understand how she’s acting. I was the “only eat these specific foods, and eat the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for years and have a panic attack if I had to get new bedsheets or if a shirt I’d worn for years no longer fit me!,” type.
It may seem irrational and annoying to others, but when you have anxiety and change is a big anxiety trigger for you, it’s *not* a silly/small thing to you, it feels like a big deal to do something as simple as change your look.
Joyce has had to cope with a ton of changes the past few months, the massive change of going to college is stressful enough for someone with these issues and she’s dealt with so much other wild stuff (like her entire worldview crumbling and losing trust in her mother and her sense of safety in the world) on top of that.
How she looks probably feels like one of the few thing she can control right now and keep the same and enjoy the comfort of that familiarity, and now that’s being taken from her too.
And I also spent my whole life having people assume I was lazy or childish or “neurotic” or “just being difficult” when I was experiencing very real visceral distress I did not understand and could not control and that’s…a really unpleasant thing to deal with and it sucks to have a real anxiety issue be dismissed like that.
I don’t know what’s in Willis’ head but the story thus far seems to have painted a picture that Joyce may very well have some kind of anxiety disorder or at least very clear anxiety problems related to her overbearing, judgmental upbringing, and that’s not just “laziness.” It’s a real problem that is extremely difficult to overcome (and takes a lot of time).
To reiterate, two of her siblings (Jonathan and Jocelyn) wear glasses. It’s not that she is altogether clueless about glasses, but rather, there are deeper, long unaddressed psychological concerns here. I knew people who joined the military, and were issued glasses. Between new uniform that you wear all the time, new haircut that makes you look the same as everyone else, and glasses they may require you to wear, I understand the sense of losing sight of yourself. I’d say this has more to do with Joyce’s closet case of atheism, than the glasses themselves.
Between things Willis has said alongside ‘Joyce is autobiographical’ and the comic itself, yeah, I can’t see a reading where Joyce doesn’t have an anxiety disorder. Like Willis, I’m less sure about the other common question (is she autistic or is this all from being raised in a cult,) but that is in fact a viable question. (And neither of the two excludes the anxiety disorder thesis.)
It’s not about glasses at all. It is deep, deep issues Joyce hasn’t had adequate support for.
Yeah I dunno, I’ve never been diagnosed with autism, and didn’t grow up in a cult like Joyce did, but I have generalized anxiety disorder that was triggered by various things I’m not gonna detail on a public forum and I can 100% see Joyce’s behavior being a result of an anxiety disorder triggered by her upbringing.
Those weird food quirks are so very very familiar to me. I used to have panic attacks when I couldn’t eat the specific familiar foods I wanted and it took a loooot of time, and some therapy and medication to work past that. I know those are also traits that people with autism can have, don’t know what Willis’ intention is, just confirming that it definitely could be anxiety.
Damn it Joyce just try on some glasses already so I can see how you look wearing glasses. I’ve been wanting to see Joyce in glasses since this story arc started.
I have to take mine off for a few minutes when I first enter the office every morning, can confirm. (I have lenses that darken in the sun, and we have to wear masks so they fog up quickly when they’re cold. That one-two punch renders them almost opaque. I’ll take blurry over echolocation any day.)
that can also be a source of friction, though. I have been getting new frames every 2 years or so in part because I keep choosing frames that ‘go out of fashion’ and they no longer have ‘blanks’ that fit the frame… or at least that’s what the company that’s had my custom for 20 years tells me.
I get why they’re not waiting to buy the glasses story flow-wise, but if Joyce were my friend, I wouldn’t make her go. The whole air puff machine left her irritated enough. Put it off for a day and she’ll be able to deal with it better.
Eh, it’s self-preservation too. People who don’t care about their own health like Joyce is doing right now then to just create lots of other messes for other people to clean up.
If Joyce doesn’t get glasses Dorothy will have to deal with the fallback of Joyce’s grades slipping even more and all the drama around that.
See, this is a thing that I think demonstrates one of Dorothy’s flaws that stands out to me. The idea that Dorothy will “have to deal with Joyce’s grades slipping.”
Getting glasses is Joyce’s choice. Dorothy is trying to be a good friend by recognizing she has a problem that could easily be solved by doing this, and is smart enough to know how to be supportive by, in some degree, involving herself to remove as many barriers as possible to make it easier for Joyce to make that choice.
But like, at the end of the day, it’s still Joyce’s life, and Joyce’s problems, and Joyce’s decision, and that’s…not…Dorothy’s responsibility? She is not OBLIGATED in any way to deal with Joyce’s problems, she’s CHOOSING to help because she cares. But if Joyce doesn’t want to do it and doesn’t care about her own health and her grades slip, that’s not Dorothy’s fault! It’s not her JOB to fix it, either!
If Joyce creates messes because of her poor choices, it might be inconvenient later on to others but that won’t be Dorothy’s fault or responsibility, either, it’ll be Joyce’s. And like, if in fact Dorothy feels in some way like she genuinely *IS* responsible for micro-managing the lives of the people she cares about and that their problems are actually HER problems, that is a big red flag for boundary issues and even codependency.
I only really speak from experience in that these are the lessons I’m trying to, like, learn myself, through. LOTS AND LOTS of therapy. Lol.
Yes, all of this. And while I get why Dorothy thinks someone has to do this FOR Joyce, unless Joyce is actively endangering herself by not wearing glasses? Let it lie, Dorothy. And even then, she can say ‘yes this is in fact THAT SERIOUS Joyce, please make better choices because I will not stop pushing this until you do’ but as soon as you start dragging her to optometrists against her will, you enter seriously iffy territory.
Like, Joyce is clearly upset about this in ways that are out of proportion with the actual risks vs rewards (it will not be a painful examination, vision will probably get worse over time so she can’t put this off forever, wearing glasses will benefit her,) and it’s part of her ongoing Trying to Ignore Changes Enough They Stop Happening/fear of extremely mild body horror thing… but Dorothy, you are not actually her mom. Thank God for that. Joyce is a mentally-competent adult, treat her like one.
Yeah, I get the reasoning (it’s going to be a struggle to get her back there so they might as well do it now), but she’s spent. Anything they try now will be met with resistance. If they come back tomorrow, Joyce might be back up to “well, okay maybe“.
