In the middle of my 20s, there was a fierce baldness debate, just among the men: if one went bald, did it make them all look old? And if so, did that create a moral onus upon the first bald man to take Regaine? It was so contested that considerations like: “are we absolutely sure Regaine works, and if it does, why is anybody bald?” became secondary, the way all the practical questions of Brexit melted away, once one person, one time, said the word “sovereignty”. I can’t remember how baldgate ended because, sooner or later, give or take 25 years, everyone was bald, except for the ones who most definitely were not.
Now in our 50s, the battleground is reading glasses: everyone has a subtly but importantly different version of the etiquette. One friend hates it when you never quite take them off, and just slide them to the top of your head, because she thinks it’s beyond physical laziness: the beginning of entropy, like eating with your hands, weeing in a sink. I love wearing my glasses on my head, because then I either know where they are, or forget where they are, and am wearing a pair on my face as well, win-win. But I hate it when people wear them round their neck on a chain, because I take it as shorthand for my adornment days are over. From now on, anything I hang off myself will be strictly utilitarian, and soon I will get a hammer and a big bunch of keys and a miniature spirit level, and I’ll be ready for absolutely anything except the high life.
My school friend abhors all visible eyewear, and can’t understand why everyone doesn’t have varifocal contact lenses. Another friend hates it when anyone’s glasses are attached to them by anything, because it means he can’t steal them, which he does constantly; often you can only find them again by following the sound of him shouting: “are these a THREE POINT FIVE?” Another friend won’t wear anything, out of vanity, and has the font so large on his phone that I have accidentally read every text he’s been sent for the past five years, one giant word at a time.
There’s no glasses fix that makes any of us look any younger, except when we all lose them at the same time; then we will all look 25.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
