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alt title(s): The Glasses Got To Go 
"Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses."
— Dorothy Parker, "News Item"
Yuki: "I forgot to recreate the glasses." Kyon: "Actually, I think you look cuter without those things. I don't really have a glasses fetish anyway." Yuki: "What is a glasses fetish?"
The Meganekko is the anime trope of girls with glasses being considered "cute," but the Real Life/Live Action alternative is, of course, the automatic perception that girls (or, for that matter, guys) wearing glasses are nerdy, homely, or otherwise undesirable in various ways.
These ways could include the "sex appeal" department, and it could also include the strangely instantaneous deletion of glasses from the face of any up-and-coming hero or heroine in stories, movies, or television shows. Depending on your personal preference, this could be part of an Unnecessary Makeover. Always the first step in a Makeover Montage. (Oddly enough, a character that loses his/her specs as part of this trope almost never suffers afterward from the sort of vision problems that presumably required them to be worn in the first place.)
Pretty much, if "the glasses must go," then the example must go here.
A common step in a Beautiful All Along transformation. Also see The Glasses Come Off, when the glasses are ditched so the character can be more Bad Ass. Recently, an "Evil Through and Through" variation has started occurring in anime, where hidden villains remove their glasses to show that... well, yes, they are beautiful all along, but they don't have to hide their intentions anymore.
Per Rule Thirty Four, there are of course exceptions to this work for writers who consider glasses to be sexy, and pornographic websites dedicated to people wearing glasses can be found without much effort ( Or So I Heard).
A common way to avert this one is to turn the character into a Badass Bookworm.
Examples:
Advertising
- Subverted in a series of Dutch commercials where 'unsexy' people where turned into deadsexy people by giving them glasses.
- An advertisement that isn't trying to sell glasses or laser eye surgery will never feature a woman with glasses. Ever.
- Oh my god, you're right.
- Eh, they're uncommon, but they do exist. (Though most of those women tend to be older, or in motherly roles.)
Anime and Manga
- Yuki Nagato of Suzumiya Haruhi gives up her Scary Shiny Glasses when she protects Kyon from another Sufficiently Advanced Alien, and he comments that she looks better without them.
- Aizen gives up his glasses when he reveals himself to be the true villain in Bleach, in this case going from Hidden Villain to full-out Badass.
- Likewise, Quattro from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha seemed to be a goofy Dojikko villainess at first, but abandons her glasses when she reveals just how ruthless she is. Likewise Due, upon abandoning her disguise.
- Ouran High School Host Club does this when Tamaki first removes Haruhi's glasses, revealing her large, bishonen-style eyes. The host club insists she wear contacts from then on, as her eyes are apparently a draw for female customers. Flashbacks reveal that she only recently wore the glasses in the first place and normally wore contacts — the glasses were only a temporary thing anyway.
- Recently this has been subverted in the manga with Haruhi going back to how she was before she met Tamaki, complete with the Memetic Outfit from the first chapter/episode. She also mentions she has no contacts now... but we'll see how long that lasts.
- Miu Fuurinji from Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple inverts this trope. She wears glasses to tone down her appearance because she stood out too much and got ostracized for it at her last school.
- In D.N.Angel there's a scene where Satoshi asks Risa for help in an investigation, and she thinks he's asking her out on a date. At first she's put off by him, but then starts to think he might be cute...if he takes off his glasses. She then asks him to take them off, and he does. (They're back on in later scenes, however.)
Comic Books
- Subverted (and confirmed) in, of all places, Archie Comics. In one comic, Veronica, always at the forefront of style, chooses to wear glasses with no lenses in order to look more fashionable. Ironically, everyone feels sorry for her because they absolutely know that glasses always make women look ugly.
- Another story showed Betty wearing glasses for school while Veronica taunted her that she'd only attract "nerds and dweebs" (Betty didn't care one way or the other). When she saw Betty was actually attracting attention from handsome guys instead, she snatched Dilton's glasses in an attempt to show her up. The prescription was so high that she couldn't see, however, leading her to flirt with the principal.
- Played straight in Watchmen. Laurie finds Dan much more attractive without his giant glasses. When they go into hiding at the end and forge new identities, he has apparently ditched the glasses in favor of contacts.
Film
- Pick any "homely to hottie" teen movie. Chances are, she's going to have contacts given to her during her Makeover Montage.
- Or, in older works, she has to live her entire public life in a half-blind haze.
- The Princess Diaries (2001). Your teen wish fulfillment movie of choice for trope overload. Urg.
- The guy pulls them off her face and breaks them in his hand. That's right, not only is it shockingly, willfully unattractive to wear glasses on a day-to-day basis, you shouldn't even own them, little missy. Or remember you spent hundreds on that one pair.