Plus then we could get a montage of Dorothy handing her thin, reserved wire frames and Becky swapping them for outlandish styles.
She doesn’t want to change her face? The idea of looking like someone else other than this fixed idea of ‘me’? Maybe I’m over-interpreting but this really seems to me to be another symptom we’re seeing of Joyce’s neuro-atypicality.
If Joyce is freaked out by the thought of putting something on her face for the rest of her life, the thought of putting something on her eyeballs would likely trigger a total mental collapse.
This comic amused me. So, mission accomplished, right? 😀
But I’ve worn glasses since high school, and I hate putting things in my eyes so even using visene on the incredibly rare occasions that I’ve used it is a task which involves a lot of spilling visine all over my face before getting any in my eye. Kinda like Joyce and the air puff machine (which I’ve never had a problem with, besides jumping a little). So I’ve never even bothered to try out contacts. Glasses are just a part of my identity after all these decades.
You know, I wear contacts, and I swear, everyone who wears glasses says “I’m just not good at touching my eyes!” when the topic comes up. Honestly, I don’t believe anyone starts out being good at touching their eyes when they start wearing contacts. Everyone gets flinchy. Every contact wearer has a story about how the first time they did it, it took hours to get them in/take them out and they irritated their eye so badly they spent an hour waiting for it to calm down just so they could try again.
It gets better with practice. Like everything. If you wanted to wear contacts, it would probably take under a month to feel just as natural as putting on glasses. And you get your peripheral vision back!
Mysterious guy with USSF delta on his uniform: “Miss Joyce Brown? The creator of Captain Julia Grey? Excellent. Please come with me; your country needs you.” (The Last Starfighter Overture starts playing on the muzzak speakers).
I’d suggest contacts, but there is NO WAY she’d have the discipline to stick a finger in her eye when she took so many tries to get past the air puff test
As someone who has also had glasses since pre-K, this is actually pretty fascinating. Since I’ve always had glasses I’ve always thought me-with-glasses looked more like ME than me-without-glasses. At this point it’s pretty core to my self image, somewhere between my sense of style and my gender expression. Now I think about it, that’s probably the biggest reason I’ve never considered contacts…
I’ve been wearing glasses every day for the vast majority of my life, but my mental image of myself doesn’t wear them. IDK why. So like- getting glasses doesn’t fundamentally change your perception of yourself.
when i was at the age of 18 i got my first pair of glasses. now i am 36 and still wear the same glasses. my eyesight has only changed a little since then but i refuse to get a new pair cause the frames i have now are perfect. But are no longer avaible to buy in new sadly.
Admittedly, after wearing glasses since the age of seven and finally getting contacts at the ripe old age of 25, seeing my face without glasses took some getting used to. It’s nice to be able to change it up, though. And, given that I work with animals, contacts are a godsend.
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Joyce, that’s EXACTLY why I got glasses in the first place
You didn’t like how you looked? To change the real you?
I’ve never felt that anything about my body defined who I am, but that seems to be a minority view. Probably has something to do with hard headedness in general.
As someone who wore glasses as a kid (along with a patch to help fix two lazy eyes – I looked like a mess), I can tell you Joyce that glasses are NOT part of your face – if you don’t like the pair you’re wearing, get new ones! (My pair looked ugly af, but for some reason 8yo me thought they looked really cool xD)
This is exactly what I was thinking. You get to change your face if you don’t like it, and you get to pick part of your face! How is that not a blessing?
I was so lucky – I wore my glasses for a year, maybe two, and once my lazy eyes were fixed I haven’t had to wear glasses at all since (I’m now 38). My dad, on the other hand, did not wear his prescribed specs as a kid and has paid for it with a lifetime of having to wear them (also it would’ve helped if he’d agreed to have the surgery to fix his squint, apparently it has to be done when you’re young enough to adjust).
If you were wearing two eye patches, I don’t think there was much need for the glasses.
Funny thing is, I was the opposite. Like, I wore glasses from age 13 to 25, and I never ever liked how I looked in glasses as much as I did without. It just didn’t feel like me. And contacts were mostly out, my eyes are too sensitive and it was uncomfortable (not a mental squeamishness, but they felt physically bad for the first hour or so of the day every day.)
I ended up being very fortunate enough to afford laser vision correction, which obviously isn’t an option for everyone, but I like how I look a lot better now.
I didn’t start wearing glasses consistently til i was 18 or smth but i refuse to be seen without them now. They’re like makeup for me
I’d bring up contacts, but Joyce would be way too squeamish for that.
I sure am. The mere thought of putting something in my eye squicks me out.
Hard same. Hard. Same.
Ditto. As a result, I need prescription sunglasses for work. Bouncers wearing regular glasses get laughed at.
Ditto too! I have the kind of eyes that squeeze shut the moment something comes near them, so contacts are right out for me. I’ve worn glasses since I was… 7? Maybe 6? Either way, a long, long, loooong time. Were it not for baby photos, I wouldn’t even remember what I looked like without them.
Also, I’m not sure if Joyce’s resistance to getting glasses is because she feels it changes a fundamental aspect of “her look”, but if so, I wonder how she’s going to cope as she gets older and one day looks in the mirror and sees a completely different person staring back at her.
For me, it was the annoyance of having to poke myself (gently) in the eye every morning and then pull them out at night. Glasses are easy to take off and put on quickly as needed. Contacts aren’t. There’s also the fact that my prescription is light enough that it’s no big deal if I go without, so it was often easier to just skip it than see clearly.
Exactly my thought process. “What about contacts? Oh wait wait wait nevemind.”
I remember when my wife first got contacts (also in college!) it took her… an hour (or maybe more?) to put them in the first time and she wasn’t nearly as squeamish as Joyce.
(Of course now it’s basically second nature to her and can pop them in and out super quick but I still find it pretty weird.)
It’s VERY difficult in the beginning. Just physically difficult – eyeballs weren’t designed to have objects put on top of them.
I got my first contacts in 7th grade and cannot for the life of me imagine myself wearing glasses. Maybe it’s easier when you’re younger, but for me it was always just routine.
Yeah, if Joyce can’t even handle the whooshing air thing in her eye then she’ll never manage contacts
Not necessarily. I have a hard time with the air poof but can manage contacts. Trick is to warm up the lens with your palm before putting it in.
