The mask unveiled

In April 2010, which makes it more than ten years ago, I blogged about the French government fining a 31-year old French woman for wearing a niqab while driving.

Yep, that was her crime.

That seemed like a different era. I call that BC--Before Coronavirus.  Now, France requires everybody to wear masks in the public.  So, if masks are mandatory, then a niqab should work, right?  Keep in mind that there is a huge difference between a niqab and a burqa:

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A niqab and a face mask reveal the eyes comparably, right?  Here's a photo of the French president with a mask on:

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You put a baseball cap, er, beret, on Macron and the niqab equivalent will be complete.

But then in the age of the coronavirus, France reveals what the niqab ban is really about:

That one type of face covering is seen as withdrawing from society and another has become a sign of civic duty reflects the contradictory ways France defines community and solidarity, political analysts and historians say.
“It’s not a hypocrisy, it’s a schizophrenia at the end,” said Olivier Roy, a French scholar of secularism and Islam. “Which is to say that it’s about the problem of Islam. If you cover your face for Islam, it’s not the republic. If you cover your face for a reason not to do with Islam, it’s acceptable.”

So, if a woman ventures out wearing a niqab but not a face mask, "the result is a Catch-22. Those who do not wear a mask can be fined, as can those who violate the face-covering law."

Amnesty International notes that "the current recommendations on wearing face masks also lay bare the absurdity of the arguments that some European governments have used to prohibit the wearing of face coverings in the public space."  

When has politics not been a theatre of the absurd!

One politician has made a fashion statement out of masks.

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That person making a fashion statement is the president of Slovakia, Zuzana Čaputová.

Caputova was here in Eugene not too long ago.  When I met with her and chatted, I never imagined her as the president of her country!  Life --the coronavirus included--is beyond my imagination.

There's something in the air!

After deplaning and exiting the jet-bridge, we were in the terminal of the fancy and modern airport in India's capital city.  But, even the inside of the airport was polluted.  My eyes started watering even before we exited the terminal ... and the outside was infinitely worse!

Such is life in India, where a suburb of Delhi--Gurugram--has the notoriety of having the world's dirtiest air.  India, whose prime minister chanted the mantra of "India First" well before tRump started yelling and tweeting about "America First," is perhaps not too thrilled that India is first, indeed, when it comes to air pollution!

Worldwide, air quality seems to be worsening.  Even in places like Oregon, the summer wildfires, brought on by extreme weather events that are related to climate change, make the air un-breathable sometimes.

The worse this gets, one would think that the world's billions will rise up and demand an end to pollution.  We would think that humanity would want to breathe free and look up at the blue sky.  Right?

Wrong!

Instead, we are apparently creating fashion out of the masks that we need to wear to get through the choking pollution!  Yep, masks!!!  If you build a better mask, the capitalistic world apparently will rush to your door and flatten it and you in a nanosecond!

Enter the face mask, an accessory ripe for the market in these dystopian times. People who live in desert areas have long known to cover their mouths and protect their lungs from dust. But in the past few years, a handful of companies have started making air filtration masks engineered specifically for both fashion and function. In California, a company called Vogmask has all but cornered the market with its brightly colored designs. And abroad, companies like Airpop and Respro are entering the fold, hoping to provide an attractive alternative to the standard white painter’s mask.

This.Is.Sad!

I mean, come on, look at this photo:

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Seriously?

And the logic for why this is a "fashionable" add-on?

And there’s an accessory these brands can look to as a historical example. “If sunglasses didn’t exist today and you were going to pitch an investor on sunglasses, you would sound insane,” Hosmer says. “‘Hey, we’re gonna put this thing that covers, like, the window to your soul, the most communicative part of your body; we’re gonna put something in front of it so that you can’t see it, and that thing is gonna essentially be able to protect you from your environment.’ They would be like, ‘What? That’s stupid. No one’s gonna do that!’” Masks are no different, he says.
Xu also pointed to sunglasses when I asked her about the issues Americans might have with covering up their faces. “I’m not actually someone who likes to wear sunglasses,” she said. “And I’m struck by how common it is for people to cover up one of the more expressive parts of their face all the time.” How different are masks, really?

Seriously?

In the future, these masks may be outfitted with tiny sensors that detect everything from hazardous chemicals to the electric fields nearby. And with all that additional data, Hosmer thinks people will better understand the kinds of risks our environment might pose. “So there will gradually be a familiarity with, if not an acceptance of, knowing what the invisible threats to your and your family’s health and well-being are.”

I hope I am gone before that day arrives when people are walking around with hi-tech fashion gear that covers their nose and mouth.  Oh the humanity!