When characters take off their glasses, why do their eyes turn into a "lip eyes" icon?


Often in anime which features a character who wears glasses, when they take
off their glasses, their eyes turn into a sort of puckered lip emoticon that
looks like the number 3.

![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S0JDv.gif)

The meaning is fairly obvious, that the character looks drastically different
or worse without their glasses on. But why is this icon used, specifically?




The "3" is a stylized (and humorous) way of showing the characters squinting
their eyes, which then look somewhat like a "3".

Most glasses wearer -- especially the young ones -- are short-sighted, so
whenever they take off their glasses, they start squinting. The "3" is used in
a similar fashion to depict pouting characters, like with the following emoji:

(°3°)

A variation of this is the famous へのへのもへじ (henohenomoheji), which uses
Hiragana characters that look somewhat like facial features and is used almost
exclusively for humorous purposes:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sWo03.jpg)](http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/09/26/hiragana-
art-creating-pictures-using-the-japanese-syllabary/)  
Image taken from
[RocketNews24](http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/09/26/hiragana-art-creating-
pictures-using-the-japanese-syllabary/)




The "3" is a stylized (and humorous) way of showing the characters squinting
their eyes, which then look somewhat like a "3".

Most glasses wearer -- especially the young ones -- are short-sighted, so
whenever they take off their glasses, they start squinting. The "3" is used in
a similar fashion to depict pouting characters, like with the following emoji:

(°3°)

A variation of this is the famous へのへのもへじ (henohenomoheji), which uses
Hiragana characters that look somewhat like facial features and is used almost
exclusively for humorous purposes:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sWo03.jpg)](http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/09/26/hiragana-
art-creating-pictures-using-the-japanese-syllabary/)  
Image taken from
[RocketNews24](http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/09/26/hiragana-art-creating-
pictures-using-the-japanese-syllabary/)

