A Brief History Of The Military’s Unsightly ‘Birth Control Glasses’

Somehow, the iconic eyewear has gone from reviled standard-issue gear to hot commodity.

BY SARAH SICARD | UPDATED MAY 14, 2021 3:09 PM



Anyone who served in the U.S. armed forces in the last half-century or so is likely familiar with the standard-issue GI eyeglasses. With thick brown rims and lenses that looked like magnifying glasses, they were so unattractive that wearing them effectively reduced the chances of getting laid to near zero.

The S9s, more commonly known as “birth control glasses” or BCGs, were issued to U.S. troops for decades until 2012, when officials at the Department of Defense realized their iconically awful prescription eyewear actually functioned as a major cockblock for thousands of libidinous service members who would rather be blind than wear such atrocious spectacles.

Over the last five years, the Pentagon has gradually switched to the smaller, black-rimmed 5A glasses that take us back to an era when wannabe punk rockers everywhere donned the spectacles to look fly. But around the same time military scrapped the ghastly S9s, those civilian punks who made black-rimmed glasses popular in the first place grew up, got jobs, and reinvigorated the market for what appear to be overpriced military-style BCGs.

Those chunky glasses have become so mainstream that you can actually purchase them at *such classy* eyewear purveyors from Lenscrafters to Warby Parker. One site even refers to them specifically as BCGs, with specific reference to the military.

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