vox--2020-06-08--Black kids are watching this moment. What will it teach them?

Dr. Brittani James ends all of her visits these days asking her patients how they ’ re coping with being Black in America .
James is a family medicine doctor at a hospital on the majority-Black South Side of Chicago .
By giving space for her parent patients to process their trauma , she says she ’ s helping their children , too .
“ These kids are a vulnerable population , ” James told me .
“ Even adults we ’ re seeing are struggling to put words to the racial trauma and the deep pain they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , protests against racism and police brutality , sparked mostly by the murder of George Floyd and the demand for justice for Breonna Taylor , have erupted across the country .
Masked protesters chanting and yelling their disgust and exhaustion with police violence has ended in tense confrontations with officers , some of which turned violent .
Many children have been in attendance at these events , and many more have witnessed images of young protesters being pepper sprayed and attacked on the news and social media .
“ These kids are a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re seeing are struggling to put words to the racial trauma and the deep pain they ’ re experiencing.
” But even before videos captured the police abuse of protesters or the last violent moments of Black men like George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery , Black parents have been raising children through generations of chronic stress and ongoing trauma .
Systemic racism has its hands deep into the physical health , mental well-being , future economic prospects , and daily lives of Black people — and Black children have always been watching , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Instead of images of their future selves on television as doctors and lawyers and policy leaders , they are bombarded with stories of people who look like them being slaughtered in the streets and in their homes by police officers with no justice .
“ We ’ re starting from a point of decimation , and now we have George Floyd and other racist terror on broad display , ” says James .
“ We had to stare and watch one of us getting murdered .
That is PTSD .
That is actual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Boyd , a pediatrician at a community-based clinic in Northern California and instructor of structural inequality and health at Stanford University , says Black children are undoubtedly shaped by exposure to police violence , but the exposure is inescapable .
“ When Black children witness , either through their cellphones or social media accounts , or maybe even just secondhand accounts where somebody shares that these events have occurred — and especially if they relate to somebody who was included in that event , rather [ than ] because they share the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that risk as potentially affecting them , ” Boyd says .
Even just one exposure to police violence is enough to set them up for the stress , anxiety , and hypervigilance associated with knowing their lives are possibly at risk , she added , citing a study on the effect of police killings on the mental health of Black Americans .
In media coverage and online discussions about the protests , there has been a lot of condemning debate about the looting that occurs as a side effect of the largely peaceful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notice when people care more about a retail store ’ s destruction than a Black man ’ s life .
They hear the silence from the apathetic .
They are aware of the lack of justice when the systems they should trust and look to protect them not only fail to act when Black people are killed , but are also the ones doing the killing .
Parents of Black children spend their lives preparing their kids for the inevitable racist experiences they ’ ll encounter , even giving them a literal “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when it comes to police interactions .
All of these observations tell Black children that the country their ancestors built values their lives at next to nothing .
The effect of this devaluation of life is clear — especially in an alarming mental health trend .
How we are failing the health and well-being of Black children The rate of Black children ages 5–11 who died by suicide nearly doubled from 2007 to 2017 , according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics .
The study ’ s researchers hypothesize that one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ disproportionate exposure to violence and traumatic stress and aggressive school discipline.
” More research is needed to determine why suicide rates started trending upward for Black children in 2007 while decreasing for white children , but according to a 2019 report by the Congressional Black Caucus , mental health studies and interventions for Black children are notoriously underfunded .
There ’ s no question that racism harms the mental and physical health of children .
It begins before children are even born .
Black babies are more likely to be born @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of racism contributes to this risk .
Prolonged exposure to the stress associated with racism wears down both the physical and mental health of Black children .
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics , children who recall directly experiencing racism suffer psychological trauma and an eroded self-perception , even when the experience is as a bystander or witness to racism .
What children see around them is not limited to what ’ s on television or social media , either .
The physical spaces around children also tell them something about their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adverse mental health outcomes is the racism and racist policies embedded in our nation ’ s systems .
Structural racism is fed by policy violence , says Tawanna Black , founder and CEO of the Center for Economic Inclusion .
“ It ’ s the way we go about drawing school boundaries and district lines , limiting the amount of dollars and resources that flow to one school or another , ” she says .
“ It ’ s policies that have restricted our ability to enjoy the wealth which we built in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ability to experience a quality education system.
