![]() Using props gathered for teaching undergraduate anthropology courses on infectious disease, and being an extrovert trapped in social distancing mode, I myself started a daily photo series featuring a Plague Doctor encouraging creative pursuits and self-care while self-isolating. Miasma reminded a rapt online audience to wash their hands. ![]() Folks in beaked masks wandered onto live on-location newscasts. Memes predicting Spring 2020 fashion replete with black capes, canes, and beaked masks flooded social media in March 2020, as the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 cases made global headlines (Figure 1). Steeped in our current context, the stage was set for the Plague Doctor, that iconic masked medical icon, to make a comeback. Anthropologists have explored the imagery of disease-repelling face masks as “potent symbols of existential risk” (Lynteris 442), while Lasco explains that motivations including “cultural values, perceptions of control, social pressure, civic duty, family concerns, self-expression, beliefs about public institutions, and even politics” might make an individual cover their face. Anxiety over invisible invaders encourages individuals to desire a barrier, to wrest back a feeling of control. The spike in face-mask purchasing and crafting in response to COVID-19 fears is not surprising. The efficacy and culture of masks as personal protective equipment has been investigated for over a century’s worth of diseases, including the 1910-’11 Manchurian plague (Lynteris), influenza (Chuang Cowling), SARS (Sin Syed), tuberculosis (Biscotto), and Ebola (MacIntyre et al.). ![]() Whether manufacturing, stockpiling, MacGyvering, sewing, 3D printing, or debating them, masks are (figuratively, if not literally) on everyone’s lips. Madeleine Mant // 2020 is the year of the mask. ![]()
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