I don’t know you personally but I feel like you’re still more reasonable than Joyce.
Yeah, I don’t think I could do that, either.
I’m waiting for someone to bring them up, in the comic.
Wackiness will ensue.
When I was at school one of my friends needed to leave and go to A&E because her contact tore as she was taking it out leaving half a glass lens against her eyeball 😬 She was fine but the idea of a jagged glass edge just balanced on an eyeball squicks me out quite a lot.
Glass?
I don’t think contacts have ever been glass.
With soft lenses (which is what pretty much everybody has) it’s very, very soft and flexible plastic. If one tears, you just reach in and grab the other half. I’ve had it happen, it’s mostly annoying because you need a new lens, which you may not have handy.
Hard lenses are more rigid plastic, not glass.
I hear you but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I put contacts in my eyes anyway.
I’ll stick with glasses. Sucks for sports, though.
Hard contacts definitely used to be glass.
According to Wikipedia: “Although Louis J. Girard invented a scleral contact lens in 1887,[13] it was German ophthalmologist Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick who in 1888 fabricated the first successful afocal scleral contact lens.[14] Approximately 18–21 mm (0.71–0.83 in) in diameter, the heavy blown-glass shells rested on the less sensitive rim of tissue surrounding the cornea and floated on a dextrose solution.”
A few other Google sources confirm the timeline and material as well.
Yeah, but unless Miri is actually 90 years old then its pretty unlikely that their friend had glass contacts.
My reply was more to Victor who said they didn’t think they’d ever been glass, rather than Miri. I was just pointing out that they really had been, originally. My mum has talked about glass contacts from the 60s-70s, but those may have been a hard plastic and just called glass, IDK.
My mom’s first contacts were glass D: they’ve always icked me out
I’m glad I missed the glass contacts, but my first contacts were hard plastic. They took some getting used to and could be a bit painful at times. Then I fell asleep wearing them. I have never felt anything as painful as when I woke up the next day. I got the lenses out, but all I could do was walk around blind, crying hard for hours. Had to take the day off from school, but couldn’t enjoy it.
I’d say dorothy bring up contacts specifically to make Joyce more okay with glasses
So, when do we tell her about contacts?
Never, because she will literally shit herself.
She couldn’t even handle a puff of air in her eye.
Contacts are way easier than the air puff.
I don’t think Joyce will feel that way.
About 40 strips ago. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/contacts/
And if you get several pairs of glasses, you can have many faces! Just like Man-E-Faces!
I don’t get why people have this hangup about wearing glasses. They’d rather…not be able to see?
Eh, if you can make do well enough without ’em…
Can think of plenty of things in my life that are broken but work well enough that I can’t be bothered to fix
Getting glasses for the first time is dope; I remember looking at trees and seeing individual leaves. Going from low-res to high-res but… like… REALITY
SAME
My dad was the same after his cataracts surgery. He just walked around stunned by the detail for days at least.
I got my first set in 3rd Grade and I can still remember just boggling at the fact that street signs could in fact *be read from across the intersection* on the ride back home.
That was around twenty-five years ago. I don’t think I’ll ever forget, at this point.
Same. Hard same.
Like stupidly the first sentence out of my mouth was, “It’s like a photo!”
Cuz like I had been nearsighted for so long I didn’t know that you’re supposed to be able to see that clearly.
When you’ve lived your life 40+ years with perfect vision? It’s hard to accept you may need them now.
But Joyce is not 40+, and we don’t know how long her vision has been … let’s say, ‘sub-standard’. If she’d been in a public or parochial school instead of being home-schooled, she might have been struggling to see the blackboard for years.
And for the record, I’ve been a four-eyes guy since roughly 3rd grade, when it turned out I was having trouble seeing the blackboard clearly.
While Tim was probably being self-referential… Compare the ratio of real life time to DoA time and extrapolate, and Joyce would have been born *does a lazy barely-trying calculation* about three and a half real life centuries ago.
They don’t like change…as someone who has two people who hate change to the point that they complain about new neighbors and new doctors it’s tough to live with them and tough for them to accept that things aren’t always the same even after just a couple of months!
I don’t get it either, but I’ve been wearing glasses since I was three or four. I consider my glasses part of my face, and it’s weird when I look at pictures of me when I was a baby and didn’t wear glasses.
I was about her age when I got my glasses. Thing is, I didn’t know I can’t really see. I was VERY rectulant to wear glasses. Until I got out of the shop, looked around and thought “wow. THAT’S what the world looks like?!”
Took me a week or so to openly admit it though. Teenager and pride and stuff.
I think it’s def more about not liking change and having dealt with so much change lately, her familiar reflection was one thing she had control over, and now she’s lost that too.
They would rather not *change*. They would rather not recognise that something was *wrong* with them. They would rather not have to accept the relatively minor inconveniences of dealing with this new THING. Once you are used to it, it will be no big deal, but it’s like accepting new limitations on how you can move and act and that this thing will be part of your life no matter what.
It is easier to accept getting glasses as a child when you haven’t fully formed a concept of your identity and what you look like. Glasses do change how you look and how you are perceived. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is different.
The new clarity can override all the other emotional stuff because ‘WOW, I CAN SEE SO MUCH BETTER!’ but you’ve got to actually try the glasses for that.
Well, for now she could just wear them in the lecture halls so she can see the board. But then being able to see clearly is addictive, she might be afraid of getting hooked.
The scariest part is not recognizing yourself in the mirror without them.
Because you’re used to what you look like with glasses, or because your vision is too blurry to see your reflection?
Yes.
Definitely yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I’m eager to see what she ends up settling on.
I just want to see Joyce trying on different pairs already. I’ve been looking forward to seeing Joyce wearing glasses since this arc began.
Probably a conservatively styled thin wire frame, similar to Dorothy’s and Jocelyne’s but maybe a bit more rectangular instead of an oval. Joyce seems like she’ll lean toward the least noticeable frame that fits her.