” School districts with majority non-white children receive less funding than white ones , to the tune of approximately $ 23 billion .
But evidence shows that low-income students need more funding , not equal and certainly not less .
Those missing dollars translate into missing books , fewer course options , larger class sizes , and schools that are falling apart — literally and metaphorically .
Failure to invest in predominantly Black schools and neighborhoods represents a failure to value Black children .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are equitable and are thriving , Black children will believe that they are valued too , ” Black says .
But instead of investing in the resources that will improve the lives and futures of Black children , school districts nationwide have invested in putting police officers on campus .
Schools continue to increase the presence of school resource officers , as they ’ re called , even though there is no data showing that having police on campus protects kids from school shootings or decreases the likelihood that a shooting will occur @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the presence of police officers in schools increases the likelihood that Black students are disproportionately policed and criminalized compared with their white peers , pushing them more directly into the school-to-prison pipeline .
What can be done to uplift and support Black children To build Black children up and improve the health and economic outcomes that systemic racism has negatively impacted , look directly to fixing the systems that children interact with most often .
“ Many important interventions could occur in schools , including improved access to mental health supports and ending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brown students , ” says Boyd .
Instead of harshly disciplining and criminalizing children , replace school resource officers with social workers and mental health professionals .
“ We have to remove police from school , ” she added .
“ It ’ s policies that have restricted our ability to enjoy the wealth which we built in this country , and our children ’ s ability to experience a quality education system ” We also have to look at the way we fund schools .
“ Our formulas for applying dollars and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down to a district and school level , are often designed really to create failure , ” says Black .
School resources are direct predictors of student achievement , yet states have been allowed to continue creating unequal opportunities based on lines drawn on maps .
Changes in federal policies to end the practice of funding public schools through local property taxes , such as California ’ s need-based school finance reform , can help create more equitable schools .
Another line of support for Black children that needs to be reexamined is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time they are 10 , most children have been to a pediatrician or family doctor at least five times .
Each one of those times is an opportunity for doctors to ask children questions about their stress and sense of well-being , says James .
“ Mental health is still kind of an afterthought , and that ’ s problematic , ” she says .
“ It ’ s irresponsible .
You can not talk about physical health in a vacuum.
” The challenge , James says , is a hesitancy to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deal with race as a factor .
“ By not talking about it , we ’ re allowing the trauma to flourish , ” she added .
On an individual level , as parents and citizens we each have the power to value Black children by exercising our right to vote for or against policies that devalue Black communities , schools , and families .
The structural racism that allows police officers to murder unarmed Black people is the same structural racism that allows decision-makers to ignore the disparate health and economic outcomes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black people are less than .
“ The default in our society is for a Black child to believe that they are inferior — that they have less worth and less value and don ’ t deserve to be seen or loved , ” says James .
However , Black children — the descendants of a people who were enslaved , bought , and sold , then built an economy they were not allowed to benefit from — have value far beyond what America is willing and ready to recognize .
They deserve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because the best way to show Black children that Black lives matter is to put our money where our mouth is , and to work to reverse the violent , racist policies that say otherwise .
Kelly Glass is a freelance journalist and editor whose writing focuses on the intersections of parenting , health , and race .
Find her on Twitter @ kellygwriter .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
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Dr. Brittani James ends all of her visits these days asking her patients how they’re coping with being Black in America. James is a family medicine doctor at a hospital on the majority-Black South Side of Chicago. By giving space for her parent patients to process their trauma, she says she’s helping their children, too.
“These kids are a vulnerable population,” James told me. “Even adults we’re seeing are struggling to put words to the racial trauma and the deep pain they’re experiencing.”
Over the past two weeks, protests against racism and police brutality, sparked mostly by the murder of George Floyd and the demand for justice for Breonna Taylor, have erupted across the country. Masked protesters chanting and yelling their disgust and exhaustion with police violence has ended in tense confrontations with officers, some of which turned violent. Many children have been in attendance at these events, and many more have witnessed images of young protesters being pepper sprayed and attacked on the news and social media.
“These kids are a vulnerable population. Even adults we’re seeing are struggling to put words to the racial trauma and the deep pain they’re experiencing.”
