Goldie Hawn squinted into the lights. “I can’t read that,” she said to her co-presenter. “Cataracts.”
It was the 2025 Academy Awards. She was wearing a pale gold gown, and her hair and makeup did their best to evoke the look she’s had ever since she became a star in the 1960s. She is, in fact, 79. But Hollywood 79. Except for the cataracts. I know people who cheered when she said that bit of honesty about her own aging.
Doubtless soon Hawn will join the probably hundreds of millions who’ve had cataract surgery, and at her next awards outing she’ll be able to read the Teleprompter just fine. Because, let’s face it, although the idea of the surgery is scary and although the tabloids painted Hawn’s “condition” as “tragic”, if you’re going to have something wrong with you at 79, cataracts are the least worst. They’re not life-threatening. There’s a good, thoroughly tested treatment that takes less than half an hour. Recovery is short (a few weeks). Side effects, immediate or ongoing, are rare and generally correctable. Treatment vastly improves your quality of life and keeps you independent. Even delaying treatment is largely benign: the cataract may harden and become more complicated to remove, but doesn’t do permanent damage.
Just don’t see the 1929 short experimental film Un Chien Andalou when you’re 18. That famous opening scene with the razor and the eyeball squicks out *everybody*. Thank you, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.
I have cataracts. But: I also have a superpower. Like lots of people with extreme myopia, even at 71 I can read the smallest paragraph on the Jaeger eye test in medium-low lighting conditions. I have to hold it four and a half inches from my face, but close-up has always been the only truly reliable part of my vision.
Eye doctors have a clear, shared understanding of what constitutes normal vision, which involves not needing glasses to see at a distance and needing reading glasses around the time you turn 40. So when it comes time for cataract surgery they see it as an opportunity to give you the vision that normal people have.
In the entertainment world, this attitude was neatly summed up in 1926 by the famed acerbic wisecrack and New Yorker writer Dorothy Parker: “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.” It’s nonsense. Women who wear glasses know it’s nonsense. There was even a movie – How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) – which tackled this silliness by having Marilyn Monroe’s Pola wander around bumping into walls and getting onto wrong planes until she meets Freddie (David Wayne), who tells her to put her glasses on and that he thinks she looks better wearing them. Of course she does. Restoring the ability to see in focus removes the blank cluelessness from her face.
“They should put on your tombstone ‘She loved myopia’,” joked the technician drawing up a specification for the lens they were going to implant. We all laughed. But it’s incorrect, since what I love is not myopia but the intimate feeling of knowing I can read absolutely anything in most lighting conditions.
But kudos: whatever their preferences, they are doing their best to accommodate mine – all credit to the NHS and Moorfields. The first eye has healed quickly, and while the full outcome is still uncertain (it’s too soon) the results look promising.
So, some pointers, culled by asking widely what people wished they’d known beforehand or asked their surgeon.
– Get a diving mask or swimming goggles to wear in the shower because for the first couple of weeks they don’t want all that water (or soap) to get in your eye. (This was the best tip I got, from my local postmaster.)
– A microwaveable heated mask, which I didn’t try, might help if you’re in discomfort (but ask your doctor).
– Plan to feel frustrated for the first week because your body feels fine but you aren’t supposed to do anything strenuous that might raise the pressure in your eye and disrupt its healing. Don’t do sports, don’t lift weights, don’t power walk, don’t bend over with your eyes below your waist, and avoid cooking or anything else that might irritate your eyes and tempt you to scratch or apply pressure. The bright side: you can squat to reach things. And you can walk gently.
– When you ask people what they wish they’d known, many will say “How easy it was” and “I wish I’d done it years earlier”. In your panicked pre-surgery state, this is not helpful. It is true that the operation didn’t hurt (surgeons are attentive to this, because they don’t want you to twitch). It is true that the lights shining on your eye block sight of what they’re doing. I saw a lot of magenta and blue lights. I heard machine sounds, which my surgeon kindly explained as part of fulfilling my request to talk me through it. Some liquid dripped into my hair.
– Take the time you need to prepare, because there’s no undo button.
Think of it as a very scary dental appointment.
Illustrations: Pola (Marilyn Monroe) finding out that glasses can be an asset in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).
Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. She is a contributing editor for the Plutopia News Network podcast. Follow on Mastodon or Bluesky.
