We might have learned more from the Spanish flu about what to expect, socially and culturally, from our own pandemic. When, a century ago, states and cities imposed mandates requiring everyone to wear gauze masks, there was no small number of those who refused. Some were prosecuted for violating public health commands. Prominent doctors squabbled over the efficacy of masks. There were even physicians who denounced masks as germ-breeding media likely to increase, not decrease, infection. They told newspapers “that an influenza mask must be washed every three hours in a disinfectant” when, in fact, “it was not washed for days at a time, if ever.”
Early in 1919, a syndicated fashion feature declared that the women of Paris had “abandoned the veil. They are tired of it.” What with mourning loved ones killed in the Great War and gauzing up against the Spanish flu, the ladies of France had seen their share of face coverings. Putting all that unpleasantness behind them, “They have taken to cartwheel hats and do not wish to destroy the outline of the brim by the folds of a face covering.”
By contrast, American fashionistas were embracing veils and masks, the more elaborate the better: “One of our own designers of eccentricities,” wrote one fashion columnist, “has produced a genuine influenza mask of dyed lace which is drawn upward over the chin and nose to the back of the head.” Fancy, no doubt, and surely no use against pathogens. Or how about this bit of facial frippery: A reporter noted “a sharply dressed shopper” whose “germ arrester was tastefully decorated with bows drawn taut and attached back of her pink ears with ribbons.” But the main complaint about the masks being contrived by milliners in the United States was that they were less attractive than those already being cast off by the fashion-forward Parisiennes. The French flu masks were “more seductive and coquettish” than the American ones.
As for this pandemic, I can’t recall anyone striving for a flu mask that could be described as seductive or coquettish, which means the French attitude could be a help with our current confused moment, when many (the vaccinated) have no reason to wear masks but are confusedly being told they should continue to cover their faces. Could this stalemate be broken if the pulchritudinous finally grow tired of hiding their light under a bushel of gauze and begin to show their lovely smiles?
Ah, but there are counterweights to that proposition. A century ago, a wolf trying to make time with a waitress complained about masks to a reporter sitting near him in a restaurant. Covered, as the young lady’s face was, the would-be lothario couldn’t tell whether his come-on was being met with a smile or a frown. Had the reporter bothered to ask the waitress, she might well have endorsed mask-wearing as protective against more than just germs. Have we come to enjoy the anonymity and emotional inscrutability that comes from hiding behind masks?
Masks have not inspired much in the way of fashion this time around. There have been some whimsical face coverings — J.Crew offered preppy plaid masks. But even those retailers one might have expected to go the coquettish route, say, Victoria’s Secret, were mostly tame and plain.
There has been one sort of mask that hasn’t been plain: the sort using the billboard from cheek to chin to advertise sports teams. Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the model for this mode. With his red-white-and-blue “W” masks, he has promoted the Washington Nationals baseball franchise almost as much as he has promoted himself.
Given the popularity of the sports logo COVID-19 cover-ups, we may be able to get a sense of the future of the face mask by checking out the market for team facewear. At NFLShop.com, face mask packages that had been $25 are now available for five fire-sale dollars.
That by itself is cause to smile and to let others see you do so.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
