The eyes don’t have it
There are many well-documented differences between the sexes: there’s makeup (men only use it when they know they won’t be caught), there’s the remote (men have a genetically developed capacity to sense and skip channels showing romantic comedies and wildlife documentaries), there’s driving (women know that your capacity to depress an accelerator does not measure your skill), there’s fashion sense (both straight and homosexual women have it), and there’s sport (women know that some other human endeavours matter as well). While it may not get the headlines that other differences do it is also proven that women require reading glasses earlier than men and now a new report has found out why.
The findings come from researchers who analysed data from nine studies comparing the prevalence and degree of presbyopia (loss of near vision that comes with ageing) in men and women.
The analysis showed that while women have a greater need for glasses than men of the same age, there was no significant difference between the sexes in the eye’s ability to focus on objects at near distance. So if it’s not the eyes that are the difference then why do women need glasses when men do not?
The answer it seems, is that there is a difference in preferred reading distance between men and women. In other words, women like to hold reading material closer than men do.
It’s tempting to say that this is just another metaphor for how women like to get close to the world while men like to keep it at arm’s length. That might just be a little too convenient and simplistic though…or would it?
