Why is Hillary Clinton wearing glasses?
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the September 11, 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on January 23, 2013. Sec. Clinton warned of the challenges posed by rising militancy after the Arab Spring as she appeared before US lawmakers Wednesday to be grilled about a deadly attack. “Benghazi didn’t happen in a vacuum,” Clinton said at the start of a Senate hearing into the September 11 assault on a US mission in eastern Libya.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been wearing thick-rimmed eyeglasses since returning to work on Jan. 7 after recovering from a concussion and being treated for a blood clot between her brain and skull.
It’s well known that Clinton, who sported large glasses during her college years and owns pantsuits in every color of the rainbow, wears what she likes.
In a 2012 interview with CNN she said, "I feel so relieved to be at the stage I'm at in my life right now. Because you know if I want to wear my glasses I'm wearing my glasses. If I want to wear my hair back I'm pulling my hair back. You know at some point it's just not something that deserves a lot of time and attention.”
But Clinton is not making a sartorial statement with her current glasses-wearing, her spokesman Philippe Reines said today, according to ABC News.
"She'll be wearing these glasses instead of her contacts for a period of time because of lingering issues stemming from her concussion," he said. "With them on she sees just fine."
James Liu, director of the Center for Skull Base and Pituitary Surgery at the Neurological Institute of New Jersey, told ABC News that concussions and head injuries can cause cases of blurred or double vision.
"It is possible that blurred or double vision can last up to weeks and even months," he said. "This really depends on the severity of the head injury. In cases of concussions, these symptoms are usually temporary and eventually resolve with time."
While Reines did not provide details about Clinton’s current glasses, the left lens of Clinton’s specs appears to have a Fresnel prism affixed to it, experts told the New York Daily News. Fresnel prisms – they look like clear stickers with transparent lines etched into them – are used to treat double vision.
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