*subtly plays New Face by PSY down the hall*
Horrifying is when the light shines on your glasses, or below the chin
Speaking of glasses, *glances at Joyce’s face* I’d prefer her in an aviator style,
Large yet chic to fit her expressive face
Weird. I’ve worn glasses since High School, and never once thought of them this way. How are glasses any different from the clothing you decide to wear each day, or how you style your hair? Your face is your face, Joyce, unless you get horribly disfigured in an accident.
They’re phrasing it in a rather strong way, but I agree with the basic sentiment; after wearing glasses for so long, seeing myself in the mirror or a photograph without them just looks weird. Like it’s someone else.
I mean, if you see someone in uniform for decades, or they cut their hair short after having it long for ages, doesn’t that look weird for a while until you adjust to the new image? It’s the same sentiment, really; it just tends to be more pronounced with glasses for various reasons.
Yeah, I’ve had them since I was five or six and genuinely struggle to recognize my face without them sometimes.
The last time I got my driver’s license renewed, they had me take them off. I found out that without them, and at the right angle and lighting (not what I usually see in the mirror), I look a lot more like one of my brothers than I previously thought.
It’s a good day to wax on from my arm-chair… gather round and chew the salt.
It seems like a common conceit to identify the image of the self most strongly with the perception of ones own face. (at least in modern times) Firstly there’s Pareidolia, which is heavily selected by evolution for face recognition. So we’re hard-wired to see faces everywhere and perceive it as important. This is of course because (secondly) we express a huge range of emotion and communication through our faces. Thirdly, our society places a huge stress on the importance of vision and appearance, so even if it was only a fashiin element, some people feel very strongly about changing how they dress. Finally, due to awareness of our id and conciousness being a phenomenon in our brains, we’ve also gained an increased sense of self being in the head. (this may also be emphasized by the cluster if sensors in close proximity as well). All of these factors individually can be enough to explain Joyce’s self image concerns. Given that they come as a set, well, I respect her concerns. There can be a similar struggle happen for those of who need to start medication for mental health.
Interestingly, apparently the ancient egyptians conceived of the self being in the torso. As a result they discarded the brain during mummification and this apparently also influenced how they viewed the world.
I can understand where she’s coming from here. I had to get glasses when I was 13-ish and stuck with them for about a year before switching to contacts right before starting high school. I didn’t have an issue with the way I looked with glasses, but it didn’t really feel like me when I was wearing them, and the idea of starting a new school where I’d meet a bunch of new people who only knew the version of me with glasses didn’t sit well with me because on a certain level it just didn’t feel like that was what I looked like. I wasn’t as intense about it as Joyce is, but I also hadn’t recently had to go through a massive amount of change in a very short period of time like she has, so the prospect of change wasn’t as loaded a subject for me as it is for her.
It’s true. I think I look so weird without sunglasses (and without a beard, as well. Can’t re-cork that bottle).
Just put your glasses on. Nothing will be wrong.
Putting glasses on will make you smarter. Just ask Robin.
it certainly didn’t help Roz…
Everything will be fine. You’ll see!
Sorry, kiddo. Life is full of constant change. Nothing lasts forever.
Okay, grav roulette. Lette’s do this.
OH COME ON. No, I refuse.
Much better.
You know what? I’mma gonna roll with this one!
HAHAHAHAHA!!!! NO WAY!!!!
Not sure I know how to play this game.
Is it a thing about how you capitalize your email?
Huh. So it is.
Neat.
Thanks for the tip
Careful you don’t roll the roulette too many times in one day! I’ve heard it can cause your IP to get banned
Im v happy with dina but I’m curious what else I can get so, roll!
Ultimate sweetie! I’ll have to remember this one
Roll!
*giving you squinty, jealous, judgy eyes*
I’ve been displeased with mine (not a Malaya fan) but also I got one of the only potentially transmasc characters so I’ve been going with it, but hey, might as well try
I wonder if this will be more acceptable to me
YES. PERFECT. 1000/10
BBCC is good luck!
niiiice
@ Sirksome – I’m glad my quest is helpful! XD
Jealous!
BBCC – helping everyone find the perfect Grav, excepting themself.
Except fruit cakes.
Even fruit cakes are eventually absorbed into black holes. Even black holes evaporate. Nothing lasts forever.
Fruit cakes ARE pretty durable though.
Are fruitcakes an instance of the Winslow? Is the Winslow a kind of fruitcake?
What the heck, I’ll try it just this once even though I’m fairly happy with my Asher grav.
Huh, Billie. What are the odds.
…it’s certainly something I’ll consider.
…nice redo, funny how it went to him!
I’ve worn glasses since I was 9 years old. Now I can’t even go to the bathroom in the dark without them. *eye roll* Someone tell Joyce that change is part of life and without it we grow stagnant.
Considering all the change we’ve all dealt with throughout 2020, I think stagnation is just fucking fine.
And I’m about ready to give back my subscription to 2021 if the 7-day free trial period we’ve seen is any indication.
Stephen Colbert suggested we think of it as a 2020 bonus week.
Where are everyone’s favourite places to buy glasses online?
I got some that are really minimal from zenni, but now I want more faces. A different face every day of the week!
I’d suggest glassesshop. The lenses I got from them are better quality than what I got from the actual doctor’s office. They have really cute styles and a bunch of coupons which can help you get a full pair for 20-50ish dollars (there’s even a first time free coupon for some frames that’ll let you get the frames and basic lenses for free). It’s also super easy to get store credits which you can stack with coupons. I’d recommend having honey installed when you use it so you can see all your coupon options.
(Also really good for cute prescription sunglasses c:)
*plays Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” on the hacked Muzak*
First the toenail and now this — truly this is Joyce And The Mild Body Horror
Sure is! And it’s this mild body horror where we see Dorothy pushing Joyce more, which is a lessen learned after Sarah resolved the toenail incident. Will a hand be next? Revenge of the uncomfortable hangnail? We’ve already seen some evolution around Joyce’s clothing choices
Jesus Christ Joyce, just pick some glasses.
I like Joyce but this is getting beyond a joke
it’s reaching pity levels…I don’t think even Amber reached that level of “woe is me” yet
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s reached that point with this storyline…
On the plus side it now means Joyce can have two identities like Superman!
*Joyce puts glasses on*
Everyone: Where did Joyce go? Who is this new person that in no way looks like Joyce because they are wearing glasses?
