Why Face Masks For Coronavirus Have More To Say Than Germ Protection
In recent history, the humble mask has played many roles, from objet d’art to tool of salvation.
The Instagram account @Fashion_for_bank_robbers, curated by Munich based artist Carina Shoshtary, features an eclectic collection of designer masks and head garb that you must see to believe. A ruby-encrusted armor of intricately cast chain-linked plates conceals a model’s visage in one. Pieces of Icelandic seaweed appear to be growing over a model’s face in another. They are nothing like the uber-functional N95s and thin medical sheaths we now cover our faces with to go to the grocery store. In the age of virus protection, function comes first over fashion.
“The fact that we usually don’t wear headpieces and masks in daily life, with the exception of hats, seems to give artists more freedom to create quirky extraordinary pieces,” Shoshtary told Vogue last April. These words feel like they’ve come to us from a time capsule now that face masks have inundated our everyday lives.
But let’s be clear. Masks haven't just leapt out of the realm of fantasy into public life in the span of a year. There have been multiple plot twists for the rise of this now-pervasive accessory, a scattered global narrative that leaps from California to Hong Kong to Australia.
Each time the face mask reappears, it reminds us that we’re in the midst of ecological crises, broken health systems, political conflicts and economic and social inequalities. And while this simple tool reveals our agility in responding to multiple crises, it does little to address the deeper issues at play.
The Camp Fire flared up in Northern California on November 8, 2018. Sparked by a century-old powerline infrastructure overdue for repair, it ignited a landscape parched by six years of drought. The smoke immediately drifted to the nearby Bay Area, tainting the airways of approximately eight million people with particulate matter-an irritant for healthy people, but a serious threat for people with chronic lung and heart disease.
These health warnings prompted people to stock up on N95 masks and rig up DIY box-fan air purifiers. Tech companies like Facebook and Apple, headquartered in the Bay Area, stockpiled so many N95 masks that, two years later, they’re now donating them to medical facilities strained for resources during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the Camp Fire destroyed an area the size of Chicago, the Australian bushfires burned an area the size of Portugal. The Southern Hemisphere fires swallowed the habitats of beloved kangaroos, koalas and wombats in flames, killing an estimated 1.25 billion animals. Face mask selfies became a popular trend in the final months of 2019 in Australia.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) air pollution from industry exhaust, traffic emissions and wildfires combined cause roughly 7 million deaths around the world each year. For sake of comparison, the death toll of the coronavirus has now almost reached 130,000. With such a heavy footprint on our health, there’s no excuse to exempt air pollution from coronavirus-like mobilization.
But air pollution isn’t the only reason to don a mask. During the Hong Kong anti-government protests, which sprung up in February of 2019 over proposed amendments to a law that would allow for criminals to be extradited to mainland China, protesters mobilized to influence public policy. Though the bill was withdrawn on October 23, it was not enough to appease the pro-democracy protesters who resist the spread of China’s governmental influence in Hong Kong. They continued to protest until the coronavirus made it nearly impossible.
Face masks entered into the fray as a means to provide protection against facial recognition technology used by the government to identify protesters, who could lose their jobs for protesting. The masks also helped filter the tear gas used to break up protests. Innocent in appearance, medical masks and face masks of all kinds posed such a problem to the government authorities that they banned them on October 4, 2019.
Soon after, the Hong Kong High Court found the ban unconstitutional in November. At this point, conflicting policies between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong city ruling have left the bill in limbo. It has received even greater criticism, now that people need to wear masks to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. On the flipside, because of the widespread use of masks, Chinese firms have swiftly worked to develop facial recognition technology that can detect an individual’s identity from just their eyes and forehead.
People are now navigating the world of a massive surveillance state that can indefinitely end one’s career by charging political protesters as criminals. In this context, the face mask has become a covert symbol of anti-authoritarianism. As governments claim the right to employ tear gas and facial recognition to thwart any opposition, public space has become an increasingly fraught domain.
This is especially true for people of color. After the U.S. CDC backpedalled on its stance that only sick people and health care workers should wear masks, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recommended wearing bandanas as facial coverings to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.
While shortages in medical supplies have caused people to stigmatize the act of wearing a medical mask in public, the alternative of a bandana offers a potentially dangerous solution for people of color. This is particularly true in Los Angeles, where gangs have historically used colored bandanas as identity markers. In response to the recommendations by Garcetti and others, one African American man tweeted, “I don't feel safe wearing a handkerchief or something else that isn't CLEARLY a protective mask covering my face to the store because I am a Black man living in this world."
The about-face in policy surrounding face masks may also leave Asians feeling disheartened. Many experienced racism for wearing masks in public in the U.S. as the virus began to spread in March. But oftentimes Asians wear a face mask is a sign of courtesy in public during the outbreak of any infectious disease. This has been the case at least since the SARS outbreak in 2003.
Facial coverings are loaded cultural markers that can make public space even more difficult to navigate during a pandemic for minority populations who regularly experience racism.
Ultimately, whether they are mini-filters or anonymity shields, masks always signal the many overlapping, interrelated crises we’re undergoing. They perennially reappear as a Band-Aid over much bigger issues: the climate emergency, waning democracy, racism. It’s important to remember that though we currently find ourselves in the midst of one crisis, others still deserve our rapt attention and swift mobilization. We should do everything in our power to return the mask to its status as, in Shoshtary’s words, an object of “authentic artistic expression… and a bit of myth and magic.”
Words / ERICA ELLER