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Original poster

This obsession with blue eyes! Anyone else?

451 replies

Lelophants · 13/08/2020 10:44

Honestly, I know it's a minor thing but it's really starting to annoy me! 🤣

Dh and I both have hazel eyes. We are white but more olivey skin (not that it matters!) Ds is the spitting image of me as a baby and his eyes are still that changeable very dark blue/brown colour, but looks dark in most lights. He has basically the same eyes I did as a baby and most of the time they look hazel, but I guess they haven't quite set yet. Mine didn't set until 1. He is 9 months. (Other babies we know with blue eyed parents have proper blue eyes - ds has never looked very blue!) Also neither DH or myself are blue!!

Pil are both blue and hazel eyed and mil is the blue eyed one and is obsessed that our baby will have blue eyes! Every time she visits (maybe 6 or 7 times now) it's "his eyes look blue! Are they blue?" Then looks disappointed when we say no. I'm not kidding. Every time she comes in! I actually have an intake of breath now. She then makes the odd comment of "well they look blue to me." as if I'm making it up. Confused

I actually find it quite offensive. Dark eyes are attractive you know! Her son has them! And ds has my eyes!
She even made some comment about how her other son has blue eyes and how beautiful they are.

Anyone else have people like this? Blue eyes are no nicer than dark eyes. Hazel eyes are beautiful thank you very much!

OP posts:
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9
Willthisallblowover · 13/08/2020 13:26

My DH has blue eyes, I have green eyes and I mean bottle green with a dark blue ring around the outside of the iris. My children have blue eyes. My mum had blue eyes, and my dad had brown eyes.

Green is apparently the most rarest colour.

Whenever I go abroad, I always get asked if I’m Irish before I open my mouth as apparently I “look” Irish because of my dark hair and green eyes

notreallybotheredaboutausernam · 13/08/2020 13:26

@ShinyMe

It's only because blue eyes are so rare.
they're not not amongst white people. They're more common.

My whole family has blue eyes and I find them quite boring. My boyfriend has brown eyes and they are gorgeous.

Change17 · 13/08/2020 13:26

mrsjoyfulprizeforraffiawork

“I have green eyes. When I was a child, every time we went to visit a family we knew (with children of similar ages to us), the father would make a beeline for me to look at my green eyes. It was because he, too, had green eyes (which he obviously thought was a great attribute). I found it REALLY embarrassing and odd. As I have recently read that green eyes are the most rare colour, I realise he probably didn't meet many people with them.”

My green eyes are the one thing I really like about myself. Although a friend once did give me the back handed compliment of “your eyes are really pretty. Kinda that swamp green of my nephew’s nappy” It’s been 12 years but I’ve not forgotten it lol.

funinthesun19 · 13/08/2020 13:27

I have hazel eyes, my ex has hazel eyes, our 3 sons have hazel eyes and our 1 daughter has blue eyes! Just to buck the trend Grin

Interested to know how DD ended up blue eyes. Is it that me and ex are carriers of it but it’s not normally the strongest gene?

RedRumTheHorse · 13/08/2020 13:27

@lilgreen

I thought most red heads have blue eyes?
I didn't realise until I started looking at people's eye colours properly that about half of the red heads I know had brown or hazel eyes. The others had grey or blue.

@mrsjoyfulprizeforraffiawork I've met very few people with green eyes.

Change17 · 13/08/2020 13:29

WaxOnFeckOff

This is really interesting because when I think of the redheads I know they all have brown eyes.
However I just googled the first red head celebs that came to mind- Jessica chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard and Amy Adams and yep.. all blue!!

DramaAlpaca · 13/08/2020 13:30

There are lots of people with red hair and blue eyes here in Ireland, and in Scotland as well I think. It's certainly not unusual.

I have hazel eyes and DH's are green. I know I carry the gene for blue eyes as all four of my grandparents had blue or grey blue eyes. I was still a bit surprised (and secretly quite pleased because I love blue eyes) that two of my DC inherited the blue eyed gene. Not bright blue though, one has greyish blue and the other has blueish grey.

Middle DC has really interesting eyes, a gorgeous mixture of blue, brown and gold, which seem to change colour depending on what he's wearing.

I was hoping for at least one of them to have red hair as there's a lot of it in both sides of my family and also in DH's, but it missed my generation and my children's.

WaxOnFeckOff · 13/08/2020 13:31

@Change17 are you in Scotland? I'm east coast if that makes a difference.

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 13/08/2020 13:32

Is your MIL related to Eva Braun by any chance?

Naughty! Grin

crosstalk · 13/08/2020 13:32

Thanks to previous poster who explained the genetics - though I suspect few of us will know or be able to find out if we're bB BB or whatever.

I claim this post with a father with brown eyes, mother with grey, DB with blue and me with green. I married a brown eyed man and had DC with blue eyes.

It seems from what literature there is that green eyes and red hair tend to be recessive so while both are relatively common in the UK and Ireland and northern Europe they are diminishingly small (2 per cent?) worldwide. However the most arresting people I've met included a Tobagan man who had light green eyes and an Afghani woman with grey/green. And a French girl with what they call chataigne and dark blue eyes.