Also glasses add a +1 to intelligence even if you haven’t gotten any smarter!
Contacts?
Seriously.
She couldn’t handle the air puff!What makes you think she can touch her eyeball?
It’s totally different when you’re 1) in control 2) motivated.
I must say that Dorothy is 200% correct here.
I do not see my glassless self as my face.
That said I am also of the firm belief that Glasses make one at least 40% more attractive/cuter and I say this both about my own self-perception and outwardly.
So come on Joyce. Join the Hot/Cute side of the Frames.
Back in my dating years I managed to pick out, 3/4ths of the time, women who wore glasses. At some point what may have been random became a preference.
The best part? This ended way before the “getting old, needing glasses” phase, with yet another bespectacled babe, and we’ve been together, then married, for decades.
My boyfriend would agree with you, he has a strong preference for glasses.
i desperately want her to choose cat eye frames give the me what we want!!
I feel like a better route would have been “you only have to wear them during class and when you’re driving, and no one’s really looking at your face at those times anyway,” and help picking out a fancier case and maybe even a glasses chain
Sooner than she’d expect she’d be wearing them all the time because it just makes more sense to be able to see all the time, but it would probably mitigate her initial stress.
I didn’t have Joyce’s hangup but that’s how I started. Only got glasses to get my license. Then I found I needed them in grad school classes if I wasn’t sitting at the front. Then noticed that if I left my glasses on I could see leaves and grass. Then eventually did leave them on.
Of course, my vision getting even more nearsighted probably had a role.
Same, except I got them at twelvish, so no driving. It didn’t help that I kept being told that it would make my eyes worse to use them for reading and other close-up things (pretty sure that’s a myth, but even it it’s not, it’s a huge inconvenience)
I’d also advice half rimmed glasses, considering her concerns, especially if she needs wider lenses (I know it can be an annoying adjustment going to a much thinner field of vision). My dad literally didn’t notice that I was wearing glasses the first time I got half rims.
(also note, I’m the same axel)
It is a myth that using glasses makes your eyesight worse. It is also a myth that sitting too close to the TV damages them (you sit closer BECAUSE your eyesight is bad, it is not bad because you sit closer) as well as that reading in the dark damages them. It can strain your eyes to look at a screen all day or to try to read in the dark, but not like in a permanent damage way, more like in a when you get a muscle ache after overexerting yourself for 10 seconds which goes away after some rest way.
People who say ‘wearing glasses makes your eyesight worse’ are correlating the fact that eyesight gets worse in people with glasses and the wearing of glasses and assuming the glasses are the causation of the continued degradation. Instead of you know, people with already poor eyesight already being prone to eyesight degradation to start with considering their eyesight was already faulty and that age can make things that already don’t work well, worse.
Thanks for confirming this for me. It was specifically about using distance glasses for close reading and that sort of thing, rather than wearing them in general that I was warned about, but it seemed fake and I’m pretty sure it was just family telling me that, not my optometrist.
I got my first glasses around 9-10 years old. I’m nearsighted, and the optometrist at the time suggested bifocals with no strength to them so I wouldn’t try/have to force-focus on close objects through the distance prescription. I’ve had bifocals with zero-strength readers ever since, but it’s getting harder to focus on the dashboard and now I’m sometimes “playing the trombone” to read things, so it might be time to switch to progressives.
Apparently the theory was that exercise is supposed to be good for you and delay the progression of your eyesight getting worse? I don’t know if that actually holds water, but anecdotally it does. (My little sister needed glasses at around the same age, and didn’t want bifocals so she got plain flat lenses. Now her vision’s worse than mine.)
Something to think about…
A few years back, Joyce was driving her parent’s vehicle. But supposedly she is near sighted and has trouble seeing in class. How was she able to drive a vehicle safely?
Eyesight can deteriorate over time. And depending on her visual acuity she could still pass the necessary requirements to drive. She went down to line seven unaided if I recall. That’s better than I can do even with corrective lenses but that’s not saying much since I’m legally blind.
Where I live you need to pass a vision test to get your driver’s licence. But it isn’t a very stringent one: I can (and do) pass it without my specs.
And she probably did it when she was sixteen, so it’s been two years.
Not in comic time. It was about 3 months earlier, when she went home the weekend after the first kidnapping.
two things: she likely earned hers two years before and in a few months your vision can degrade enough to require corrective lenses. My nephew passed his learner’s permit exam and vision test without need for glasses six months ago, now he needs them to drive. It can happen in just one semester.
Another thing: her prescription could be within the threshold for vision impairment so doesn’t require correction for driving. She might need glasses for class, but not for driving.
I meant she probably got her license/learner’s permit when she was 16
I can’t pass my vision test w/o glasses, but I can drive w/o them. As long as I don’t have to read street signs.
To add to the other points, hasn’t she taken a fair few hits on the head due to the kidnappings?
She could very well have gotten damage from that
That’s a less fun thought. Good thing they did the pressure test though, now that I’m reminded.
Cars are much much larger than an eye chart and Joyce can see fine in her SMALLER classes. So she isn’t EXTREMELY nearsighted and cars would still visibly exist even if details would be difficult to make out if they were far away. Plus, depending on when she got her driver’s license, her eyesight may have degraded slowly, but it is probably still passable enough that she can still see enough to not crash into anything.
If she’s only a little nearsighted, she can make out distant objects fine, she just loses fine details. That also doesn’t affect your depth perception.
I’m nearsighted and my prescription’s a couple years out of date (too weak), so my corrected vision’s drifted to the point Joyce’s probably is uncorrected. I can see objects fine, but reading street names is difficult until I’m right on top of the signs.
By “see distant objects fine” I mean “recognize there’s something there”. You might not be able to read a distant license plate, but you can tell cars from pedestrians and discern movement. Lights are no problem either.
It’s not like the fog in old 3D games, or a sudden gaussian blur coming on at a given distance. For me it’s like looking through those “X-Ray glasses” from the back of old comic books, there’s a few ghost “copies” of everything that won’t converge into solid objects, and their apparent distance apart grows with physical distance.
Just think of Penny on B.B.T. ….”Molecules”.
It’s like Dorothy is intentionally missing Joyce’s point. And I say this as a glasses-wearer-since-third-grade. I don’t look like me without my glasses, and I can understand Joyce not wanting to feel the same way having not grown up with them.