- Parodied in Not Another Teen Movie, where the protagonist is given the task of making an "ugly" girl into Prom Queen, and his buddies pick a girl whose only faults are explicitly that she wears glasses and has a ponytail. The guys pick her as being "impossible" to turn into a beauty queen, after calling a pair of Siamese twins joined at the head and what appears to be a troll "too easy."
- The laws of physics aid this parody when her glasses are removed to make her look hotter... only for her to have to squint hard at the mirror to make her reflection out.
- In the movie spoof Monster In The Closet, the hero is an overt Clark Kent parody: every time his glasses come off, the heroine literally goes into a slack-jawed trance at how "handsome" he suddenly is. And then the same thing happens with the monster, and it kidnaps him.
- One of the first steps of the makeover in She's All That is glasses removal.
- One of the older (though almost certainly not the oldest) examples comes with the Ruby Keeler character in the '30s musical Footlight Parade.
- Subverted in Scary Movie 2. When The Vamp (forgot her name) tries to seduce the nerdy graduate assistant into giving her the keys out of the Haunted House, she takes off his glasses in hopes that it makes him prettier. All it does is make his eyes cross.
- LA Confidential: A couple high-ranking characters tell up-and-coming police Sgt. Edmond Exley to "lose the glasses", since he wouldn't fit in as the only detective wearing them. He takes their advice as best as he can, going without them while sitting at his desk and while being photographed.
- In "Strictly Ballroom", one of the first things Scott does after agreeing to dance with Fran is ask if she really needs her glasses, and then takes them off. The glasses are never seen again, and Fran's dancing (and love life) rapidly improves as soon as they're gone.
Literature
- In the "heroes don't wear glasses" sub-category: One of the main characters in the Young Wizards series of books, Nita, was originally described as wearing glasses in the first book. In the second book, the description went away. In the following books, one could probably forget she'd ever been described that way in the first place, and no explanation as to why she suddenly got 20/20 vision was given.
- A Wizard Did It. This is more likely than most given that Nita is a wizard.
- In Vivian Vande Velde's book "Now You See It..." the protagonist wears glasses and hates them with a passion, citing this trope on the second page. While the lesson of the book is essentially that looks aren't everything, she still manages to get rid of them permanently at the end of the book, making this a Broken Aesop.
- Although the book is partially meant as a bit of escapist fantasy for those who hated wearing glasses, since the author had the same problem and even dedicated the story to those share her distaste for bad eyewear.
Live Action TV
- In the Sit Com Grounded For Life, the husband goes through ridiculous lengths to keep his wife from wearing her new glasses because he finds glasses so ugly that looking at them turns him off instantly. In a flashback, he even snubbed his would-be wife simply because she was wearing glasses.
- Beatriz Pinzón and Leticia Padilla only changed hers for a more flattering pair.
- Subverted in an episode of Arrested Development. Gob attempts to woo his father's secretary (a plain girl with glasses who wears her hair up) to get some business done (not entirely legally). In an attempt to make this easier for himself, he asks her to take her glasses off and her hair down, which makes her even less attractive, since without them, she has a lazy eye, and crazy hair.
- Referenced in The Office when Pam wears glasses for an episode. Micheal even tells her point-blank that to be attractive you have to take the glasses off. However it's soon subverted when Kevin is revealed to have a fetish for girls in glasses.
- Truth In Television: The reality makeover show 10 Years Younger employs Lasik eye surgery religiously.
- In the first episode of Sliders, Quinn needs reading glasses, yet this was dropped for later episodes.
- Stargate SG-1, over the course of the series as Daniel becomes less nerdy and more awesome he starts wearing his glasses less and less, eventually losing them all together.
- Not true, he is still wear glasses throughout the series and even into Ark Of Truth and Continuum, he just chose a more flattering pair.
Music
- Pretty much the whole point of the music video for the song "You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift. She starts off with huge cokebottle glasses which she wears for most of the music videos, then right before she goes to the High School Dance, she takes off her glasses and puts on a pretty dress, prompting her true love to dump his scank ho of a girlfriend and ending the music video with a True Loves Kiss.
Theater
- Doubly subverted in Wicked: When Galinda takes it upon herself to give Elphaba a makeover (in "Popular"), the first thing she does is remove Elphaba's glasses. The second thing she does is put them back on. All the same, Elphaba stops wearing glasses after that song.
- Male example (kind of) in The History Boys: "Taking off my glasses is the last thing I do."
