Recently, I was sitting with my nephew at a family event. The temperature in my home state turned frigid, the snow was starting to fall and my family gathered for an early holiday party. My nephew, who is almost 16 years-old, sat next to me in baggy-ish jeans, skater shoes, a knit cap, a scarf and a graphic t-shirt. He looks like your typical American teenaged boy - even standing higher than 6 feet tall. We were watching football and he turned to me to ask "how can I pop out the lenses in my eyeglasses?"

I sat next to him very confused. Apparently, there is a new trend among teens and college students. They take geek chic to a whole new nerdy level when it comes to glasses. Teens and the college folk are popping out their lenses to look a little more geeky and not to look like they actually need vision correction. Granted, my nephew has prescription glasses - so I asked him why he wants to pop the lenses out when he actually needs them to see. His answer "I'll wear my contacts when I wear the lenses." My eyes nearly bugged out of my head and I asked "why not just wear your eyeglasses?" His answer was priceless "I want to make a fashion statement!"

Once I got rid of the deer-in-headlights look from my face he continued "I want to look smarter and a little more like a nerd. I can only do this when I pop out the lenses from my glasses. So, how do I pop out the lenses of my eyeglass frames? I told him I wasn't going to help him destroy a perfectly good pair of glasses. However, I gave him the encouragement he was looking for in order to follow his fashion sense.

Many times when teens are looking to follow a fashion trend, they are really just stretching their personality wings in order to find what their real fashion sense is. We've all been there - we've all followed fashion trends even when our parents told us not to. While I didn't tell him how to pop out his lenses, I did point him in the direction of where to find cheap frames.