She didn’t miss it, she’s trying to make Joyce see that nothing changed about her, people won’t change how they see her. Joyce is trying to find any excuse not to wear glasses, she’s running out of valid ones.
I disagree. Joyce was literally trying to say that she is scared of seeing herself with a different “face” and Dorothy just affirmed that she would end up doing exactly that.
Agreed, and there are lots if reasonings that would actually work (such as what I said below- that Joyce doesn’t have to wear them outside of lectures and driving)
I’d go for the other option myself:
“Well, if you’re worried about that, we can get you contacts. You’d look no different, all you have to do is stick your finger in your eyes each day to put them in, then at night to take them out”
“…So any brand you like, Dorothy?”
Are contacts not an option?
…remembers we had 3 straight strips of Joyce failing the puff test in spectacular fashion
It’s amazing what you can get over if you want contacts. The first time I tried to get them was a complete disaster. About a year later I tried again and it was easy. Plus with contacts, unlike the puff test, you’re completely in control.
Sometimes I mentally call my glasses my eyes.
this is the reason i got clear frames, so you can still sorta see my face
some day, Joyce, you’ll be old.
like… forty.
Is Damn You Willis confessing to some history with glasses face? When I was growing up, my father wore glasses, my mother wore reading glasses, my older sister got glasses when she was 7 or 8, my younger brother needed glasses when he was 7 or 8, and when they finally decided I needed glasses when I was 10, I was “well, it’s about time!”
it’s still wild to me that people can just,, see things without any assistance. I didn’t get glasses until grade 7 but I probably needed them at least six years earlier. I remember going to the zoo and not seeing most of the animals thinking they must camouflage really well. I remember people pointing out things on road trips and thinking I didn’t look fast enough. one time a teacher brought in mario kart the day before christmas break and put it up on the projector and I couldn’t stay on the track bc I couldn’t see where I was going even though I was sitting in the front row looking at this massive screen. the only reason I finally got glasses was because I had a teacher that graded notes and even in the front row I couldn’t see a damb thing. up until that point I’d been getting As in all my classes by just remembering what the teachers were saying in class so nobody had noticed
a few years later taking the eye exam for my driver’s license I genuinely thought they mixed up the chart with one with chinese symbols?? I was like why do you have an eye chart with chinese symbols on it are there really that many people who can read chinese in this part of canada???
also trying to find new frames is fun when you have to put your face only a few inches away from the mirror to even see what you look like. shopping online with digital previews was great because I could see them!
Yet another reason, as I have said before and will say again, that every child of school age should get their eyes checked every single year. By the optometrist, not the school or the pediatrician.
why would a pediatrician check eyes unless they’re also an optometrist? This is just plain ridiculous…the school thing I can understand, there’s no way that’s a full test and there’s a bunch of issues that are easily missed by them that the trained optometrist would see easily
It’s not ridiculous, pediatricians do simple eye exams with a chart. So do schools. Every single year, my kids get their eyes checked with the ped unless they’ve already had their visit to the eye doctor, and every year the school checks their vision too.
are eye tests in school a real thing or are you just saying that a school wouldn’t be qualified for a full proper eye exam? I’ve seen school eye exams on tv but I never had one. I feel like the bare minimum they could’ve done would be to have us read off some letters from a chart, then maybe my nearsightedness would’ve been caught sooner lmao
There were eye tests in school when I was in primary school. An optometrist employed by the Department of Education came around. Also, there was a Dept of Ed dentist with a dentist’s room in a trailer.
I remember that one girl in the class a year ahead of me turned out to be very short-sighted, and was issued with dark-framed chunky public health glasses, which got delivered at school and a teacher gave them to her on the verandah outside the 1st grade and 2nd grade classrooms. She put them on, looked out into the playground, and said “Oh! It’s all in little pieces.” First time she saw that trees have leaves.
They are a thing, and I agree that they should be done routinely by the schools as an important health measure, simply because not everybody goes to the eye doctor yearly like they should.
But you can’t simply rely on it. They just do the chart and then send a note home if the kid fails.
My school had them, that was how they found out I needed glasses.
Not quite as horrifying as spending the rest of the school year dealing with eyestrain.
I’m guessing this is just subtext to her overall fear of change, but she’s being a bit mean about glasses, like having them be a part of your appearance is just automatically a bad thing. Like if she had gone to public school as a kid, she might’ve made fun of kids wearing glasses.
As someone who has struggled with anxiety and issues with change my whole life I did not read it that way at all. She’s not freaking out because she thinks it’s a negative to wear glasses, she’s freaking out because she did not previously wear glasses and now she does and has no control over this change. It’s like if she suddenly woke up with a different hair color. It’s not about aesthetics, it’s about anxiety over change and lack of control. It’d probably be equally distressing if she’d worn glasses her whole life and suddenly got contacts or laser eye surgery.
She’s lost control of so much of her life, experienced so much change, and a person’s own appearance is generally something consistently familiar that they can exercise a certain amount of control over, and now even that is being taken out of her control.
You don’t have to wear them all the time Joyce, just think of them as a study aid.
But of course since this is a webcomic about young adults struggling with change, she *has* to wear them 24/7 now.
Depending on how nearsighted she is she may very well need to wear them all the time. Once you get used to being able to see clearly it becomes frustrating trying to navigate the world without that, esp if your vision is bad enough.
I can *see* without my glasses but once I started wearing them i became hyped-aware of how blurry everything was without them and started to find it difficult to walk around without them even when I didn’t have to read stuff from far away. I basically only take them off when I’m looking at something way up close and not walking around.
While I only wear glasses to read what I hate is most glasses available seem to be made for people with tiny heads and I end picking not the ones I want to have… but among the 2 that fit me :/ If I saved enough for fancy designer shit would I get more options… or am I doomed forever?
Dunno about you, but I seem to be doomed forever. There is zippo range of choice in frames for people who have huge faces.
Being a swan has got to complicate matters.
Cor, why am I Joe now?
What about this?
I sympathize…my ears are uneven and I like narrow rectangular frames so it’s really hard to find ones that actually properly cover both eyes and sit properly on my face even when adjusted.
