Safe Cosplay Contacts: 7 Rules to Save Your Eyesight!

Before I started reading up on safe cosplay contacts, I had the misconception that the process was very simple. I assumed it was all just a matter of doing a quick Google search and clicking “add to cart.” Not so coincidentally, companies want us to think exactly that, so that we’ll buy their cheap contacts. Your fellow cosplayers are often perfectly happy to keep thinking exactly that so they can still afford to build those epic, next level cosplays. I’m sure there’s a part of you that would prefer to keep thinking that, too. At one point, I definitely wanted to keep thinking that, but when I finally talked to an optometrist, I learned just how much apathetic hearsay is going around at the expense of safety.To get more news about Cosplay contact, you can visit beauon.com official website.

As more of us get vaccinated and start to hope for a future that involves herd immunity and a return to comic cons, our cosplay plans are ramping up again. Maybe you have cosplay contacts that you haven’t touched in over a year, and you’re hoping they’re still safe to wear (spoilers: NOPE, sorry!!) Maybe you’ve been spending the pandemic building the most epic costume you’ve ever created and you’re ready to start looking for cosplay contacts to go with it. Here’s how to do it safely and not irreparably damage your eyes before you can fully enjoy life after the pandemic.
Note 1, Content warning: Tangential references and warnings about serious eye infections with no specific details and no photos of damaged eyes. You’ll eventually come across that if you click through enough of the linked content, but they use content warnings, too.

Note 2, Transparency: In this article, I speak highly of a certain website and a certain lens manufacturer, but I have not been compensated or sponsored by either of them. My recommendations are based solely on advice from my optometrist and my experience wearing a pair of contacts I paid full price for.
I know the article literally starts with the words “safe cosplay contacts,” but the Venn diagram of “safe” and “cosplay contacts” are two circles sitting five feet apart in a hot tub. All you can do is get from “not safe” to “as safe as possible.” Predictably I was satisfied with the “as safe as possible” option. Finally I found an optometrist willing to talk. (This is a very important thing to do in general by the way! Admit to your trusted doctors, dentists, optometrists, psychiatrists, personal trainers, etc when you’re realistically not going to change your habits and behavior exactly the way they recommend. Then ask them to clarify the exact risks you’re facing and suggest things you can do minimize them.)

I’m really glad I opened up about this, even if some optometrists refused to advise me. I’m really glad one optometrist was willing to listen, because the best practices we discussed have kept me safe while wearing cosplay contacts, and now hopefully, they’ll keep you safe, too. The most valuable thing she told me was that she’s heard from hundreds of other optometrists on this topic, and out of everyone willing to consider making a recommendation, they all agree (almost unanimously) on the following rule:
Companies are required by (USA) law to obtain a prescription before selling you contacts. Contact lenses are categorized (in the USA) by the FDA as a medical device. Gothika and several other places follow the laws. Any site selling you lenses without a prescription or FDA approval is inexperienced or unscrupulous enough to break the law, which brings their lens quality into question. No matter how popular some other brand of cosplay contacts is, if they don’t require a prescription or have FDA approval, they’re not trustworthy or reliable. (Sidenote: “AquaVue” and “ColorVue” are two very different and unrelated contact lens companies.)

Infections often take some time to get bad. Irritation takes a while before serious infection sets in. This gives you more than enough advance warning. Use it! As soon as your eyes start to feel a little “off,” TAKE THE CONTACTS OUT. The feeling of “off-ness” could be as mild as the feeling of having something in your eye or as serious as blurry vision and light sensitivity. This is the MOST tempting rule to break, but if you ever find yourself in this position, know that you’re literally at the point of no return. Don’t wait for “not that bad” to worsen into a horrific “yes that bad, very very bad” infection.

Not enough of the other articles talk about how cosplayers are far more susceptible to break Rule 6, so I’m going to spend more time writing about our unique challenges when it comes to safe cosplay contacts…because whew, let me assure you, I understand! I’ve been there with so many aspects of convention culture. It hurts. It’s hard. We’re people who want the thing to be perfect, whether that thing is a cosplay, event, panel, or anything else. And that perfect outcome is often very much in our grasp. When things look hopeless, we just shrug and make do the night before with superglue and safety pins and then we look fantastic the next day on 3 hours of sleep. If something is “not that bad,” we ignore it because it’s “probably fine.” We’re magic that way. But there’s no clever cosplay trick for fixing issues with contacts. There’s just a clever trick for saving your eyesight. And that clever trick is the final rule…