young boys with glasses and guns

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BringHomeTheBacon

BringHomeTheBacon

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For decades I have seen a disproportionately greater number of bespectacled boys in hunting scenes, whether in books, magazines, TV shows and in film. We are not talking about children in safety glasses at the range here. I can't figure this phenomenon out. Wearing corrective glasses to some might make hunting seem geeky and not "cool". Young boys wearing specs might turn to outdoor sports and mother nature because the glasses make them social outcasts in their peer groups who do city stuff like surfing, hot rods, 10-speed-bike-riding, pinball, skateboarding, pushmobiles, soap box derby and rock and roll music. Is there a better explanation for the higher rate of glasses-wearing in the shooting sports, range safety eyewear notwithstanding? It would seem to me that the glasses-wearers with recreational guns are a smart, intellectual group. Perhaps, campaigns to promote gun rights and hunting should show a lot of people with glasses and who are well-dressed, city-slick-looking, to engender a positive public perception of the shooting world. Motorcycling once suffered from a negative image because of all the greasy, brutish unsophisticated boorish apes associated with it. Do YOU know any doctors, lawyers, scientists, IT geeks and teachers who are recreational shooters and/or hunters?

Below is a picture of me at age 32. Don't the Buddy Holly specs along with the buffalo plaid Pendleton and blaze orange make me look studious as a hunter?

Side note: virtually every younger man working at my local gun shop has specs on. All of these fellows look and sound like teenage boys. I really have not seen a single female shooter with glasses on in hunting scenes outside of shooting range eye protection. Peter Fonda did look nerdy in Easy Rider with eyeglasses on as a chopper rider, speaking of motorcycles above.

96 deer hunt.jpg
 
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More and more kids these days need corrective lenses for several reasons; the main one is staring at tiny phone screens for hours on end. There are actually progressive lenses made in .25, .50, and .75 diopter add power for teenagers for use with phone and tablet screens, and computer monitors. Adults are also becoming presbyopic younger than ever before, for the same reasons.

My theory? They (or their parents) are spending too much money on shooting related items to get contacts. ;)

BringHomeTheBacon said:
Wearing corrective glasses to some might make hunting seem geeky and not "cool".
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Nice generalization, BTW; Old four eyes must be smart.

BringHomeTheBacon said:
I really have not seen a single female shooter with glasses on in hunting scenes outside of shooting range eye protection.
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Girls are more likely to wear contacts. And can you tell perscription shooting glasses for non-Rx every time? I can about 90% of the time, but there are some Rx's that you just can't tell without putting them in a vertometer.
 
BringHomeTheBacon said:
I really have not seen a single female shooter with glasses on in hunting scenes outside of shooting range eye protection.
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Well, take a look at this one. That’s our grandson, Jake (in the orange), his friend Zack, and Jake's “bespectacled” mom, Chrissie (our oldest daughter) standing beside the truck.
IMAG1183.jpg
Besides that, Jake AND Chrissie both shoot my "bespectacled" wife's old 7mm-08s. They kind of laid claim to them 10 or 12 years ago when Mrs. 308 Norma had a Model 70, 7mm Rem Mag customized for her own big game rifle.
BTW, not only does my deer and elk hunting wife wear glasses, she was wearing a face mask while hunting for many years before covid was around, and face masks became "fashionable." She's asthmatic, and she learned long ago that sagebrush pollen can trigger an attack. She also carries an inhaler and an epi-stick in a quick access fanny pack.
Nerdy?o_O Yeah, I guess so.:D
 
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I think you're thinking too much. I get the premise though, a kid with glasses might be more of an outcast and therefore spends more time in nature than at the movies with buddies.

I wore glasses starting at the age of 4 years old so I was used to being picked on. It didn't drive me into the woods though. The woods drove me into the woods.
 
Wûuuuut?

I have worn glasses since I was 8 years old.
I played baseball, football, rodeos, raced dirt bike. Was not a social outcast. Grew up in a hunting family. Spent every waking moment outdoors.

My son got his glasses in 2nd grade. 2 grandsons are spectacles, 4 are not.

They are outside, in them woods, hunting because they enjoy it.

Wearing glasses or not has nothing to do with the situation.
 
Pretty sure more people are wearing lenses younger because advances in ophthalmology make it easier to assess vision problems earlier.
I’m not an eye doctor and don’t work in the field at all. It makes sense though. How else do people too young to know their abcs well enough to read an eye chart get perfect prescription lenses or contacts?
 
courtgreene said:
Pretty sure more people are wearing lenses younger because advances in ophthalmology make it easier to assess vision problems earlier.
I’m not an eye doctor and don’t work in the field at all. It makes sense though. How else do people too young to know their abcs well enough to read an eye chart get perfect prescription lenses or contacts?
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There are other eye charts besides the Snellen chart; and autokeretometers give a pretty close approximation of an Rx without having a pt. use any eye chart at all. Contacts are rarely prescribed for kids too young to comprehend the Snellen chart anyhow.
 
