Enclothed Cognition

For this assignment, to wear something you wouldn’t normally, I chose to wear my glasses for a day. I’ve had glasses since sixth grade and only recently got contacts, after many years of protest and blurry vision. In the past year, my vision had gotten worse and I had been forced to wear my glasses all the time during my senior year of high school. Sometime in May of 2014 though, I got contacts and there have been maybe two or three days since that I’ve worn my glasses instead of my contacts.

I don’t think I look very attractive in glasses, so while I was wearing them, I was very aware of how others would perceive my appearance. I would try to understand how they thought I looked, if I saw an attractive guy on the street I would immediately feel self conscious just because I was wearing glasses. Which sounds ridiculous, people probably didn’t notice. But I’m pretty confident in how I look, so not having that confidence anymore left me feeling vulnerable. I was interested to see what my friends would say. Some didn’t say anything, maybe because they didn’t care or didn’t notice. One friend told me that I looked smarter. (Did I look dumb before??) I think like most people, my friends just went with it or didn’t notice a significant change. The difference in my appearance that was so evident to me was not nearly as noticeable to those around me. I think for everyone there is significance in how they look that goes beyond just a superficial desire to be attractive- we put an immense amount of our identity into how we dress, and wearing glasses is just not something that I incorporate into my identity. Eventually, however, I didn’t even remember that I was wearing glasses anymore.