People are constantly reminded of how terrible their life is on the outside. Appearance is important, content is of secondary importance – how many studies have already scientifically proven that. And of course it still makes sense when the parents say: “Dress nicely for the exam.” Because the world out there is not only terrible, it is also terrible on the outside.
Of course, there is a lot to think about when it comes to the new glasses that Friedrich Merz bought just before he went on a trip. Apparently it’s a pretty stable model. One that you can sit on in the sleeping car – without the bracket breaking. The leader of the opposition has worn quite a few glasses over the past few years: dark cycling glasses, for example, and these small reading glasses that you can use not only to read, but also to wave around cleverly. Most of the time, however, Merz, 66, wore no glasses at all. That seemed particularly youthful to him.
Udo Walz advised Martin Schulz to use a different model of glasses
With the new rather round and dark glasses, so interprets the network, which is extremely interested in externals, the CDU politician is now trying to combine international diplomacy (soft transitions at the edges) and domestic aggressiveness (thick, black lines). The glasses may even help with long-sightedness and short-sightedness at the same time. The former Berlin “celebrity hairdresser” Udo Walz, a passionate collector of glasses, once advised the SPD chancellor candidate Martin Schulz to use a very similar model. More geometry, more structure. But the frameless Schulz ignored the advice of the hairdresser and left the field to the hand rhombuses and snail chains of the CDU.
Optics are crucial. Are you still allowed to wear your hair as long and open as you are getting older, like Anton Hofreiter, chairman of the Green Europe Committee, or, more recently, the Austrian Minister of Education, Martin Polaschek?
Before: The Austrian Minister of Education Martin Polaschek with a flowing mat.
(Photo: Georges Schneider/imago images/photonews.at)
It gets complicated at the latest when the hairstyle completely pushes political thoughts into the background and the first Viennese high school graduates appear in similar outfits for their final exams. Polaschek, 56, has been wearing a serious short haircut over his glasses for a few days now. Incidentally, not even Udo Walz would have found fault with the glasses, which are clearly designed in terms of shape, cubature and proportions.
After: Martin Polaschek with a serious short haircut.
(Photo: Martin Juen/Imago/Sepa Media)
But who wouldn’t like to hide the outward appearance? For once, not having to look at the news presenter’s yellow high heels while she’s talking about the war. And don’t worry again about whether Botox or a stroke could be responsible for this or that celebrity’s sagging lips. Or about how long he or she will remain in office, because: He or she can’t even get up the gangway anymore. Life would be so much nicer if you didn’t constantly think about such insignificant things as body size, dental ceramics, horn-rimmed glasses or hair manipulations.
But if you follow the comments on the net, the appearance seems to be becoming more important again these days. Masks are disappearing, your own glasses rarely fog up, your physiognomy is coming back to the fore. The philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel once called the human face the “geometric location of the inner personality”. Of course, this is also quite externally thought.
So let’s take a look at our own glass house and talk less about glasses, long hairstyles and heels and more about content. As Wilhelm Busch put it: “Whoever looks through the glasses of suspicion sees caterpillars even in sauerkraut.”