It might be just a coincidence that I have seen a disproportionality higher number of American boys in hunting scenes wearing glasses than in other activities as a whole. Even before cell phones, in the 1970's, there seemed to be a noticeable number of boys wearing glasses who were associated with guns or shooting in film and on TV. In my school, boys with glasses often had higher marks. Having good grades was a sign of responsibility and wearing glasses have long been associated with being smart. It could have just been that academic and often bespectacled sons back in the day were deemed more trustworthy by their folks with guns. Back then, smart children ruined their eyes slaving over textbooks rather than straining them on little smartphones. In my high school years I was just a C average student and thus had no car or driving privileges. My mother didn't want me to have anything to do with guns or hunting also. I did have an archery class in junior high, however. I didn't wear glasses then, and wouldn't wear them until I was 24 at the time I went into the service and flunked the eye test on the physical. I knew my eyes might have been going bad because at age 23, I had trouble driving a car in the rain at night or riding a motorcycle at night. If your naked eyes have trouble seeing while driving a vehicle under low-light conditions, see an eye doc at once, regardless of your age. But I digress.

Of course back then, girls were never portrayed in film and on TV in hunting scenes or in shooting sports. I have seen enough old Disney films, Waltons episodes and Lassie episodes to understand this. In the 4th grade, circa 1974, we read a story from our readers "Little Sure Shot" at school about Annie Oakley and that is the first female I was ever introduced to that had anything to do with guns. Before that, I never knew women would even touch a gun.
 
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BringHomeTheBacon said:
It might be just a coincidence that I have seen a disproportionality higher number of American boys in hunting scenes wearing glasses than in other activities as a whole.
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Ya think?

BringHomeTheBacon said:
Even before cell phones, in the 1970's, there seemed to be a noticeable number of boys wearing glasses who were associated with guns or shooting in film and on TV. In my school, boys with glasses often had higher marks. Having good grades was a sign of responsibility and wearing glasses have long been associated with being smart.
Click to expand...

That's because they were socially ostracized for wearing glass. SO, they'd hit the books. Having worn glasses since second grade, I can attest to this. You were on the other side of the equation at 7, so you saw things differently. Working in the Optical field, I have seen just as many not-as-smart boys (and girls) with glasses.

BringHomeTheBacon said:
It could have just been that academic and often bespectacled sons back in the day were deemed more trustworthy by their folks with guns.
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Another supposition based on your observations. Having been an academically inclined and bespectacled student, you'd think I'd readily agree with you, but my experience was the opposite. Most of my friends as a teenager that shot did not wear glasses. One still doesn't, except readers.

BringHomeTheBacon said:
Back then, smart children ruined their eyes slaving over textbooks rather than straining them on little smartphones.
Click to expand...

In my case, this certainly was true. I learned to read at age two, and have read voraciously for the past 56 years. I'm fairly certain this was a factor in my getting glasses, but not the only one. My sister hated reading back then, (still does) and she got glasses at 12. I believe the onset of puberty may have been a factor there. 11-13 is also the age we see most kids come in for glasses, that already don't have them. 15-16 is the next age we see a lot of, having failed the Titmus II at the DMV when applying for DL's.

BringHomeTheBacon said:
If your naked eyes have trouble seeing while driving a vehicle under low-light conditions, see an eye doc at once, regardless of your age.
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Sage advice. :thumbup:

BringHomeTheBacon said:
Of course back then, girls were never portrayed in film and on TV in hunting scenes or in shooting sports. I have seen enough old Disney films, Waltons episodes and Lassie episodes to understand this. In the 4th grade, circa 1974, we read a story at school about Annie Oakley and that is the first female I was ever introduced to that had anything to do with guns. Before that, I never knew women would even touch a gun.
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Society, and Hollywood, were still clinging to the 1950's dream of the the "perfect" post-war America, which when examined closer, wasn't as perfect as we remember. My sister is about your age, and by 4th grade she was a crack shot, (with a .22 rifle) and still was even after she got her glasses at the age of 12. She still is at 55. My mom, OTOH, didn't touch a gun until my Dad made her learn how to shoot his off-duty snubnose, because as a new cop he worked midnights. She never liked handling them herself, even though the rest of us did. YMMV.
 
Mn Fats said:
I think you're thinking too much.
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^^^Same here. Growing up in the 50s and 60, glasses on young kids was a rarity, not because kids didn't need them, but because it wasn't till they got to school and had a hard time reading the blackboard that it was determined they needed glasses. Even then, the standard "which way is the "E" pointing" we got in school, did little to discover things like astigmatism. Thus it was only kids with very poor vision that needed those thick corrective lenses that got them at a early age. I was in my early 30's before going to a "real" optometrist because those standard reading tests at the GP told me I had 20/15 vision. When I was told I needed glasses I told him he was a "quack". I was wrong....he was right. For years I didn't know why I couldn't see horns on a buck in the brush without using the scope or binos. Why everyone else could see the turkeys out in the neighbors field and I couldn't. Now I know why.

