The contact lens: once upon a time, it was a heavy, cumbersome lens of glass designed to be shoved into the eye. It scratched the cornea, caused headaches, frequently broke, and was prone to falling out.
Technology has come a long way, however, and these days there are all manner of contact lenses, all designed for different purposes and much more convenient than their cumbersome forebears.
Among many other benefits, contact lenses provide sharp definition and vivid colors, which glasses sometimes simply cannot mimic. Glasses get smudged, they get cracked, and they get broken. They leave red indentations on the sides of the nose and they gather dust in a way that seems to defy gravity. The contact lens, on the other hand, is only prone to getting dry, but a drop or two of saline can take care of that. Moreover, where once upon a time a person had to keep a pair until their prescription changed because of the way glass lenses were made and because they were so expensive, nowadays there are disposable, soft lenses. Furthermore, there is a vast array of cheap contact lenses, making them easily replaceable and highly affordable.
There is also the matter of colored contact lenses. Unlike glasses, these give a person the opportunity to change his or her eye color, which is something a lot of people appreciate. Brown, amber, grey, light blue, dark blue, light green, dark green, purple, violet, just about every color in the spectrum is available.
For this reason, even people who have 20/20 vision sometimes choose cosmetic contact lenses. These may take the shape of a colored contact lens or they might be cosmetic contact lenses. Frequently, novelty and color lenses are not synonymous with cheap contact lenses, but they are not incredibly expensive. Of course, it really depends on what style one wants.
Anyway, a novelty contact lens can mean many things. They might be cat’s eye lenses, or they might look at snake eyes. There are white contact lenses, black ones, and red ones; some have spiral designs and any number of other symbols. The adventurous person might wear these every day; others may use them for costume parties or Halloween festivities.
Back to cosmetic contact lenses, they give people the opportunity to change their look from day to day. If a person so desires, their eye color could match their outfit every single day. Because a lot of people frequently wish that they had an eye color different from what they were born with, there is a large market for these types of lenses. Novelty lenses are just as common in some scenes and cultures. For certain, however, a person who actually needs contact lenses to see should probably steer clear of the novelty ones. Some of them are so opaque that it is impossible to see out of them. The same cannot be said for colored lenses, which are just as translucent as clear ones.
These days, even people who need bifocals can get the appropriate lenses for that. Glasses are almost becoming obsolete, between contacts and laser eye surgery.