“Don’t get the glasses!” A Lord’s war cry that signals a backlash about to strike hard

In the sweltering heat of an early July weekend in Madrid, singer-songwriter Lorde stopped during her set to drink from her signature rainbow-colored water bottle. As she thanked the audience for being there and being part of “something real,” she took a backseat to something that had increasingly become a subject of anger and suspicion.

“You don’t know if someone’s wearing sunglasses, or if they’re wearing those damn glasses… Can I just say, for the record, fuck the glasses! Don’t wear glasses — it’s not sexy,” she said.

It is not a fringe view, but rather the tip of the iceberg. They have already been widely denounced online as “perverted glasses”, Smart glasses Products made by companies like Meta are garnering attention, especially from the demographic they are increasingly courting: women. Lorde’s public protests against smart glasses point to the problems facing Mita and others who try to sell what is widely seen as Monitoring tools For a group already deeply unsettled by technology.

It became clear how much priority women place on the success of smart glasses last month Meta has launched its latest designs Teaming up with pop culture powerhouse Kylie Jenner — and not only tapping her for a wide-ranging ad campaign, but also espousing her voice for Meta AI.

While Jenner isn’t the first ambassador Meta has relied on — Blackpink’s Jennie, who took the stage at Mad Cool right after Lorde, is one of the faces of Meta’s Ray-Bans — it seemed like a sudden shift in messaging about who the smart glasses are targeting.

As a still emerging technology, which has seen 167% annual growth Between 2025 and 2026 according to IDC, it is starting to take hold, and the primary audience for the new face-worn computers appears to be largely men. Technology companies, including Meta – the Current market leader From a distance – it primarily marketed glasses to men, and men seemed to have adopted them more readily.

Women’s smart glasses

I’m a tech reporter who spends a significant amount of time moving in circles with tech reporters, influencers, CEOs, and early adopters. Over the past three years, I’ve seen Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakley sunglasses everywhere on the tech event circuit, but I can only think of one woman I know who uses them regularly.

This is anecdotal evidence, but it suggests that there may not be a lot of women in the loop when it comes to conception, design, marketing, and finding compelling uses for smart glasses.

Young women helped make Jenner a billionaire by buying her makeup, and they hold enormous cultural power as trendsetters. Now, as tech companies try to capitalize on that influence and purchasing power, they face not just reluctance but outright hostility.

Women have seen credible reports of women being harassed by men wearing smart glasses, filmed or secretly photographed. Many content creators and activists — mostly, but not exclusively, women and gay men — have objected to glasses for some time, but now that marketing is actively targeting them, the real backlash has begun.

“You can’t have a successful product without women, and Meta needs these glasses to be successful because it will show shareholders that the hundreds of billions of dollars they’ve invested in AI is paying off,” creator Matt Bernstein said on Instagram. “So who better to get approval for predator-proof glasses than the most famous woman on the internet?”

This is a win for both Meta and Jenner, Bernstein added, saying the only people who lose are women and girls who are less safe in public than they were before.

When contacted for comment, a Meta spokesperson directed us towards Latest questions and answers for the company Regarding privacy and glasses, he provided the following statement:

“More and more people are using our AI Glasses because they are truly useful in everyday moments like listening to music, getting a live translation while traveling, or making a hands-free call. The people who use them and those around them need to trust them. That’s why we built privacy into our AI Glasses from the ground up.

“For example, each pair has a photo capture LED that flashes when you take a photo or video that you can save or share, and it cannot be turned off, and if someone covers or damages the LED, the camera will be disabled. We will continue to enhance our protections as our glasses become more capable.”

A representative for Jenner did not respond to a request for comment.

The Kardashian effect

Of all the women in the world, Jenner is Meta’s perfect choice to use as a vehicle to sell smart glasses. She’s perhaps the most famous member of the Kardashian family — reality TV and social media royalty — and the person who resonates most with Generation Z.

“The Kardashians are a cheat code for virality,” says MJ Currie, culture critic and author of Dekonstructing the Kardashians, citing fellow Kardashian researcher Natalie Franklin. She added that the Kardashians were also long-time early adopters of technology and new media, pointing to the way Kim Kardashian popularized selfies on Instagram at a time when people were only posting photos of sunsets and breakfasts.

Corey, who goes by @Kardashian_Kolloquium on Instagram and TikTok, says Meta’s partnership with Kylie is a smart marketing move.

“It speaks to how powerful the Kardashians are in starting conversations and really drawing attention to a product by contradicting people. I always say people hate the Kardashians because they represent the Internet, and we naturally, and understandably, have a lot of anxiety about the Internet and its ability to expand.”

She adds that smart glasses would be “terrible for women” in the same way Instagram has not been positive for women. “The Kardashians bring what some people consider a kind of toxic femininity to their relationships with technology, and that helps the expansion of technology.”

Before launching Kylie Meta Glasses, and before she even knew what the product was, Corey was contacted to promote the glasses for free. She believes the marketing team was hoping she would create content that decoded the billboards teasing the device’s launch.

“She insulted me,” she says. As someone who has studied media extensively under late capitalism, she’s pretty sure that smart glasses won’t lead us anywhere good.

“The reward won’t be worth the risk, because this media is designed to take advantage of some of our worst impulses,” Currie says. “I think we’re going to become more paranoid and more performative, and women will be the first to take the fall this fall.”

The birth of an anti-glasses movement

Corey isn’t the only woman Meta has tried to recruit to sell eyeglasses — and for many of them, things aren’t going well.

The Kardashians have always been impervious to criticism of their choices, and the negative reaction is likely to be water on a duck’s back for Jenner. But there’s already a rift forming online between the non-billionaire women who (sometimes) get money from Meta to promote the glasses, and those who object to it.

This isn’t a straightforward case of influencers and celebrities selling their products – in many ways, the internet has come to terms with this as a concept. Instead, it is interpreted as an outright betrayal of women who will be monitored, stalked, shamed and harmed by men wearing smart glasses. Female influencers who post under #MetaRaybanpartners are bombarded with comments from their female fans expressing their disappointment.

The first threat facing Mita and others is that women simply won’t want to buy glasses at all. Unlike artificial intelligence, which… Women also use less than menThere is actual consumer choice and spending. Most of us have grown accustomed to AI being forced upon us by Google, Meta, Microsoft and others through “useful” software features, but this passive acceptance of technology cannot be replicated when it comes to purchasing hardware.

The second threat is likely to come as part of a larger campaign. What has already appeared online will spread to real life. People will publicly scream and shame those who choose to wear them – the nickname “perverted glasses” will become embedded – and non-public places may begin to ban them.

Activist Gina Martin, who successfully led a campaign in the UK to classify wearing skirts as a criminal offence, says she can already see a growing anti-glasses movement, sparked by broader frustration with big tech’s encroachment on our lives.

“Every day people are becoming more and more angry with tech billionaires because of their excessive influence in Western politics and their rapid expansion of data centers that are destroying community water systems,” she says. Martin adds that Meta glasses are a representation of the intrusion of the tech oligarchs into our daily lives.

“I think community resistance from marginalized people and women will increase as Meta rolls out next-generation models of Meta glasses,” says Martin, citing particular concerns about rumors of permanent registration. “We will see public brawls, boycotts and more.”

Smart glasses are already a difficult sell for companies investing in this technology, but they shouldn’t underestimate how difficult it is. Lord’s War Cry is just the beginning.