I also have this problem. My glasses are always crooked and it drives me nuts when I notice it.
Change is scary 🙁
Yup. But also inevitable.
So you can either try to have a say in how it’s going to go, or just let it happen to you… but either way, it will happen.
This went from neurotic to just plain annoying. It’s one thing to not like change because of some semi-related issues, but now she’s just being lazy.
And for all she knows she might find Mr. Right because of how she now looks and acts now that she can see clearly!
As someone who has had lifelong issues with change that I have had to work to overcome, I really sympathize with and understand how she’s acting. I was the “only eat these specific foods, and eat the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for years and have a panic attack if I had to get new bedsheets or if a shirt I’d worn for years no longer fit me!,” type.
It may seem irrational and annoying to others, but when you have anxiety and change is a big anxiety trigger for you, it’s *not* a silly/small thing to you, it feels like a big deal to do something as simple as change your look.
Joyce has had to cope with a ton of changes the past few months, the massive change of going to college is stressful enough for someone with these issues and she’s dealt with so much other wild stuff (like her entire worldview crumbling and losing trust in her mother and her sense of safety in the world) on top of that.
How she looks probably feels like one of the few thing she can control right now and keep the same and enjoy the comfort of that familiarity, and now that’s being taken from her too.
And I also spent my whole life having people assume I was lazy or childish or “neurotic” or “just being difficult” when I was experiencing very real visceral distress I did not understand and could not control and that’s…a really unpleasant thing to deal with and it sucks to have a real anxiety issue be dismissed like that.
I don’t know what’s in Willis’ head but the story thus far seems to have painted a picture that Joyce may very well have some kind of anxiety disorder or at least very clear anxiety problems related to her overbearing, judgmental upbringing, and that’s not just “laziness.” It’s a real problem that is extremely difficult to overcome (and takes a lot of time).
To reiterate, two of her siblings (Jonathan and Jocelyn) wear glasses. It’s not that she is altogether clueless about glasses, but rather, there are deeper, long unaddressed psychological concerns here. I knew people who joined the military, and were issued glasses. Between new uniform that you wear all the time, new haircut that makes you look the same as everyone else, and glasses they may require you to wear, I understand the sense of losing sight of yourself. I’d say this has more to do with Joyce’s closet case of atheism, than the glasses themselves.
D: “When you see me, do you just see me with glasses or do you just see me?”
J: “I just see an atheist”
Between things Willis has said alongside ‘Joyce is autobiographical’ and the comic itself, yeah, I can’t see a reading where Joyce doesn’t have an anxiety disorder. Like Willis, I’m less sure about the other common question (is she autistic or is this all from being raised in a cult,) but that is in fact a viable question. (And neither of the two excludes the anxiety disorder thesis.)
It’s not about glasses at all. It is deep, deep issues Joyce hasn’t had adequate support for.
She’s also struggling with her own identity, and adding another change on top of her crumbling worldview isn’t helping that.
Yeah I dunno, I’ve never been diagnosed with autism, and didn’t grow up in a cult like Joyce did, but I have generalized anxiety disorder that was triggered by various things I’m not gonna detail on a public forum and I can 100% see Joyce’s behavior being a result of an anxiety disorder triggered by her upbringing.
Those weird food quirks are so very very familiar to me. I used to have panic attacks when I couldn’t eat the specific familiar foods I wanted and it took a loooot of time, and some therapy and medication to work past that. I know those are also traits that people with autism can have, don’t know what Willis’ intention is, just confirming that it definitely could be anxiety.
I don’t understand how any of this pertains to laziness
Damn it Joyce just try on some glasses already so I can see how you look wearing glasses. I’ve been wanting to see Joyce in glasses since this story arc started.
Waiting to see Joyce in glasses is the most suspenseful comic event I have experienced since waiting to see what happened to Mike.
Yuuup. I’m waiting for the inevitable “trying a bunch of different frames on” montage (even though that’s the worst part about picking new glasses.)
Man, dorothy really is the mom joyce deserves. I mean even their bracelets match her shirt
At some point I felt pretty naked without glasses
I have to take mine off for a few minutes when I first enter the office every morning, can confirm. (I have lenses that darken in the sun, and we have to wear masks so they fog up quickly when they’re cold. That one-two punch renders them almost opaque. I’ll take blurry over echolocation any day.)
I have a backup pair of glasses that are very different from my main pair. Does that mean I have two faces?
I mean, I DO flip a double-headed coin to help me decide whether or not to murder someone, so…
It doesn’t need to be forever, Joyce! I’ve changed my frames several times over the years.
that can also be a source of friction, though. I have been getting new frames every 2 years or so in part because I keep choosing frames that ‘go out of fashion’ and they no longer have ‘blanks’ that fit the frame… or at least that’s what the company that’s had my custom for 20 years tells me.
I get why they’re not waiting to buy the glasses story flow-wise, but if Joyce were my friend, I wouldn’t make her go. The whole air puff machine left her irritated enough. Put it off for a day and she’ll be able to deal with it better.
Eh, it’s self-preservation too. People who don’t care about their own health like Joyce is doing right now then to just create lots of other messes for other people to clean up.
If Joyce doesn’t get glasses Dorothy will have to deal with the fallback of Joyce’s grades slipping even more and all the drama around that.
See, this is a thing that I think demonstrates one of Dorothy’s flaws that stands out to me. The idea that Dorothy will “have to deal with Joyce’s grades slipping.”
Getting glasses is Joyce’s choice. Dorothy is trying to be a good friend by recognizing she has a problem that could easily be solved by doing this, and is smart enough to know how to be supportive by, in some degree, involving herself to remove as many barriers as possible to make it easier for Joyce to make that choice.
But like, at the end of the day, it’s still Joyce’s life, and Joyce’s problems, and Joyce’s decision, and that’s…not…Dorothy’s responsibility? She is not OBLIGATED in any way to deal with Joyce’s problems, she’s CHOOSING to help because she cares. But if Joyce doesn’t want to do it and doesn’t care about her own health and her grades slip, that’s not Dorothy’s fault! It’s not her JOB to fix it, either!