But even before videos captured the police abuse of protesters or the last violent moments of Black men like George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, Black parents have been raising children through generations of chronic stress and ongoing trauma. Systemic racism has its hands deep into the physical health, mental well-being, future economic prospects, and daily lives of Black people — and Black children have always been watching, experiencing, and feeling it all.
Instead of images of their future selves on television as doctors and lawyers and policy leaders, they are bombarded with stories of people who look like them being slaughtered in the streets and in their homes by police officers with no justice.
“We’re starting from a point of decimation, and now we have George Floyd and other racist terror on broad display,” says James. “We had to stare and watch one of us getting murdered. That is PTSD. That is actual and irrefutable racial trauma.”
Dr. Rhea Boyd, a pediatrician at a community-based clinic in Northern California and instructor of structural inequality and health at Stanford University, says Black children are undoubtedly shaped by exposure to police violence, but the exposure is inescapable.
“When Black children witness, either through their cellphones or social media accounts, or maybe even just secondhand accounts where somebody shares that these events have occurred — and especially if they relate to somebody who was included in that event, rather [than] because they share the same age or racial identity — they internalize that risk as potentially affecting them,” Boyd says. Even just one exposure to police violence is enough to set them up for the stress, anxiety, and hypervigilance associated with knowing their lives are possibly at risk, she added, citing a study on the effect of police killings on the mental health of Black Americans.
In media coverage and online discussions about the protests, there has been a lot of condemning debate about the looting that occurs as a side effect of the largely peaceful protests across the country. Black children notice when people care more about a retail store’s destruction than a Black man’s life. They hear the silence from the apathetic. They are aware of the lack of justice when the systems they should trust and look to protect them not only fail to act when Black people are killed, but are also the ones doing the killing.
Parents of Black children spend their lives preparing their kids for the inevitable racist experiences they’ll encounter, even giving them a literal “how to try to survive” guide when it comes to police interactions. All of these observations tell Black children that the country their ancestors built values their lives at next to nothing. The effect of this devaluation of life is clear — especially in an alarming mental health trend.
How we are failing the health and well-being of Black children
The rate of Black children ages 5–11 who died by suicide nearly doubled from 2007 to 2017, according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics. The study’s researchers hypothesize that one of the factors linked to this increase include experiences of “disproportionate exposure to violence and traumatic stress and aggressive school discipline.” More research is needed to determine why suicide rates started trending upward for Black children in 2007 while decreasing for white children, but according to a 2019 report by the Congressional Black Caucus, mental health studies and interventions for Black children are notoriously underfunded.
There’s no question that racism harms the mental and physical health of children. It begins before children are even born. Black babies are more likely to be born prematurely, and evidence suggests the stress of racism contributes to this risk. Prolonged exposure to the stress associated with racism wears down both the physical and mental health of Black children. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children who recall directly experiencing racism suffer psychological trauma and an eroded self-perception, even when the experience is as a bystander or witness to racism.
What children see around them is not limited to what’s on television or social media, either. The physical spaces around children also tell them something about their value. At the root of these adverse mental health outcomes is the racism and racist policies embedded in our nation’s systems.
Structural racism is fed by policy violence, says Tawanna Black, founder and CEO of the Center for Economic Inclusion. “It’s the way we go about drawing school boundaries and district lines, limiting the amount of dollars and resources that flow to one school or another,” she says. “It’s policies that have restricted our ability to enjoy the wealth which we built in this country, and our children’s ability to experience a quality education system.”
School districts with majority non-white children receive less funding than white ones, to the tune of approximately $23 billion. But evidence shows that low-income students need more funding, not equal and certainly not less. Those missing dollars translate into missing books, fewer course options, larger class sizes, and schools that are falling apart — literally and metaphorically. Failure to invest in predominantly Black schools and neighborhoods represents a failure to value Black children.
“To the extent at which Black neighborhoods are equitable and are thriving, Black children will believe that they are valued too,” Black says.
But instead of investing in the resources that will improve the lives and futures of Black children, school districts nationwide have invested in putting police officers on campus. Schools continue to increase the presence of school resource officers, as they’re called, even though there is no data showing that having police on campus protects kids from school shootings or decreases the likelihood that a shooting will occur, says Boyd. In fact, the presence of police officers in schools increases the likelihood that Black students are disproportionately policed and criminalized compared with their white peers, pushing them more directly into the school-to-prison pipeline.
