Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [35]
In choosing frames, take into consideration the shape of your face, the size of your cheek and brow bones, the slant of your brows, your hairline, and any facial hair you may have. Glasses can make your face look slimmer and soften sharp angles. They should balance the top and bottom of your features; and they should enhance your own good looks, not overpower your strong points.
Ben Franklin or granny glasses should be avoided in public, because they catch too much light and sit too far out in front of your face.
Glasses should fit snugly enough so that you do not have to constantly push them up into the correct position; such a gesture can be distracting. Have your optician fit your glasses properly to your head and adjust the eye angle for you.
If you wear glasses only for reading, it is fine if you put them on as you refer to your notes, remove them when you have finished, and continue speaking without them.
Eyeglasses on TV
It is especially important when you are appearing on television that your glasses frames not be shiny, fancy, or flashy, because they obscure your eye contact with the camera. Glasses reflect the studio lights, flashing when you move your face.
If you find that your glasses constantly give you trouble on camera, by all means select a new pair for use on TV. Meanwhile, you can eliminate the shine to some extent by putting cream makeup or a touch of powder on the frames. You can also eliminate some of the glare spots by positioning the glasses so that the bottom is closer to your cheeks than the top. You may feel that this looks slightly strange; but, in fact, it only raises the shafts a little above your ears and does not show on the camera at all.
Another solution is to have your optician send the lenses to a laboratory to have a special clear coating applied. This will eliminate the light flaring off the glasses on camera.
Never wear tinted glasses that shade your eyes on TV, since they change to strange colors under the lights and block your eye contact. They also make you look like a shifty-eyed bandit type. This applies to the combination regular glasses/sunglasses that change with exposure to light, and to permanently tinted glasses, including those that are very faintly or only partially tinted. Yellow, brown, or rose-tinted glasses look especially bad on camera.
Contact lenses are wonderful if you can tolerate them. They now have highly refined characteristics, are relatively inexpensive, and are easier to take care of than ever.
TWO
YOUR VOICE
The success of many famous people may be attributed in part to the quality of their speaking voices. To understand this point instantly, think of Richard Burton, who may have had one of the most beautiful voices of this century; Winston Churchill, whose unforgettable voice comforted millions during World War II; and Greta Garbo, who, although we have not heard her speak in many years, has a voice that still haunts our memories.
Just as they do with appearance, people judge the voice of a public person in the first few seconds of listening to it. This is true whether you are famous or not. What would your very first impressions be of the voice of Marilyn Monroe or Mae West if you had been introduced to her? What do you think of the voices of sportscasters John Madden and Howard Cosell? Of the host of the television program “CBS News Sunday Morning,” Charles Kuralt? Think of the distinctive voices of Elvis Presley, Diane Sawyer, Jesse Jackson, Jackie Gleason, Cary Grant, Bill Cosby, Burl Ives, Barbara Walters, and George Burns. Despite the very distinctive looks of these individuals, when we think of them we also immediately think of their voices, as well.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD VOICE