If Joyce creates messes because of her poor choices, it might be inconvenient later on to others but that won’t be Dorothy’s fault or responsibility, either, it’ll be Joyce’s. And like, if in fact Dorothy feels in some way like she genuinely *IS* responsible for micro-managing the lives of the people she cares about and that their problems are actually HER problems, that is a big red flag for boundary issues and even codependency.
I only really speak from experience in that these are the lessons I’m trying to, like, learn myself, through. LOTS AND LOTS of therapy. Lol.
Note that Dorothy didn’t say anything about Joyce’s grades being her fault or responsibility. Even Lena didn’t say that.
Though it’s not unreasonable to want to help out early on in ways that will reduce drama later, without making it into an obligation.
Yes, all of this. And while I get why Dorothy thinks someone has to do this FOR Joyce, unless Joyce is actively endangering herself by not wearing glasses? Let it lie, Dorothy. And even then, she can say ‘yes this is in fact THAT SERIOUS Joyce, please make better choices because I will not stop pushing this until you do’ but as soon as you start dragging her to optometrists against her will, you enter seriously iffy territory.
Like, Joyce is clearly upset about this in ways that are out of proportion with the actual risks vs rewards (it will not be a painful examination, vision will probably get worse over time so she can’t put this off forever, wearing glasses will benefit her,) and it’s part of her ongoing Trying to Ignore Changes Enough They Stop Happening/fear of extremely mild body horror thing… but Dorothy, you are not actually her mom. Thank God for that. Joyce is a mentally-competent adult, treat her like one.
Yeah, I get the reasoning (it’s going to be a struggle to get her back there so they might as well do it now), but she’s spent. Anything they try now will be met with resistance. If they come back tomorrow, Joyce might be back up to “well, okay maybe“.
Plus then we could get a montage of Dorothy handing her thin, reserved wire frames and Becky swapping them for outlandish styles.
She doesn’t want to change her face? The idea of looking like someone else other than this fixed idea of ‘me’? Maybe I’m over-interpreting but this really seems to me to be another symptom we’re seeing of Joyce’s neuro-atypicality.
ok but, hear me up
what about contact lenses?
If Joyce is freaked out by the thought of putting something on her face for the rest of her life, the thought of putting something on her eyeballs would likely trigger a total mental collapse.
Alt text is making me wonder what Face/Off would be like if it starred Dorothy and Joyce.
Joyce: Hey, everyone… so this is me, with glasses…
Walky: “HA!! Nerd.”
*Joyce rips glasses from her head, Dottie has to grab her arms to prevent Joyce from hurling them at the ground*
Dorothy: WALKY!!
Walky: What?!? I was just quoting Kipu!
Joe: *freezes, wide-eyed, starts sweating, runs away*
How dare you Nicholas Cage me in the alt text.
“Some day, Joyce, you’ll think the real you is how you look with fat and wrinkles”.
Yeah, I was just thinking, if she doesn’t like this change, oh boy she’s not going to like the enforced change of aging. I know I don’t.
But that’s slow and gradual, not an instant shift.
It’s an instant shift the moment you notice it.
Honestly I’m more interested in everyone’s reactions at school when they see Joyce with glasses.
JOE: “Hey, Dorothy, who is your hot new sister-geek?”
BECKY is CONFUSED! She hurt herself in her CONFUSION!
This comic amused me. So, mission accomplished, right? 😀
But I’ve worn glasses since high school, and I hate putting things in my eyes so even using visene on the incredibly rare occasions that I’ve used it is a task which involves a lot of spilling visine all over my face before getting any in my eye. Kinda like Joyce and the air puff machine (which I’ve never had a problem with, besides jumping a little). So I’ve never even bothered to try out contacts. Glasses are just a part of my identity after all these decades.
You know, I wear contacts, and I swear, everyone who wears glasses says “I’m just not good at touching my eyes!” when the topic comes up. Honestly, I don’t believe anyone starts out being good at touching their eyes when they start wearing contacts. Everyone gets flinchy. Every contact wearer has a story about how the first time they did it, it took hours to get them in/take them out and they irritated their eye so badly they spent an hour waiting for it to calm down just so they could try again.
It gets better with practice. Like everything. If you wanted to wear contacts, it would probably take under a month to feel just as natural as putting on glasses. And you get your peripheral vision back!
Soon…
Joyce: *Tries on aviators*
Dorothy: “*snrk* You look like a fighter pilot!”
Joyce: *Turns beet red, rips glasses off*
Mysterious guy with USSF delta on his uniform: “Miss Joyce Brown? The creator of Captain Julia Grey? Excellent. Please come with me; your country needs you.” (The Last Starfighter Overture starts playing on the muzzak speakers).
I’d suggest contacts, but there is NO WAY she’d have the discipline to stick a finger in her eye when she took so many tries to get past the air puff test
We’re gonna find out something really sad about her family dynamic, aren’t we.
Seriously Joyce what is your problem?
I dunno I’ve had glasses since I was 3
As someone who has also had glasses since pre-K, this is actually pretty fascinating. Since I’ve always had glasses I’ve always thought me-with-glasses looked more like ME than me-without-glasses. At this point it’s pretty core to my self image, somewhere between my sense of style and my gender expression. Now I think about it, that’s probably the biggest reason I’ve never considered contacts…
I mean, it could be worse, Joyce. My prescription changes every 1-2 years, so I pick out a new face every 1-2 years.
… it’s kind of fun, actually.
I’ve been wearing glasses every day for the vast majority of my life, but my mental image of myself doesn’t wear them. IDK why. So like- getting glasses doesn’t fundamentally change your perception of yourself.
when i was at the age of 18 i got my first pair of glasses. now i am 36 and still wear the same glasses. my eyesight has only changed a little since then but i refuse to get a new pair cause the frames i have now are perfect. But are no longer avaible to buy in new sadly.
also yaaaay, no longer amazi-girl. and thank the gods that i didnt get Booster.
phew.
Is she afraid of these things because she doesn’t like change or because of a family thing?
Does Dorothy have an overbite?
I vaguely recall seeing this before, but not registering it.
Nope! Don’t want Booster.
Admittedly, after wearing glasses since the age of seven and finally getting contacts at the ripe old age of 25, seeing my face without glasses took some getting used to. It’s nice to be able to change it up, though. And, given that I work with animals, contacts are a godsend.
Hmm. no.
Ah! That’s progress.