Inside the Reported Workplace Ban on Women Wearing Glasses in Japan

Most people wear glasses for corrective vision. Either they can’t see far, close, or both. Of course, nowadays glasses come in various shapes and sizes to reflect a person’s fashion taste, but still, their overall goal is to improve a person’s vision and they’re considered acceptable just about everywhere.

Well, perhaps not everywhere, like Japan.

Because, apparently, in some places in Japan, women were (and maybe still are) banned from wearing glasses at work, and people are just now finding out about it. It sounds ludicrous to prohibit a person from wearing something they actually need to see, but alas, it seems it might be the reality for some people.

Here’s what we know about the glasses ban and why it was reportedly implemented.

A Reddit thread shared in early June 2026 brought attention to an alleged glasses ban that took effect some years ago in Japan, preventing women in some workplaces from wearing glasses. “TIL some companies in Japan ban women from wearing glasses,” the post was captioned. And because of just how ridiculous it sounds, we did some digging, and based on reporting from the BBC, using information reported from local news outlets, it seems like the ban might be real.

According to the BBC, some companies reportedly put in place a ban on female employees wearing glasses. Obviously, the ban sparked backlash on social media, but since it can be risky to bad-mouth a company by name at the risk of being sued for defamation, the names of the exact companies implementing such bans weren’t mentioned.

The outlet noted that some companies within the retail industry found that women wearing glasses as shop assistants gave off a “cold impression.” Others cited reasons such as customers not being able to see a woman’s makeup clearly if she worked in the beauty sector, or safety concerns if she worked in the airline industry.

The BBC did note, however, that it wasn’t always clear whether these “bans” were included in company-wide policies or merely expectations of what was considered socially acceptable. Still, the discussion sparked significant online debate, with the hashtag “#glassesareforbidden” becoming widely used in Japan.

It’s not entirely clear, but the ban made headline news in 2019, which could mean there have been major changes within those companies since then. A commenter on the Reddit thread who claimed to be Japanese even suggested, “This issue became a major controversy around 2019, and I haven’t heard of any workplaces banning glasses since then.” They added that while it was “terrible that something like this happened in the 21st century, things seem to be different now.”

Another user attempted to clarify how widespread the ban actually was, writing, “It was one small private company that made the local news and international media blew it up into a snowstorm.”

So while it may have been a smaller ban that caught public attention and went viral online, as that Reddit user suggested, it’s possible that it’s no longer active.