What can be done to uplift and support Black children
To build Black children up and improve the health and economic outcomes that systemic racism has negatively impacted, look directly to fixing the systems that children interact with most often.
“Many important interventions could occur in schools, including improved access to mental health supports and ending zero-tolerance policies that disproportionately penalize Black and brown students,” says Boyd. Instead of harshly disciplining and criminalizing children, replace school resource officers with social workers and mental health professionals. “We have to remove police from school,” she added.
“It’s policies that have restricted our ability to enjoy the wealth which we built in this country, and our children’s ability to experience a quality education system”
We also have to look at the way we fund schools. “Our formulas for applying dollars and resources from a state level, then down to a district and school level, are often designed really to create failure,” says Black. School resources are direct predictors of student achievement, yet states have been allowed to continue creating unequal opportunities based on lines drawn on maps. Changes in federal policies to end the practice of funding public schools through local property taxes, such as California’s need-based school finance reform, can help create more equitable schools.
Another line of support for Black children that needs to be reexamined is the role of medical professionals. By the time they are 10, most children have been to a pediatrician or family doctor at least five times. Each one of those times is an opportunity for doctors to ask children questions about their stress and sense of well-being, says James.
“Mental health is still kind of an afterthought, and that’s problematic,” she says. “It’s irresponsible. You cannot talk about physical health in a vacuum.” The challenge, James says, is a hesitancy to train medical students to talk about and deal with race as a factor. “By not talking about it, we’re allowing the trauma to flourish,” she added.
On an individual level, as parents and citizens we each have the power to value Black children by exercising our right to vote for or against policies that devalue Black communities, schools, and families. The structural racism that allows police officers to murder unarmed Black people is the same structural racism that allows decision-makers to ignore the disparate health and economic outcomes of Black people. It asserts that Black people are less than.
“The default in our society is for a Black child to believe that they are inferior — that they have less worth and less value and don’t deserve to be seen or loved,” says James.
However, Black children — the descendants of a people who were enslaved, bought, and sold, then built an economy they were not allowed to benefit from — have value far beyond what America is willing and ready to recognize. They deserve public policy decision-making that says so — because the best way to show Black children that Black lives matter is to put our money where our mouth is, and to work to reverse the violent, racist policies that say otherwise.
Kelly Glass is a freelance journalist and editor whose writing focuses on the intersections of parenting, health, and race. Find her on Twitter @kellygwriter.


vox--2020-06-08--The most urgent threat of deepfakes isn’t politics. It’s porn.

Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us .
Kristen Bell first found out there were deepfake porn videos of her online from her husband , the actor Dax Shepard .
In the videos , her face has been manipulated onto porn performers ’ bodies .
“ I was just shocked , ” Bell told me .
“ It ’ s hard to think about that I ’ m being exploited.
” And this isn ’ t only happening to celebrities .
Noelle Martin , a recent law graduate in Perth , Australia , discovered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shared on social media and used them first to photoshop her into nude images , and then to create deepfake videos .
Deepfakes are often portrayed as a political threat — fake videos of politicians making comments they never made .
But in a recent report , the research group Deeptrace found that 96 percent of deepfakes found online are pornographic .
Of those videos , virtually all are of women .
And virtually all are made without their consent .
“ There ’ s a lot of talk about the challenges that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Martin said .
“ But I think what is often missed from the discussion is the impact to individuals right now .
Not in a few years , not in a couple of months .
Right now.
” What ’ s happening in these videos is a specific kind of digital manipulation .
It ’ s not the same as the older face-swapping filters you might have used on social media .
Those tools let you put your face onto a friend ’ s head , but because they transfer both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you still control it .
Deepfakes are different .
They can take your facial features alone and animate your face with someone else ’ s expressions .
That ’ s what makes them so invasive .
The creator takes away a victim ’ s control of her face , using it for something she never wanted .
In doing so , they contribute to a long history of sexual humiliation of women .
You can find this video and all of Vox ’ s videos on YouTube .
And join the Open Sourced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the real consequences of data , privacy , algorithms , and AI .
Open Sourced is made possible by the Omidyar Network .
All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists .

Kristen Bell first found out there were deepfake porn videos of her online from her husband, the actor Dax Shepard. In the videos, her face has been manipulated onto porn performers’ bodies.
