It’s the danger hidden in plain sight, whenever a straight man goes out on the hunt. He may be out for a run at the park or walking the streets of Los Angeles after lunch – wherever he may be, he is almost guaranteed to encounter it. The real question is: will he be prepared?

Will you?

Yes, it’s the hot woman with the big-ass sunglasses. You might see her across the way on the other side of the street or you might brush right past her as she walks in the opposite direction and you do your double take. Whether near or far,  you cannot help but notice her because her sunglasses are AS BIG AS HER FACE.

And somehow, regardless of your tastes, your baser instincts will say that she is – without qualification – totally friggin’ HOT.

But beware! More often than not, IT’S A TRAP.

Okay, I’m perfectly willing to admit that in some cases, there is a face underneath those lenses that is as good as the promise those gigantic glasses make. Perhaps even better. But you can gamble on those odds; I won’t.

Arthur C. Clarke once said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I don’t know what black magic huge sunglasses are imbued with, but hell – if it’s not magic, it’s gotta be some top-secret military tech that leaked to the public somehow because that’s the only way I can explain how a woman that looks like Sloth from The Goonies can look like a Victoria’s Secret model in the face (true story!).

I could spend all day trying to break down how these glasses’ sinister spell works on the senses. Is it because the eyes are the window of the soul and, as a result, a major deciding factor of how attractive someone is and so blocking them from view puts the observer at a disadvantage of evaluating objective attractiveness?

Is it because every hetero male subconsciously wants their women to have ocular features similar to that of anime characters (read: HUGE EYES)?

Is it because we are all still in love with Audrey Hepburn’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s look, even decades later?

What use is there in doing this though, really? The fact of the matter is that any and all of those reasons – and more! – are equally valid. Different roads that all lead to the same place: the place where we will all find that ogre in sheep’s glasses extremely hot.

Can we short out our own instincts and look past the glasses to the real, superficial beauty beneath? The answer, quite simply, is YES. You have to take off those glasses.

A while back, I presented my theory about the power of oversized glasses to a woman I was dating. Without batting an eye, she said it was all true. It was as if, at that moment, a veil was lifted and I saw the horror lurking beneath. Then she put on her oversized sunglasses.

I hated myself for the boner I got. And to this day, I still regret that boner.

In short, my fellow hetero men: don’t jump the bones of the first hot girl with sunglasses you see.

Drink a lot of booze first.