I get it.
You “have” to wear these face coverings, so why not make them fun? or decorative? or make them match your ensemble?
So many things you could do with them, right?
But for me, even early on when I was still wearing them regularly, I refused to add fun/style to it.
Why?
The answer is simple: this should NEVER be our New Normal.
These (experimental) medical products* should be worn by necessity only and then purely for functional purposes.
If we, as society, normalize these things and even, God-forbid celebrate them then we acclimate ourselves to their habitual use and run the risk of being tied to them as a security blanket…
or as a fashion option…
Or spend thousands… er… millions? of dollars on them…
And tongue-in-cheek jokes like this could actually become a thing:
The fear that pervades peoples’ minds and the supposed panacea via masks can be disheartening to see… people wearing masks outside or in their car by themselves, for example.
There are real mental consequences for all this mask wearing:
Worse of all are the masks on kids, programming our youngest, most impressionable population to be fearful and suspicious of others… especially people whose faces are unveiled.
How is this a good thing?
How have we lost our collective minds here?
How have we allowed our judgement to be so skewed?
The judgement of the infinitesimal risk of COVID-19 for young people to override the much higher risk of psychological damage and stunted development by wrapping a face diaper around them?
I find myself thinking: even if the risk of COVID-19 was higher (which it isn’t), I’d still think long and hard about masking up my kids, especially for long periods of time (like all day during school)
Conclusion
If you must wear a mask, wear it as a pure necessity.
Wear it as something that you have to do, not something that you want to do.
That’s how I treat it. When I have to (airplane ride, visit gov’t office) I do, but I’m certainly not happy about it and I’m certainly not celebrating it.
As for children, you have to think long and hard about what it means to parent them in this day and age. What it means to protect them.
Maybe for you that means mask them up as you feel that protects them. But maybe… just maybe… it means avoid masking them and yourself, because that protects them in a totally different way.
One day perhaps we’ll know whether one way was ultimately better than the other.
As for me and my house, we will skip the masks.
Addendum
Few may know this, but these medical masks that people wear these days are technically under EUA by the FDA. Meaning: they have been given emergency use authorization. By EUA definitions, and by the laws governing EUAs, before a medical device with an EUA can be sold or administered, you must first be informed of all the risks and be given the option to accept or refuse its use.
Ironically (or not?), almost nobody talks about this. These are just treated as “things you wrap around your face”, and not as medical devices.
Yet another reason to resist normalizing their use.