“I was just shocked,” Bell told me. “It’s hard to think about that I’m being exploited.”
And this isn’t only happening to celebrities. Noelle Martin, a recent law graduate in Perth, Australia, discovered that someone took photos she’d shared on social media and used them first to photoshop her into nude images, and then to create deepfake videos.
Deepfakes are often portrayed as a political threat — fake videos of politicians making comments they never made. But in a recent report, the research group Deeptrace found that 96 percent of deepfakes found online are pornographic. Of those videos, virtually all are of women. And virtually all are made without their consent.
“There’s a lot of talk about the challenges that come with the advancements in deepfake technology,” Martin said. “But I think what is often missed from the discussion is the impact to individuals right now. Not in a few years, not in a couple of months. Right now.”
What’s happening in these videos is a specific kind of digital manipulation. It’s not the same as the older face-swapping filters you might have used on social media. Those tools let you put your face onto a friend’s head, but because they transfer both your facial features and your expressions, you still control it.
Deepfakes are different. They can take your facial features alone and animate your face with someone else’s expressions. That’s what makes them so invasive. The creator takes away a victim’s control of her face, using it for something she never wanted. In doing so, they contribute to a long history of sexual humiliation of women.
You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. And join the Open Sourced Reporting Network to help us report on the real consequences of data, privacy, algorithms, and AI.
Open Sourced is made possible by the Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.


vox--2020-06-08--How wearing masks will change us

How wearing masks will change us

On our daily walk , my small dog barked at a big dog , and I did what I always do : smile meaningfully , in a manner I hope communicates , “ She ’ s friendly !
” and , “ I ’ m sorry !
” and , “ I don ’ t think that was an appropriate response , either !
” but then I realized I was masked .
How did the big dog ’ s companion feel about it ?
I couldn ’ t tell .
He was also masked .
I worried a woman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for allowing my dog to sniff her dog .
“ You can see it in her eyes !
” I told my boyfriend .
“ No , ” he said .
“ You can ’ t. ” Masks mean something is wrong ; we ’ re wearing them because things are not okay .
For a while , this is all they said , I thought .
“ Nothing is normal !
” I ’ d think , looking out over the mostly empty streets .
But we are going on three months @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
Masks still mean something is wrong , but now they ’ re also just a fact of living , and what was a siren has mellowed into a low unsettling hum .
It is very hard to say anything definitive about what the next year or month or week will look like , but by all expert predictions , we can say this : It is almost certain that the future will be masked .
In the first days of the coronavirus pandemic , we were told masks weren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fact that they ’ d been common in Asia for years .
Then a chorus of medical experts began raising alarm bells : Yes , of course we should wear masks , they argued , in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Boston Globe .
In early April , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) amended its guidelines , recommending that people wear “ cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.
” In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the public should wear masks “ on public transport , in shops , or in other confined or crowded environments , ” with medical masks preferred for people over age 60 or with preexisting conditions .
So now , with certain high-ranking exceptions and some public consternation , we ’ re wearing masks , and we will be wearing masks for the foreseeable future .
As the economy opens up and we spend more time in public settings , it seems possible that we will only wear more masks , trading the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the freedom of rejoining some semblance of the world .
Office workers will wear masks .
Commuters will wear masks .
Rationally , it should be a small change : Masks , for one thing , aren ’ t very big .
There is a lot we still don ’ t know about how well masks work and under what circumstances , but there is mounting evidence that even non-medical grade fabric masks help prevent the coronavirus from spreading , which is logical : If the virus spreads mainly through infected droplets , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our best to contain them before we cough or sneeze or talk them out into the world .
So this is what we ’ re doing now , and if it helps at all , then it ’ s obviously worth it .
I have never especially liked my chin , anyway .
But already , it has changed things .
The most jarring changes are not physical , although I liked it better when I spent less time marinating in the heat of my own breath .
It is the dog encounter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t have the access to other people that I did before , that everyone I pass is just slightly more removed .
( This is exacerbated , probably , by the fact that it is true — 6 feet ! )
It isn ’ t just a feeling .
It is , according to Paula Niedenthal , a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies emotional processing , simply true .
We really do lose information when we ’ re operating without the benefit of the lower half of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her home in Madison , where she has been experimenting with her own growing mask collection .
Eyes may be the window to the soul , but mouths and chins , it turns out , are also quite useful .
