Sign up for The Media Today, CJRâs daily newsletter.
Okay, did that get your attention? Good. It was meant to.
Now, hate to break it to you, but this piece has very little to do with Lady Gaga. We just thought weâd try something our friends at the L.A. Times and The New York Times tried a couple of weeks back: tack a dubious Gaga link to our hed and lede and grab a few extra eyeballs. (Read Gene Weingartenâs more satirical use of the same tact here.)
And now that we have youâŚ
The two articles in question spotlight the (possible) dangers and illegality of a new fashion fad among teenage girlsâlarge, colorful contact lenses called âcircle lensesâ designed to make the eyes look bigger. Both suggest the trend springs from, you guessed it, pop star Lady Gaga, who sported oversized, anime-style eyes in her music video for the song âBad Romance.â But the link is less a true relationship than a journalistâs assumption, and not the only piece of careless reporting the two storiesââWhat Big Eyes You Have, Dear, but Are Those Contacts Risky?â in New York and âThose big, round Lady Gaga contact lenses worry some doctorsâ in L.A.âshare in common.
Both jump off in similar style. From Catherine Saint Louisâs New York Times piece:
Of all the strange outfits and accessories Lady Gaga wore in her âBad Romanceâ video, who would have guessed that the look that would catch fire would be the huge anime-style eyes she flashed in the bathtub?
These lenses might be just another beauty fad if not for the facts that they are contraband and that eye doctors express grave concern over them. It is illegal in the United States to sell any contact lenses â corrective or cosmetic â without a prescription, and no major maker of contact lenses in the United States currently sells circle lenses.
And from Jessie Schiewe at the L.A. Times:
Call her super-talented or super-insane, there’s no denying that Lady Gaga has a magnetic effect on young girls, inspiring thousands of young fans to don blond wigs, sheer lace leggings, yellow caution tape and even sunglasses made out of cigarettes. But, the latest Gaga trend â circle lenses, has got not only fashion critics worried, but eye doctors as well.
Except, of course, the pieces have zero evidence that circle lenses are a Lady Gaga trend at all; or that sheâs even heard of them. Neither reporter offers proof that the starâs mammoth peepers in the videoâclearly the result of digital tweaking, at least to this naked eyeâwere enhanced by any sort of contact. Saint Louis even admits as much in her next paragraph:
Lady Gagaâs wider-than-life eyes were most likely generated by a computer, but teenagers and young women nationwide have been copying them with special contact lenses imported from Asia.
Okay, but the three teenage girls the Times goes on to interview about the trend never mention Gaga as an inspiration for their new look (or their illegal online purchases). The link is almost established with mention of a YouTube makeup tutorial that shows how to use circle lenses to get the Bad Romance look. And that video has been viewed over nine million times (more now no doubt thanks to a nod from the Times), but thereâs no proof any proportion of those viewers are young American girls.
The implication that Gaga âinspiredâ the trend is weightless in both pieces; and both writers tacitly acknowledge this in some capacity describing how the trend began in Asia. From Saint Louis:
The look is characteristic of Japanese anime and is also popular in Korea. Fame-seekers there called âulzzang girlsâ post cute but sexy head shots of themselves online, nearly always wearing circle lenses to accentuate their eyes. (âUlzzangâ means âbest faceâ in Korean, but it is also shorthand for âpretty.â)
Now that circle lenses have gone mainstream in Japan, Singapore and South Korea, they are turning up in American high schools and on college campuses. âIn the past year, thereâs been a sharp increase in interest here in the U.S.,â said Joyce Kim, a founder of Soompi.com, an Asian pop fan site with a forum devoted to circle lenses. âOnce early adopters have adequately posted about it, discussed it and reviewed them, itâs now available to everyone.â
With Gaga out of the way, both stories then go through the familiar this-trend-could-be-dangerous motions. But there doesnât seem much to it. From Schiewe:
Perhaps the biggest tiff that doctors such as Salz have with these lenses is that girls can buy these without a prescription. No prescription means no sizing or fitting of the lenses to the eye.
“Each eye is unique and has different curvatures. There isn’t just one size,” Salz said.
For those who wear contacts that are too tight, the risks include swelling of the cornea, redness or corneal abrasion. Contacts that are too loose will move around and can also cause irritation and redness.
These and other highlighted problemsâsleeping in the contacts can lead to infection, ill-fitting contacts can cause visionary problemsâare hardly unique to circle lenses; theyâre the caveat for any contact lenses. So, in sum: these big contacts are dangerous⌠just like little contacts.
Weâre not saying thereâs no story here, but the reportingâs not there to back it up. And though other write-ups on the lenses have taken a similar tact tack, weâd expect better from these two coastal pillars. Thereâs nothing to show for the pop star connection, and the danger angle feels like a bit of a beat-up. The L.A. Times seems says as much in its piece.
Dr. James Salz, clinical professor of ophthalmology at USC, says the lenses aren’t radically different from the older colored contacts used for years to change people’s eye color, “except that before, the contacts weren’t also trying to enlarge the color of the iris.”
And while both articles point out there is greater concern here because the lenses are not being prescribed but bought online, and thus there is no proper medical instruction, this is the case with all un-prescribed medications bought on the Internet. And weâre not seeing stories about those.
Must be the Gaga factor, even if itâs not there.
Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.