Glasses of Invisibility

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One of the approaches to potentially thwarting psychological and physical abuse is to make your emotions invisible. This can be done by wearing glasses of invisibility. They are glasses that are one-way mirrors.

When I was a teenager in college, I bought a pair of policeman sunglasses. These were sunglasses that had a perfectly reflective mirrored finish. I found it to be very interesting wearing these. It was almost like I was invisible. No one could see into my eyes. It was like I was in a box with a one-way mirror. All that anyone ever saw when they looked at me was a reflection of themselves. Normally I never look into people's eyes, an Aspie trait. But when I wore these glasses, I could easily look them right into their eyes. I could walk right up to their face and they couldn't see my eyes. I suspect most people found the glasses intimidating when they looked at me. But I didn't really care, because I felt free of their stares.

Sunglasses shield the eyes, which limits the other person to assess the response of the user. This is an advantage that police use, by not letting the other person see their response and feelings. Sunglasses also shield the actual position and action of the eyes of an individual, through which police can easily view their surroundings without giving any indication to anyone.

Imagine yourself as a police officer for a moment. As the officer you come up on a situation you are unsure of, and are somewhat nervous. By having on sunglasses you hide an important part of your body language that might accidentally display fear to someone who does not need to see it. By covering your eyes you maintain the tactical advantage of hiding your fear.

Now imagine yourself as the civilian. The officer approaches and you cannot see his eyes. You cannot read what he is thinking but you can imagine what he is capable of. Not being able to read him [the police officer] creates uncertainty, which means he [the officer] has the advantage.

Our earliest accounts of sunglasses come from 12th century China, where some individuals from among the aristocratic classes reportedly wore glasses with smoky quartz lenses to protect their eyes from the bright sunlight. Such shades were also popular with China's judges, because they hid any emotional response the judge might exhibit while listening to testimony. Justice is blind, but the dark glasses help all the same.

Psychologist Paul Ekman, an authority on facial expressions, says that of the 23 facial expressions relating to human emotion, about one-third involve the eyes. Shades may slightly obscure your view of the world, but they also hide the world's view of how you are feeling.

Not being able to see a person's eyes greatly reduces our ability to infer his or her emotions. For example, telling a fake smile from a real one can be difficult, but if the smiler is wearing shades then detecting the sham smile is almost impossible. In a real smile, a muscle called the orbicularis oculi is activated, creating a hard-to-fake crinkling around the eyes. The eyes truly are the windows to the soul.

The eyes, eyelids, eyebrows and orbicularis oculi muscle play a major role in projecting emotions and the degree of emotions. The following is a list of some of these emotions:

* disgust, contempt, upset, unhappy, miserable,
* worry, apprehension, surprise, fear, terror, controlled fear
* broad smile, smile of enjoyment, a real smile from a fake smile, angry smile, miserable smile
* dispair or grief
* slight sadness, sadness, intense sadness, agony, masked sadness
* annoyance, slight anger, anger, controlled or restrained anger, glaring anger, masked expression of anger
* perplexity, confusion, concentration, determination

It seems like NTs are always misinterpreting Aspies intentions. They look us in the eyes and imagine our thoughts. By wearing mirrored glasses we deprive them of this tool of assessing our intentions and our vulnerabilities. So I believe this may have a therapeutic value for Aspies.

Jo_B1_Kenobi (pseudonym) wrote: “I think what you collated above was really interesting. I get people misreading me all the time and telling me they know how I'm feeling when they don't have a clue. The sunglasses might force them to listen to my words and not just look at things on my face to get my meaning. I think this would be more accurate.”

There are different types of mirrored sunglasses. For one they come in a variety of mirrored colors. Red, Blue and Silver are common. A mood analysis of these colors indicate:
* Blue is peaceful, tranquil and symbolizes loyalty. Blue is reliable and responsible. It exhibits inner security and confidence.
* Red is intense, stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. It makes the wearer appear heavier. Does not help people in negotiations or confrontations. Attracts attention.
* Silver reflects back any energy given out, whether it is positive or negative. Silver is respectable and courteous, dignified, self-controlled, responsible, patient, determined and organized. In color psychology, with a balance between black and white, silver is seen as a good critic, unbiased and compassionate with a mature sense of justice.

Therefore selecting the proper color for the glasses can be important because you are projecting a mood into the eyes of the observer. So based on this, I would select either silver mirror or blue mirror coatings.

These sunglasses are like one-way mirrors. The outer coating of these sunglasses reflect light but the interior of the lens can also have tinting. The tinting of these glasses can be dark producing true sunglasses or can be very light minimizing the loss of light reception. Therefore this type of sunglass with no interior tint can be light enough to wear indoors.

Wearing this type of glasses will require some accessorization. Otherwise you may look out of place and as a result subjected to more ridicule. Remember these glasses will create an identity for you. I tend to think in terms of jackets. So the type of jacket I choose to wear with these glasses projects a masked identity. These are some of the types of identities that might fit well with mirrored glasses:
* WWII Bomber Jacket Look
* Flight Jacket Look
* Motorcycle Jacket Look
* Archeologist Look
* Mountain Climber Look
* Arctic Explorer Look
* Western Look
* Surfer Look

Maybe they could not read your emotions if you wear such glasses. But they would right away juge you based on what they see, so to say based on your strange glasses and I doubt they would juge it clever and cool...

Probably your emotions are much more beautiful than those glasses. However most autistic people lack facial expression, so you should not worry too much about them reading into your mind, I think.

If you wish to avoid them to misread you, you may however wear a social mask which is doing just like them and say all those (superficial) stuff to pretend you are their friend, show some interest even when you are not interested, smile even if you don't feel like it, etc. (that is what they do to socialize, they do it naturally and you can learn to do it too)

This is a photograph of jimmy m. as a teenager wearing a pair of blue tinted glasses. It was during the age of hippies and I just seemed to fit right in. The tint looking out was just a light shade of blue, not really sunglasses.

I also had a pair of mirrored coated glasses but unfortunately I never photographed myself wearing them.

I almost never wear sunglasses despite the real sensory need to as I cannot stand bright sun while driving. I just love the pair you have in that old picture, now I know what I have to look for.

Regarding the question of mirrored lenses, I could see how they would allow one to observe NT etiquette as they please, not as NTs want, something I might like to do.

P.S.: Do you happen to remember who made the television in the background? I can tell it is black and white by the style, but not the make.

No but my dad once had one of the earliest black and white television sets ever made. It was huge and had a very large mirror inside it.

Those are extremely rare. Likely an RCA TRK-12.

I have a pretty rare example of RCA's first color TV set, the CT-100 from 1954.

Here it is with my GE FilterFlo washer.

The TV stood about 5 feet tall and around 3 foot wide. It was an antique in the early 1960's.
It was a little similar to the Marconiphone Television 702 with a 12-inch screen from 1937 as shown in The Most Insane Television Sets in History But the cabinetry was not that elaborate and I think the mirror was larger. It was a projection TV that project the image onto a large mirror.

Does this look like it?

http://www.earlytelevision.org/rca_trk-12.html

It might be.