Video Games
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, Bugs (Bunny Cormick) normally looks like the blonde bombshell of your wildest dreams. But her power is that she's a genius inventor, so, being Genre Savvy, she puts on the studious glasses to look like what one of her friends calls 'Professor Bunny'.
- Subverted in Star Kid Potter's Me And My Dick, Joey takes down Sally's hair and attempts to remove her glasses only to have her go cross-eyed.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- The animated series The Replacements features a supporting character named Shelton Klutzberry whose insanely thick and heavy glasses cripple his posture and pinch his nose, warping him into a stooped Jerry Lewis clone; if they are ever taken off, he instantly (and unwillingly) turns into a middle-school hunk. Of course, this particular example is so absurd in its extremes that it's likely a parody.
- As it turns out, the subversion here is that his celebrity girlfriend immediately breaks up with him after finding all this out because she was attracted to his goofy awkwardness.
- In another male example, one of the episodes of Animaniacs with Minerva Mink had her falling in love with a nerdy-looking wolf who happened to turn into a hunky werewolf when the moon was out. Naturally, his glasses somehow magically disappeared and reappeared to suit whichever form he was in.
- Gwen Stacy in The Spectacular Spiderman has a makeover in Gangland, making her look less like Deb Whitman (a love interest from the comics, notable only for having glasses and being overdependent) and more like, well, Gwen Stacy. This included losing the glasses. While Harry and Peter did go through the standard awed gape, this is likely also because her hair was down and she was wearing a nice dress with a stole. She's kept the hair and the lack of glasses.
- Inverted utterly in an episode of The Fairly Odd Parents, where a young King Arthur is a squinty bowl-cut nerd without glasses, and turns into a muscular, deep-voiced hero with flowing hair when he can see clearly.
Aversions:
Anime and Manga
- Ranma One Half subverts this trope. Mousse, a male member of the same tribe of "Chinese Amazons" that Ranma's self-proclaimed fiancee Shampoo belongs to, normally looks like a rather Bishonen guy. Unfortunately for him, his eyesight is horrendous, and to counteract this he has to wear a set of Nerd Glasses that make him look absolutely ridiculous whenever he puts them on. Worse still, he has a bad habit of taking them off frequently, due to either vanity or wanting to be dramatic... and because he's Blind Without Em, he invariably ends up making himself look like an idiot. Even worse is the fact that his eyesight honestly isn't so hot with them on either; he's a bit better at seeing where his target actually is instead of walking right past it, but he still tends to confuse objects and people.
- Kirihara in Darker Than Black may look better without her glasses, but when she isn't wearing them she spends all her time squinting.
Literature
- Harry Potter's glasses do not matter because Harry is male, and Daniel Radcliffe's been raking in the fangirls since he was jailbait. Hermione Granger on the other hand may not technically wear glasses but she has been unflatteringly described as a bookworm and a Little Miss Know-It-All with bushy hair and large front teeth, that her character had to undergo a literal Unnecessary Makeover during one of the books to be prettied up for a school ball.
- The glasses are lampshaded during Daniel's appearance in Ricky Gervais's comedy series Extras, in which he plays a "twisted version of who he really is"; he played a self-absorbed child actor constantly trying to score with older women, and was quick to point out he doesn't wear glasses in real life- the stage ones don't even have lenses. At one point he even gets called a "specky git" by one of the other actors, to which he responds "They're not real!"
- Results in a strange situation in the movie, because Emma Watson was consistently accepted by viewers as cute already — how likely were they to cast a girl who wasn't? We don't get to see the Unnecessary Makeover, yet the other characters react as if she had one, because they had to follow the book.
Live Action TV
- On the other hand, Wesley from Angel removes his glasses in his makeover as a Badass, in addition to growing a five-o'clock shadow. No mention is ever made of how he manages to see well. Fred also wears glasses only sometimes during the show.
- Perhaps contacts. Or magic. But in the comic continuation of the series, Wesley is wearing his glasses again, so probably contacts.
- Before his makeover, Wesley and Cordelia once spontaneously impersonate Buffy and Angel, in order to bring a new cast member quickly up to speed about their twisted relationship. Wesley intuitively recognizes that his keeping his glasses on in this role would look dorky, and quickly whips them off... and then fails to find a place where to store them, so he ends up looking just as dorky holding them in his hand during a passionate kiss.
- Bones: Booth finds Brennan quite sexy when she dons glasses in one episode.
Newspaper Comics
- Subversion of a variant: in one Peanuts strip, Peppermint Patty suggests that Marcie would look more sophisticated if she pushed her glasses up onto her forehead. After walking into a wall and a lamp-post, Marcie comments "Before I became sophisticated, I almost never had headaches."
Webcomics
Western Animation
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