A quotation a day for Women's History Month: 17th March

Opticians, apparently, are not a litigious class, but they must often have been sorely tempted to protest. In film after film the suggestion has been made that a pair of spectacles will cut down any heroine's love-life. Again and again a plain girl has blossomed into a tearing beauty by the simple device of taking off her glasses. She simply smashes the nasty things, and steps out towards romance without a blink; better-dressed, clearer-skinned, head held high, and sight totally unaffected.

C A Lejeune, 'Come Now, Voyager' (Review of Now, Voyager), 1943, in Chestnuts in her Lap, 1936-1947 (1948)

As a wearer of glasses since the age of 8 and a sufferer from a serious degree of myopia, I greatly appreciate this apercu by Lejeune. She is one of those much neglected female cultural figures who tend to be beneath the radar because they were working in marginalised areas (such as film criticism before it became a serious and respectable endeavour) and often several of them. In spite of the sniffiness of the BFI biographical note her film criticism is well worth reading, and just because it is not ponderous and solemn doesn't mean it's not serious in intent.