Summer 2021 Essays
The Masking of America
Faceless people make compliant subjects, not good citizens.
by Jeffrey H. Anderson
“We should never fully return to our maskless society where only health care providers donned a mask, because judicious use of masks will continue to save lives” (emphasis added). This is not the fringe statement of some obscure crank. It is the view of two doctors at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine, one of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools, writing in a New York Daily News op-ed this spring.
Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is retreating, it may seem absurd to propose further mask mandates in response to lesser—or even seasonal—viral threats. But Julia Carrie Wong, writing in the Guardian, reports that many Americans like their masks just fine. Francesca, a 46-year-old, fully vaccinated professor in New York, will not abandon her “invisibility cloak” just yet. “It has been such a relief to feel anonymous,” she explains. “It’s like having a force field around me that says, ‘don’t see me.’” Becca, a 25-year-old bookstore employee near Chicago, reports that she and her co-workers “prefer not having customers see our faces,” because “[w]ith a mask, I don’t have to smile at them or worry about keeping a neutral face.” Bob, a 75-year-old retiree in New Jersey, says wearing a mask “frees” him from having to “appear happy.” Aimee, a 44-year-old screenwriter in Los Angeles, likes the “emotional freedom” that comes from wearing a mask: “It’s almost like taking away the male gaze.”
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-masking-of-america/