When the lower half of someone ’ s face is obscured , she explains , we tend to see their emotions as more muted .
Happy babies seem less happy if their mouths are obscured by pacifiers .
Smiling women are perceived as less smiling when their mouths are covered by veils .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cultural biases against niqabs or pacifiers : Without the lower face , we tend to read even strong emotions as muted ones .
We really do lose information when we ’ re operating without the benefit of the lower half of our face This does not affect all feelings equally .
Fear and anger , for example , are big upper face emotions , Niedenthal says ; a mask doesn ’ t change wide eyes or furrowed brows .
But happiness and sadness — lower face emotions — are harder to read .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ smiling , sort of , but how are they smiling ?
You don ’ t really know .
“ You wouldn ’ t be able to tell , really , if I was smiling in a polite , affiliative way , or with a smirk of dominance .
I could have any number of kinds of smiles going on , ” she tells me .
Now , there are new ways to misunderstand each other , and we already had so many good ones before .
Facial mimicry is a form of communication @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me , I smirk back , you see me mirroring your smirk , confirming that I saw you , and now we have reached an understanding .
We are , together , smirking .
“ That ’ s what we can ’ t have with masks , ” she says .
“ If I ’ m making a smile of dominance , and you ’ re thinking I ’ m being affiliative , ” then “ whatever you ’ re doing back to me is not what I ’ m doing to you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ it ’ s going to be perceived as an error by both of us.
” Presumably , this is an issue everywhere , to some extent .
But Niedenthal suspects it may be particularly pronounced in the US .
There is a lot of ancestral diversity here , and one result of this is that our social norms are relatively loose , which means it ’ s hard to know how anybody ’ s going to react to anything , and we need as many cues as we can get .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ you already know what people are feeling because there ’ s a prescription for the feeling there.
” But here , mostly , there isn ’ t , and when we search each other ’ s faces now , we are often staring into each other ’ s masks .
“ You could imagine people becoming more gestural with their hands ” Luckily , we are nothing if not endlessly adaptive , and there are other ways to communicate , such as with words .
I find myself chuckling audibly when I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not feel natural yet , but I would say it is increasingly unforced .
“ You could imagine people becoming more gestural with their hands , ” Niedenthal proposes .
“ It could be we ’ re going to convey a lot more information with head inclination.
” We could just talk more , although this is a somewhat less helpful solution for people who depend on reading lips .
It ’ s also possible that we ’ ll get better at reading the parts of other people ’ s faces that are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movements we used to overlook .
Niedenthal is skeptical .
“ You could say , hey , try to make more eye contact , but I don ’ t know how much of a signal is there that we were missing before.
” Riza Khamal has been thinking about all of this for years .
A writer and social media strategist originally from the Philippines , she started wearing a niqab when she moved to Canada , intermittently at first , and then all the time .
One weird byproduct of the coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suddenly she ’ s not an outlier .
“ It ’ s kind of nice on my part , because I can go out and nobody will look down [ on ] me as [ the ] strange one , ” she laughs .
“ I am the trend now.
” By now , she ’ s figured out most of the communication issues .
“ I ’ ve experimented just out of curiosity , ” she tells me .
She ’ d smile at people in public , and if they smiled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about it .
“ I would be like , ‘ Hi , you smiled at me back then .
Why ?
’ And they ’ d say , “ Because you smiled at me !
’ ” But then Khamal is , she tells me , an exceptionally smiley person .
It is possible to communicate with our faces covered .
Vast swaths of the world have been doing it for years .
In 1910 , a respiratory illness called the Manchurian Plague ravaged northeastern China .
Most experts were pretty sure the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wu Lien-teh , the young doctor who ’ d been put in charge of China ’ s plague response , had another idea : The disease , he argued , was spread through droplets in the air .
This , according to medical anthropologist Christos Lynteris , was “ heresy , ” but it was also right .
In an attempt to keep the disease contained , Wu began turning existing surgical masks into “ easy-to-wear protective devices , ” mainly for doctors , nurses , and patients .
People were skeptical , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to wear one died .
And then , as Lynteris tells it , people changed their minds .
The masks — which look more or less like modern surgical masks — became symbols of modernity and reason and good hygiene , proof that China was “ trailblazing ahead of Western medicine.
