Who would have thought that of all the quirky outfits and accessories Lady Gaga wore in her “Bad Romance” music video, her big anime-inspired eyes that she sparkled in the bath would light up?
Lady Gaga’s big eyes are probably computer generated, but teens and young women across the country are reproducing them with special contact lenses brought in from Asia. Known as round lenses, these are colored contact lenses (sometimes in unusual hues such as purple and pink) that make the eyes appear larger because they not only cover the iris like regular lenses, but also partially cover the white part of the eye.
“I’ve noticed a lot of girls in my town are wearing them more often,” says 16-year-old Melody View of Morganton, North Carolina, who has 22 pairs and wears them regularly. She said her friends tend to wear round lenses in their Facebook photos.
If not for the fact that they are contraband and ophthalmologists have serious concerns about them, these lenses might just be another cosmetic fad. It is illegal to sell any kind of contact lens (corrective or cosmetic) without a prescription in the US, and there are currently no major contact lens manufacturers in the US that sell round lenses.
However, these lenses are readily available online, typically priced between $20 and $30 per pair, and come in both prescription and purely cosmetic varieties. On message boards and YouTube videos, young women and teenage girls advertise where they can be bought.
The lenses give the wearer a playful look. The appearance is typical for Japanese anime, and is also very popular in Korea. Star chasers known as the “Ulzzang Girls” post cute but sexy avatars online, almost always wearing round lenses to accentuate their eyes. (“Ulzzang” means “better face” in Korean, but it’s also short for “pretty.”)
Anime Crazy contact lenses
Now that round lenses have become mainstream in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, they are appearing on US high school and college campuses. “Over the past year, interest has skyrocketed here in the United States,” said Joyce Kim, founder of Soompi.com, a popular Asian fansite that has a round lens forum. “After it has been released, discussed and reviewed sufficiently by early users, it is now available to everyone.”
Ms Kim, 31, who lives in San Francisco, says some friends her age wear round lenses almost every day. “It’s like putting on mascara or eyeliner,” she says.
Websites that sell FDA-approved contact lenses must verify customer prescriptions with an ophthalmologist. In contrast, the round lens website allows customers to choose lens strength as freely as color.
Kristin Rowland, a college graduate from Shirley, New York, wears several pairs of round lenses, including purple prescription lenses and light green lenses that go under her glasses. Without them, she said, her eyes looked “very small”; the lenses “made them look like they were here”.
Ms Rowland, who works part-time at Waldbaum, is sometimes told by customers, “Your eyes are big today,” she said. Even her manager was curious, asking, “Where did you get all this?” – she said.
FDA spokeswoman Karen Riley was also a little surprised. When she first contacted us last month, she had no idea what round lenses were or how popular they were. “Consumers are at risk of serious eye injury and even blindness when purchasing contact lenses without a valid prescription or without the assistance of an ophthalmologist,” she wrote shortly after in an email.
S. Barry Aiden, Ph.D., a Deerfield, Illinois-based optometrist and chairman of the American Optometric Association’s Contact Lens and Cornea Division, said people selling round lenses online are “a plea to avoid professional care.” He warns that inappropriate contact lenses can deprive the eye of oxygen and cause serious vision problems.
Nina Nguyen, a 19-year-old Rutgers University student from Bridgewater, New Jersey, said she was cautious at first. “Our eyes are priceless,” she said. “I don’t put anything in my eyes.”
But after seeing so many Rutgers students wearing round lenses and a surge in online users, she relented. She now describes herself as a “round lens lover”.
A makeup artist named Michelle Phan introduced round lenses to many Americans with a YouTube video tutorial in which she demonstrates how to make Lady Gaga’s “crazy, gooey eyes.” Ms. Fan’s video titled “Lady Gaga Bad Romance Look” has been viewed over 9.4 million times.
“In Asia, the main focus of makeup is on the eyes,” says Ms. Pan, a Vietnamese-American blogger who is now Lancome’s first video makeup artist. “They love the whole innocent puppet look, almost anime-like.”
These days, girls of many races look like this. “Round lenses aren’t just for Asians,” says 17-year-old Crystal Ezeoke, a second-generation Nigerian from Louisville, Texas. In a video she posted on YouTube, Ms Ezeok’s gray lenses turned her eyes into an otherworldly blue.
According to Lenscircle.com founder Alfred Wong, 25, most of Toronto-based Lenscircle.com’s customers are Americans between the ages of 15 and 25 who have heard about round lenses from YouTube commentators. “A lot of people like the baby look because it’s cute,” he said. “It’s still a nascent trend in the US,” but “its popularity is growing,” he added.
Anime Crazy contact lenses
Jason Ave, the owner of the PinkyParadise.com website in Malaysia, is well aware that its shipments to the United States are illegal. But he is confident that his round lenses are “safe, which is why many clients recommend them to others.
He wrote in an email that his “job” is to “provide a platform” for those who want to buy lenses but can’t do so locally.
Girls like 16-year-old Ms. View from North Carolina help direct customers to websites that sell round lenses. She posted 13 comments on YouTube about round lenses, which was enough to get her a coupon code that gave her viewers a 10% discount. “I’ve had a lot of posts asking where to get round lenses so this is finally a reasonable answer for you,” she said in a recent video.
She said she was 14 when Vue asked his parents to buy her her first pair. However, these days she is reviewing them, but not for health or safety reasons.
Ms. Vue said round lenses are too popular. “Because of that, I didn’t want to wear them anymore because everyone was wearing them,” she said.
Post time: Sep-09-2022
