We’ve been in the throes of a global pandemic for an entire year now, and mask wearing has just become so normal. If you walked into the grocery store last February and everyone was wearing a mask, you’d probably assume you’d stumbled into some sort of public gathering of a death cult. Now, masks serve as the literal boundary of contagiousness in addition to being a long standing metaphor for identity. Given that masks are at their pinnacle of cultural significance, let’s take a look at their role in today’s society.
Mask mandates vary from state to state, but the reality is that most states require people to wear masks while indoors in public. While the numbers on mask wearing aren’t terribly conclusive, the logic makes sense. Masks serve to protect others from your germs, not the other way around. If everyone is wearing a mask, it follows that a virus that is primarily propagated through saliva would not spread quite as easily.
Putting on a mask to go out in public, especially in areas in which they are not required, is an expression of societal selflessness. We all have to coexist in society, whether we like it or not. Occasionally that means suffering through some inconveniences for the greater good.
Consider essential workers such as healthcare professionals and grocery store employees. They’re putting themselves in harm’s way every single day because it’s simply their job. It’s not a choice for them. Masks are a symbol of one’s willingness to submit to a society that requires sacrifices for others.
Simply put, any time the government does anything, there is going to be opposition. By mandating mask wearing, local governments created yet another idea to resist. This does not include people with genuine disabilities that make mask wearing much more challenging.
People who refuse to wear masks in public don’t really care about the masks. To them, masks are a symbol of oppression. They see mandates as affronts to their liberty. They conjure up clichés like “This is a free country!” That phrase is utterly meaningless. There is no such thing in modern civilization as a free country. You have to obey the constructs of the society from which you benefit.
It just seems so irrational to refuse to wear a mask. Whether masks really help that much or not doesn’t really matter. It’s so easy to do. You just strap it behind your ears and make sure it covers your mouth and your nose. That’s it. That’s all you do. So when people draw their lines in the sand and refuse to wear what they see as the government’s means of control, what they’re really doing is prioritizing self over the greater good.
Humans love to fixate on the superficial, don’t they? Feeling insecure about your looks is just an inevitable part of being a person. When we place so much value in outer-beauty, our inner sense of value eschews what is truly important. We use faces to differentiate one another, so when it becomes expected that everyone’s faces are covered up, some things change.
It’s so much easier to feel like yourself when no one can see you. Why else are showers so personal? You sing, cry and come up with your best ideas in the shower because you are alone. If most of your face is obscured from the prying eye of the public, the world becomes just a little bit more like your shower.
The pandemic has surely increased everyone’s pajama radius. If no one can see your face, who cares what clothes are on your body? Going out in public looking (and perhaps smelling) your worst becomes far more viable when you feel assured that no one knows who you are. Why do we care so much for the opinions of strangers that we fabricate in our own minds? No one’s thinking about you like you are.
It used to be that there was only one day of the year in which it was acceptable to wear a mask in public. Whether you’re an enthusiastically youthful trick-or-treater, a sexy adult cat or a sadistic prankster, Halloween used to be the only time to be whatever you wanted. Your innermost desires emerged past the subdermal. It’s the closest thing real society had to “The Purge.”
What makes Halloween such an adored social convention? For most kids (and many adults) it’s just the candy. That’s it. What draws the others, though? For some it must be the mystical appeal and danger of the occult. For many others it must be the possibility of stepping anonymously into a new identity for just a few hours.
To wear a second skin for one fleeting evening is a harmless exercise in imagination and self-actualization, but what happens when it becomes abnormal to not wear a mask?
The Marvel cinematic universe is omnipresent, and DC is cool too. Superheroes have become such a cultural goliath that they’d need some sort of suicide squad to defeat them at the box office. The appeal of the most mainstream depictions of these vigilantes is obvious; they’re massive budget, action-packed romps that are meant to please audiences of all ages. However, it goes far beyond that. Why are superheroes such enduring sources of entertainment and inspiration?
It start with the fantasy of their powers, of course. The idea of pushing back against evil through the use of some kind of special ability is the ultimate daydream of the disenfranchised. Beyond that, part of what makes superheroes so fascinating is their dual identities. Nearly every costumed crime fighter has a secret identity that’s protected by a mask. What’s more relatable than concealing your truest self to everyone but those closest to you? Or is the costume your truest self, and the secret identity is the real fraud?
The ugliest manifestation of anonymity in modern society is that of the internet troll. They take many forms. They’re the ones that comment the word “ratio” on every Twitter post. They’re the YouTube comments that offer unsolicited “constructive” criticism. They’re the eye-boogers of the cyber world. They range in malice from misguided jokesters to malignant globules of sentience, hate and misappropriated memes.
What is it about the lack of accountability of life online that unleashes people’s innermost dumpster sludge? Sitting behind a screen and hiding behind an anime avatar is the same as wearing a mask in public, yet you don’t see people telling grocers that they look better without makeup that often. Apologies to any of the good anime avatars out there. You know who you are.
There are different levels of anonymity that enable the cowardly dregs of online society to thrive in an environment that refuses to confront its own toxicity. Interpersonal means of communication still uphold themselves in the aggregate, whether everyone’s face is partially obscured or not, but we’ve yet to figure out how to self-police the newest frontier.
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