Now tell me why the Dutch are the tallest nation in Europe ....

Change17 · 13/08/2020 13:33

WaxOnFeckOff Nope I’m in MelbourneGrin but originally from surrey. From what I’ve just googled I can definitely see how the red hair blue eye combo wouldn’t seem unusual at all in Scotland. Even Merida from Brave had blue eyes from what I recall.

WaxOnFeckOff · 13/08/2020 13:33

I'm now completely gobsmacked that red/blue is the rarest when it's completely normal to me.

TitsOutForHarambe · 13/08/2020 13:34

I thought it was normal for grandparents to want to see a bit of them in the grandchildren- eye colour, hair, tall/short etc. I don't think It means they think there is something "wrong" with certain colourings. You're massively your thinking this.

And for the record I always thought it was hazel eyes that everyone wanted? I must have missed the blue eyed thing...

TitsOutForHarambe · 13/08/2020 13:35

*over thinking! Not your thinking...

IsThisTheKrustyKrab · 13/08/2020 13:35

I have quite bright blue eyes but my daughter has hazel. I've been asked if I'm 'disappointed' that she didn't get my eyes! Uh, no? Hmm I think her eyes are gorgeous!

WaxOnFeckOff · 13/08/2020 13:35

cheers @Change17, thought I was going mad. DS confirmed that his redhaired GF has blue eyes as do her siblings and 3 out of her 4 nieces and nephews that have red hair. Other niece is dark haired with blue eyes.

IsThisTheKrustyKrab · 13/08/2020 13:37

@funinthesun19 Yes, both you and DH have to be carriers of the blue eye gene to have a blue eyed child. Both of my parents have brown eyes, but I have blue because both of THEIR mothers had blue eyes.

lollyfog · 13/08/2020 13:38

Now tell me why the Dutch are the tallest nation in Europe ....

Natural selection over time? Tall parents = tall offspring more tall people mating with other tall people. Diet makes a difference - they eat lots of dairy apparently.

Norma27 · 13/08/2020 13:40

I have really dark brown eyes and olive skin. I always used to get complimented on my eyes.
My husband has blue eyes, dd1 blue eyes, dd2 hazel eyes. More people definitely comment on dd2s eyes rather than dd1. They both have amazing eyes in their own right.
I personally love green eyes. I find them fascinating.
People will always have their own preferences for everything. She is probably just happy that someone else has her blue eyes
My husband has 2 adult children with his ex wife. She has brown eyes like me, the children one is blue eyed and the other hazel so same as our two. He loves that 2 have blue like him but none brown like me and his ex!

missdunkindohnut · 13/08/2020 13:40

According a quick google research around 1 in 4 white people have blue eyes so not exactly rare

Fere · 13/08/2020 13:43

@ShinyMe

It's only because blue eyes are so rare.
no, but those who have blue eyes assume they are Wink

"While blue eyes used to be the least common colour and were seen as a rarity, 48% of the British population now have blue eyes. This is followed by green eyes at 30%, with a mere 22% of the British population having brown eyes."

TheNoodlesIncident · 13/08/2020 13:44

Ha, my MIL has never said a word about DS's (her only grandchild) eye colour, it's my bloomin mother who has! She complained that of her four GC, not one of them had brown eyes. This is as my three siblings and I all have our father's brown eyes, and none of our dc inherited that colour.

The galling thing is that DH and I have brown eyes, both DH's mum and dad have brown eyes, my dad had brown eyes... and my mum? Grey eyes. The same as DS's. How does she have the cheek to complain?! Grin

Mind you, DS has my nose, which I inherited from my gran, my mum's mum. It's so crazy and endearing that I look at my son and see my nose and my dearly loved GM's nose. I wonder if she would have been pleased? None of her other great grandchildren have it... I do think genetics are fascinating! I expect OP's MIL is looking for a feature she's passed on, rather than meaning to be annoying?

Kokeshi123 · 13/08/2020 13:44

splice-bio.com/where-do-blue-eyes-come-from/

Blue eyes are surprisingly recent. They didn't exist 10,000 years ago.

It kind of blows my mind to think that at the point that human beings first started practicing agriculture, blue eyes had not yet evolved.

funinthesun19 · 13/08/2020 13:46

@funinthesun19 Yes, both you and DH have to be carriers of the blue eye gene to have a blue eyed child. Both of my parents have brown eyes, but I have blue because both of THEIR mothers had blue eyes.

Interesting!
I forgot to mention, my youngest ds has hazel eyes but one of his eyes has a patch of blue in it. (about a quarter of it). Don’t know what happened there! Grin

LockdownLoser · 13/08/2020 13:46

My Ex MIl always favoured DSD over her other grandkids, she was white with blonde hair and her other grandkids were mixed race with dark skin and dark hair and dark eyes.

When DS came along and had blue eyes she used to crow about her two blue eyed dgc. I was quick to point out that actually DSD had brown eyes, hadn't she noticed.

I love DSD to bits but the way MIL used to favour her over her cousins made me so mad.