Fortunately, wearing glasses does not have the stigma it used to have. Glasses are now fashionable to the point where I see High School kids wearing non-prescription glasses or "Blu-light" glasses just because they look "cool". With the new sports goggles, you see athletes wearing corrective glasses as well as those that wear them just for protection or sun.
 
My older brother and I grew up along the northern California coast in a middle-class suburban community. Not a lot of hunting and recreational shooting in my coastal nor-Cal surf culture being a late boomer. In 1979, there was a boy of color at my high school who gave a speech in class about shooting clay targets with a shotgun. This sport was his passion. I thought it a little odd at the time that his culture would be into trap and skeet and stuff like that. Oh, yes, he wore Buddy Holly specs and was more academic than others of his demographic who were bussed in from the other side of the train tracks. In 1974, I was in the 5th grade and a boy was talking out loud in class about having gone hunting over the weekend on a Monday. He wore no glasses, interestingly. In 1975, I shot my friend's BB gun at his house. It was in the backyard and it was the first time I fired a BB gun. A few other neighborhood boys were over to his house. This was inside the city limits of town back then but nobody raised a stink about it in the 1970's not even in California. This boy with the BB gun did not wear specs and none of us had safety glasses on back then for shooting the BB gun. Nobody in the days of my 1970's youth culture even wore car seat belts back then either.
 
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I require my students to wear eye protection when shooting. Required for some ranges as well.
 
In the army, I often got ribbed for wearing glasses. There was a sergeant in basic training who called me four-eyes. The funny thing is, this man was also wearing glasses! Well, that makes TWO pairs of GI four-eyes. Before going into the army, I used to jokingly call a younger bespectacled manager of a hamburger joint I worked at four-eyes. I was still specs-less then. I was kind of his drinking buddy and motorcycling buddy off work so I could get away with it.
 
Less eye care then.

Near - industrial level bilking of health - related insurance now.

Much like how they’d stick a stent in your coronaries at the drop of a hat.

Ka - ching!

Idle speculation on my part :rofl:
 
I see some members here have been here since 2004. How long have Internet discussion boards been in existence? I first joined a discussion board in 2006 at age 42: Craigslist.
 
I think the reason for all the kids wearing glasses is the stigma of being mocked and called "4 Eyes" doesn't exist anymore. The same with braces and being called "Metal Mouth".

My 41 y.o. son needed glasses in the 7th grade but wouldn't wear them at school. He finally got contacts. However, both of my grandkids needed glasses at an early age and never blinked. They were not made fun of at school.
 
Patocazador said:
I think the reason for all the kids wearing glasses is the stigma of being mocked and called "4 Eyes" doesn't exist anymore. The same with braces and being called "Metal Mouth".

My 41 y.o. son needed glasses in the 7th grade but wouldn't wear them at school. He finally got contacts. However, both of my grandkids needed glasses at an early age and never blinked. They were not made fun of at school.
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In the 5th grade, there was this bespectacled teasing poem:

Don't get wise, bubble-eyes,
Knock you down peanut size.
Understand, rubber band?
Yes, indeed, jelly bean.
 
I don't think there is a social stigma to wearing glasses among kids these days. If anything, my suspicion of why some may perceive more kids wearing glasses in shooting and hunting versus other endeavors in the past was because kids wanted to hit the target more than worrying about how they might look. These are usually family rather than school settings and more likely to be with adults who dont act in the same manner as other kids when it comes to appearances. Plus a lot of the activities the OP mentioned like water sports and physical contact sports are not terribly conducive to keeping a pair of glasses on while participating. So even kids who wanted or needed glasses would be discouraged from using them during those activities. (Glasses were never exactly cheap and breaking or losing them is not at the top of parent or child happy list.)
 
BringHomeTheBacon said:
. Do YOU know any doctors, lawyers, scientists, IT geeks and teachers who are recreational shooters and/or hunters?
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My dad was a public-school teacher, wears glasses, was a hunter, (as was his dad too) and taught me all about sight picture, holding a steady aim, trigger control, and safety. I'm a retired SysAdmin who has worn glasses since second grade, and I go shooting a couple of times a week unless the weather's bad, and reload to keep up with the shooting (or is it the other way around?). A lot of IT types are firearms enthusiasts; I'm not an outlier. We tend to admire precision engineering in general, so guns are a natural fit. I enjoy studying the internals of a revolver just as much as I like seeing how a particular motherboard is put together.

Though I was frequently insulted as the only child in the neighborhood wearing glasses, nowadays "Nerd Culture" is celebrated. Times have changed!
 
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