Let’s take it all back. #shadesofwomen

Get the glasses. Record the men.

Smart glasses are becoming more and more of a thing.  And it’s NOT good for women.  Men are using smart glasses to secretly film us. In public. In restaurants. At the gym. On the street. While they chat you up, ask for your number, tell you you're gorgeous. If you don’t already know, the camera is in the frame of the glasses, with only a tiny light that is supposed to blink when it's recording.  That doesn’t stop men from buying stickers online to cover the light.  Of course.  Or people selling the stickers…

A sticker. That's it. That's the barrier between you going about your day and your face ending up as content for millions of strangers.

One woman's video got 23 million views, and she didn’t find out until it had already happened. She contacted the man and asked him to take it down, he refused and told her it was a paid service! A paid service!! She went to the police, who of course, told her there was nothing they could do. Photography in public is broadly legal. The law hasn't caught up andit probably won't catch up before many women have been humiliated, harrassed, assaulted, raped or killed. It never fucking does.

This Is Not New. The Technology Is New. The Pattern Is Ancient.

Women being surveilled, recorded, watched, objectified, turned into content without consent. This is not new. The technology is new. The glasses are new. The legal grey area is new. The scale is new.

The pattern? The complete and total disregard for women's right to exist in public without being made into someone else's property?

Ancient. Institutionally ingrained. Societally normalised. And most days we just absorb it and keep walking because what's the fucking point.

The colleague who talks over you in every meeting. The man who follows you to your car. The one who asks why you're sitting alone as if your solitude is an invitation. The one who stands too close on public transport and knows exactly what he's doing. The one who films your face while he chats you up and you smile politely, because you were trained from birth to smile politely and not make it awkward, and the whole time you are being recorded and you don't know.

Millions of moments. Billions of them. Every woman, every day, constantly, without pause.

We carry these moments around and say nothing because we've learned that saying something gets you labelled difficult, hysterical, oversensitive.

WTF are we doing?  Constantly fighting to have our voices heard and our bodily autonomy respected.  Well, how about this…

My Completely Unhinged and Absolutely Serious Proposal

Women. Get the glasses.

All of us. Every single one of us. We should put them on our faces and start recording.

I mean it. Fully, completely, without irony. Including the little bloody sticker so the assholes who we interact with are exposed.  It’d be like a billion episodes of Panorama every day.  These glasses could be the most powerful tool women have ever had access to if we use them.

Think about what we witness every single day that no one ever has to account for. The low-level harassment that doesn't quite count as anything. The comments. The looks. The touches that last a fraction of a second too long. The conversations in boardrooms and meeting rooms and pub back rooms where decisions get made and women don't exist. The interactions that leave you shaking and doubting yourself and wondering if you imagined it.

You didn't imagine it.

Record it.  And post it on here, or on socials with the hashtag #shadesofwomen

They built the surveillance. They handed it to us in a Ray-Ban frame. They didn't think about what happens when we start pointing it back.

These Glasses Should Be Prescribed on the NHS

I'm only half joking.

From the age of, well, young…. Every girl, every woman. Here's your glasses. Here's your evidence. Go exist in the world and know that what happens to you is documented.

We shouldn't have to do this. We shouldn't have to protect ourselves. We shouldn't have to build a case for our own daily experience just to be believed. We shouldn't have to carry a recording device to prove that the thing that just happened actually happened.

But we live in a world where a woman can be filmed without her knowledge, her face plastered across 23 million screens, and the law shrugs. So if the law won't protect us, and the platforms won't protect us, and the companies who make this technology clearly aren't prioritising our safety over their profit margins, then we have to use every tool available.

They made the tool. FFS. Let's use it.

What Actually Needs To Happen

The rage feels good. It is good. But here is what actually needs to change because rage without direction is just noise.

Mandatory consent laws before recording anyone identifiable in public. Not a recommendation. Law.

Criminal penalties for disabling or covering the recording indicator. The sticker loophole needs to close.

Platform accountability for hosting non-consensual recordings. Not voluntary takedowns after millions of views. Proactive prevention.

Updated UK legislation that recognises this specific harm. The End Violence Against Women Coalition is already calling for this. Support them.

And Meta? Meta who brought us Cambridge Analytica. Meta who sent intimate footage of women to workers in Kenya for AI training without those women's knowledge. Meta whose product is making all of this possible.

Meta needs to be held accountable. Not fined a sum that amounts to pocket change. Actually held accountable.

In The Meantime

Learn what the recording light looks like on Meta Ray-Ban glasses. A small LED on the frame. If you see it blinking, you are being recorded.

You are allowed to ask someone to stop recording. You are allowed to walk away. You are allowed to be furious.

If you are filmed without consent and it ends up online, report it to the platform. Report it to the police even if you expect nothing. Create a paper trail. Make them explain in writing why they're doing nothing.

Talk about it. To your friends, your daughters, your colleagues. The more women know this is happening, the less able men are to rely on our ignorance.

And if you buy a pair of smart glasses and start recording the world from your perspective?

I would very much like to see that content.

The Bigger Picture

There is something that breaks open in me when I think about this. Not just the smart glasses. The whole thing.

The technology changes. The tools change. The scale changes. The harm to women stays the same. Constant. Never ending. Woven into the fabric of how society is built and who it is built for.

We are not going back to pretending it isn't there. Something has permanently broken in the female collective and I feel it every time a story like this lands. The rage doesn't dissipate. It compounds.

Good. Let it compound.

Get the glasses. Record everything. Refuse to be quiet.

#ShadesOfWomen

That's what I'm calling this. A movement. A hashtag. A proposal.

If you buy a pair of smart glasses, or you already have them, use them. Record the moments. The ones that don't quite count as anything. The ones nobody believes. The ones you'd never be able to prove without footage.

Post it. Use #ShadesOfWomen. Let's build a library of what women actually experience every single day.

They gave us the glasses. Let's use them.

Sources:

CNN (February 2026):https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/09/world/manfluencers-smart-glasses-intl

CNN (February 2026) - the women's stories follow-up:https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/10/business/video/smart-glasses-covert-filming-women-creators-digvid

CBC Radio (March 2026):https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/meta-glasses-covert-recording-9.7139927

National Law Review (April 2026):https://natlawreview.com/article/smart-glasses-and-privacy-wearable-surveillance-and-disclosure-issues

The Female Lead (March 2026):https://community.thefemalelead.com/p/the-dark-reality-of-metas-ai-glasses