Gaga Lenses (PICTURE): Is Lady Gaga-Inspired Contact Lens Trend Dangerous?
(CBS) Check out Lady Gaga's enormous, manga-like eyes on her new video, "Bad Romance." Do you think she looks cute and interesting or crazy?
If you said crazy, you might be too old, or maybe old enough to know better.
Lady Gaga's cartoonishly large eyes have sparked a new, dangerous trend, and now the cool kids are buying "circle lenses." These colored contact lenses, long popular in Korea, extend past the pupils to cover parts of the whites of the eyes.
They are illegal in the U.S., but people are buying them over the Internet, according to CNN.
CBS Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton says that the trend, which started in Korea, is a dangerous one. Mainly because wearing contacts that haven't been properly fitted by a doctor increases the risk of infection.
"In some cases, rarely (infections can) can even lead to blindness," Ashton said. "Absent those things, corneal ulcers, scratches or abrasions in the corner of the eye, impairing vision either from the tears or from infection, and depriving the eye of oxygen all can set up the risk of infection and in rare cases, blindness."
It may be worth noting that Lady Gaga wasn't wearing circle lenses in the video - her gaze was computer-generated, according to New York Times. Maybe her handlers take the American Optometric Association's warning seriously.
The AOA says that people who buy lenses "without a consultation from an eye doctor put themselves at risk of serious bacterial infection, or even significant damage to the eye's ability to function, with the potential for irreversible sight loss."
"You do not want to mess with this," says Ashton.