Oakley Asian Fit

[weiwentg]

I just met with an Oakley optician at the Mall of America store a couple weeks ago. Hopefully this will add to the discussion.

I'm Chinese, and I currently have a pair of Asia fit Flak Jackets (original version). I tried on a bunch of standard frames, and the optician said that in terms of face curvature, I appeared to fit the standard frames just fine. I believe the Asia Fit frames and lenses are, where possible, curved less than the standard fit frames and lenses. If you - whatever ethnicity you are - have had your cheeks touch the bottom of the frames or lenses, then you may want to consider the Asia Fit frames. Or if you don't have that problem on a particular frame, then just get the standard frame, because it's more common and easier to source replacement lenses.

The nosepieces on many (or all? not sure) Oakley frames are available in Asia Fit too. The Asia Fit nosepieces are the bigger ones. For example, I bought a pair of replacement earsocks and nosepieces for my Flak Jackets 2 years ago, and they came with both standard fit and Asia fit nosepieces (so I just installed the bigger pair). This is to correct for people with narrower nose bridges. If you have had your glasses slide down your nose, then you may want the Asia Fit nose bridges (or if they're wire frames, just bend the nose pieces in). This is something I've had a long-standing problem with in many frames with non-wire nosepads (e.g. my regular Swissflex glasses, which have light plastic nose pads). Again, this could apply regardless of your ethnicity. My wife is White, and she's mentioned that she thinks that Swissflex's Asia fit nose bridges are better for her, because with the stock nose bridges, they kept sliding down her nose.

It looks like Oakley's regular glasses now come with 4 different widths of nose bridges. This doesn't apply to their sport sunglasses yet. Worth watching.

Personally, I don't consider the term Asia Fit to be racist. There's good evidence that there are no fundamental differences between races in some characteristics, like intelligence. There's evidence that there are some fundamental differences between races, such as height, weight, and obviously skin color. I don't know if the morphological differences that get lumped under "Asia Fit" apply across all Asian ethnicities, or if they apply to some non-Asian ethnicities. And these are based on average differences - individual people are going to be different. What matters is what works for you. That's why I brought up my wife's example. Whatever the case, if you have had either or both the problems described above, there is a potential solution for each one separately.