I Look Like Nana Mouskouri

January 03, 2010

Before Lisa Loeb there was Nana Mouskouri, the first singer to dazzle us not just with her shrill velvet voice but her kick-ass black framed specs. I had to get glasses this year. I noticed I was getting a lot of eye strain and headaches when I was on the computer and realised I hadn't had an eye exam for about five years, so I went to an optician that had opened up in our neighbourhood. It was a pretty thorough exam with retinal imaging (eyeballs are gross) and a series of tests I've never had before in Canada (one of which I had to come back for the next day because my responses didn't make any sense!). I felt very responsible after having had the exam, kind of the way I felt after going to confession in Catholic school (where I once stole the sins of the guy before me - I could hear him through the door - because I didn't have enough sins of my own to confess and I didn't want the priest to think I was holding back. Funny, I didn't see the irony in that at the time).

I've always been able to see super far, I can read signs that only Superman can see (yes, I'm bragging a bit but let me have it as it's all I got) but the flipside of that is a tendency to be short sighted and therefore close-up reading became my kryptonite. I was going to take my prescription to some hipster optician that sells the kinds of frames that are guaranteed to present you to the world as an aesthete who is as discerning as you are blind, but I saw a simple pair of black frames, tried them and said 'This is good enough!' They were in the designer section but I'd never heard of the maker, Janet Reger, who I've since found out is a lingerie designer (not bad, either).

And now every time I look in the mirror I see Nana Mouskouri looking back at me. Which could probably be said for any brown hair/brown eyed girl who wears black framed glasses. But I don't think Nana self-photographed her album covers in the mirror. And of course it's blurry but in the clear ones I looked insane. I'm not particularly vain, as this shot proves, but I do have some standards. And apparently a fuzzy face falls well within them.