And Rachael Leigh Cook looks good before she goes through the chrysalis of She's All That, so that's clearly all butkus. The glasses are the weapon of choice for turning any number of obviously attractive people into the sort of spoddy dweebs you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, except for when they're used on somebody that you're going to find attractive further down the line. In She's All That, she's still wearing some nice, stylish frames pre-transformation. If you're a dork that nobody's ever going to feel attracted to (usually the comic relief, or neutered best pal of the main character), then you'll have a large pair of super-goofy NHS specs. It's a weird variation on the rule. Hollywood have thrown us a curve ball: we'd just got used to the new status quo that glasses automatically equals and uggo, and then we discover that uggos are not created equal? That's hardly fair. On them or us. Still, it reiterated another of those principal truths of the nineties teen film that, for the most part, wearing glasses transforms even the most attractive movie star into a completely unattractive dweeb. Unless that person is, indeed, supposed to be secretly attractive, in which case, they have nice glasses to suggest that. Also they can get by fine without the glasses, once you take them off and reveal that secret attractiveness, so why even have them in the first place? We shouldn't have to say this, but once again: glasses do not make you an automatic uggo and, whilst making sure you have the right sort of frame for your face type is important, having some cheap nasty ones also won't make you a total dog. You should probably also keep wearing them, even if you have just gone through a makeover montage.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
