Meganekko (On the Love of Girls with Glasses)

When it comes to poetically naming a fetish and translating it from a niche activity within the pornographic imagination into an accepted trend within popular culture, you can always rely upon the Japanese. And so it is with glasses fetishism - or, as they call it, meganekko. 

Meganekko - which translates literally as girl-child with glasses - refers to young women for whom wearing glasses can be considered a defining characteristic or trait and whose sexual attractiveness is magically enhanced by the fact, even in those cases where their eye-sight is not; some girls choosing to wear glasses with non-prescriptive lenses, or even without lenses altogether, simply in order to comply with a look that for us in the West is a key component of geek chic. 

This latter trend, adopted by hipsters of both sexes who delighted in wearing large, black horn-rimmed glasses, demonstrates that the Japanese youth are not alone in understanding spex appeal. However, whilst glasses fetishism is not unique to Japan, there is something unusual, something different, about the widespread Japanese fixation with glasses which are not merely valued for their symbolic associations (i.e. as a cultural trope), but as objects (of desire) in themselves.

This, arguably, is the crucial issue; particularly if you happen to be dating a meganekko devotee like a friend of mine. She never quite knows whether he loves her as a woman behind the spectacles with her own physical attributes and personal qualities etc., or whether he really only cares for her frames and lenses.

(The fact that he immediately loses his erection if she removes her glasses during sex probably provides a clue.)