Tanushri Sundaram, 17, thinks everyone at her school is a bit of a “mask
fisher”.
“When you have a
mask on, you only get to see the forehead, the eyes, and when you’re only
seeing that, you just kind of have an image in your head of what someone’s
supposed to look like,” she said. “So when you take that mask off, it’s like a
new person you’re looking at. It’s always going to be something you don’t
expect.”
اضافة اعلان
Throughout the
pandemic, face masks had become reliable shields for Sundaram and her
classmates. In addition to protecting against the spread of
COVID-19, they had
obscured all kinds of transformations teenagers may feel inclined to hide:
braces, pimples, acne scars, the first growths of facial hair.
Now that the
various cities ended their mask mandates for public schools, students are
dealing with old anxieties about appearance and the pressure to fit in. And as
they get a closer look at each other’s faces, they’re finding out who among
them has been mask fishing — in other words, using
facial coverings to cover up
what they really look like.
The term is a
play on “catfishing,” the slang for misrepresenting one’s identity online. For
a generation that has grown up with smartphones and Instagram, it is an apt
reference.
“Some of these people really haven’t seen my face
outside of
social media and things like that,” Damia Whyte, 17, said. “What I
post on social media is a little bit different than what I look like on a
day-to-day basis.”
“Me on social media, I feel like I’m a little bit
more done up,” she added.
“The only people
I really know that I’ve seen without their mask on are people I see outside of
school and people I see when they’re eating,” said Jasper, 15, whose
father requested that he be identified by only his first name. “So the majority
of the people in my classes that I don’t see outside of school or stuff like
that, I don’t know what they look like without their mask.”
“I never really
thought about it up until people would bring it up when I would take off my
mask to take a sip of water,” said Nuzhat Ahmed, 16. “They’d be like, ‘Oh, this
is not what I imagine you to look like.’ And then it would come to me like,
‘Oh, am I mask fishing?’ ”
The slang term,
one of many that emerged during the pandemic to describe new social dynamics,
took off on
TikTok last year. Of the nearly 40 US public school students
interviewed for this article, several expressed doubt that it was more than an
internet gag.
“Some of my
peers believe a lot of people are trying to mask fish and hide their face with
their mask, but I don’t think that’s really a very common thing,” Marc Duggan,
18, said. “I feel like the vast majority of people wear masks because they feel
they’re supposed to or because they want to take precautions from COVID.”
“Some people
just have gotten so use to it that I guess they don’t want to show their face,”
Russell Silverman, 18, said. “And some people still think COVID is a big
problem in the school and they’re just taking the necessary precautions.”
Clementine
Elorriaga, 17, said that neither she nor her friends are worried about mask
fishing; their priority is
COVID safety. She herself has become known around
school for embracing the mask as a fashion accessory.
“I
color-coordinate my outfits with my masks,” Elorriaga said. “So with the K95, I
have the blue one, I have dark light blue, dark blue, a pink, a red, and then I
also have the black.”
“I’m trying to
find a nice green one because I like wearing green outfits,” she added, “but I
haven’t found the mask that feels reliable that’s green”.
Darlina Noi, 15,
also thinks fears of mask fishing may be overblown. “I don’t feel like it’s
been a big concern of mine personally, but I do feel like the environment of my
school is accepting,” she said.
Still, some
students said they had come to see themselves differently.
“Three years
ago, it would have been like, ‘I have so much acne lately, I do not know what
to do,’ ” Cailin Paul, 15, said. “But guess what? It was middle school.
Everyone had acne. Everyone was dealing with the same thing. It was everyone’s
insecurity. But now it’s become a more personal thing, and it feels like, ‘Oh,
this person doesn’t have it because I haven’t seen their face. So it’s only me
that has it.’ ”
Sundaram had
also become more
self-conscious while the mask mandate was in effect.
“I’m still
pretty anxious about taking my mask off completely,” she said. “If people see
the newer version of me where I don’t like look the same way as I did, there’s
a lot of stress that I’ll be perceived as less pretty as I may have once been.”
“The only thing
for me would probably be chapped lips,” Ebenezer Hagan, 14, said. “Because
before, with the mask, I didn’t really need to do that because nobody was
really looking at my lips and I didn’t really see the need. But now I make sure
to try and make them look moist and not crusty.”
Moisturizing
regimens aside, the idea of revealing his face to his classmates did not seem
to bother him much.
“I do care a little bit,
but it’s not one of my main concerns,” Hagan said. “People obviously have
opinions regardless of what you do, so you can see my face however you want.”
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