” ( The dead doctor had been French . )
It wasn ’ t until the first wave of the 1918 Spanish flu hit the US , though , that anti-epidemic masking went mainstream , explains Mitsutoshi Horii , a sociology professor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is based in the UK .
Regular people wore them .
Health authorities mandated them .
Protesters objected to them , citing their constitutional rights .
And then , for reasons that are somewhat hard to pinpoint , the histories diverge .
In the US , mask use fizzled out .
In China , as in much of East Asia , masks remained .
Masks were something they could do , a ritual of modern science Horii , who studies mask use in Japan specifically , says that their widespread acceptance in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ major push to westernize Japan in the 1920s .
The folk rituals people used to perform , the ones that allowed them some feeling of control over uncontrollable situations — outbreaks of disease , for example — were now banned .
“ People didn ’ t know what to do , ” Horii says .
“ They had their own practices that they used to do , but now they ’ re not allowed to do it.
” There was an opening .
Masks were something they could do , a ritual of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that everyone loved masks immediately : A common theme in medical mask history is that nobody anywhere loves medical masks .
“ So many people ridiculed mask-wearing in the beginning , ” he says .
They looked weird .
They were a sign of weakness .
Why did healthy people need to wear masks ?
But masks are actionable .
“ By putting on a mask , ” he tells me , “ people feel a sense of control over the situation.
” And so for the next several decades , masks cycled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ always there , in the background , ” mostly enlisted to help prevent the flu .
And then came SARS , and with it the beginning of modern mask history .
The epidemic , which was concentrated in East Asia in 2002 and 2003 , “ led to the massive adoption of face masks as personal anti-viral protection ” in the region , writes Lynteris .
Before SARS , anthropologist Judy Yuen-man Siu told the Atlantic that masks were uncommon in Hong Kong , where she is based ; now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ widely adopted , ” both as a medical strategy and a social symbol .
When the novel coronavirus broke out , there wasn ’ t even a question : Yes , masks , of course .
In the US , many of us are still adapting to navigating public life without our chins , and one result of this is that masks have not yet matured into the fabric of American life .
It has only been nine week since the CDC began advising Americans to wear them .
If it has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country to our new masked life , there is a deep-seated reason for it .
“ In some countries , the moral significance of masks has been understood to be pro-social , ” says Martha Lincoln , a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University , pointing to China and Vietnam as examples .
“ Whereas in the US , I think we have a sense that wearing a mask is an anti-social gesture.
” Masked figures tend to get read not as communitarian , but criminal .
“ A person wearing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may be an outlaw , may be a member of an anarchist black bloc , ” she says .
To subordinate your own identity doesn ’ t make you civically responsible ; it means you ’ re hiding something .
Or , at least , it used to .
Now that is changing , but not everywhere , not evenly , and not all at once .
As a result , masks themselves have become a form of communicative shorthand .
There is , of course , the obvious : As masks have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ culture wars , ” wearing one or not wearing one becomes a very visible indicator of what kind of person you think you are .
They are a tangible acknowledgment that we are all living amid the same disaster , and we care , and we ’ re trying .
But maybe they could do more ?
Clive Fields , a primary care physician and the chief medical officer at VillageMD in Houston , is optimistic that masks could maybe , in their own way , help bring people closer .
“ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ literally an hour ago to show me his new University of Texas face mask , ” he tells me .
“ All of a sudden , instead of being barriers , masks become initiators of conversation because you either have something in common or it ’ s a friendly common foe.
” In the void where sports used to go , we can at least have sports-adjacent masks .
He predicts a future where we ’ ll all have a small wardrobe of masks we wear for different things : a home mask @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mask for running .
“ There ’ ll be expensive masks and cheap masks , and they ’ ll be used as status symbols and non-status symbols , and it ’ ll become part of the way we dress , ” Field hypothesizes .
“ No one thought about the watch as a fashion statement or a status symbol or as a way to convey other types of information , ” he says , and now look where we are .
It is hard for me to imagine this future , where masks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then , my conception of what is and is not imaginable is changing very quickly .
There is some precedent for this .
As Nancy Deihl , head of costume studies at New York University , points out , fashion has repeatedly taken what once seemed inextricable from its initial context and transformed it into an aesthetic choice , directing me to camouflage .
“ You might have thought camouflage is military or paramilitary .
It ’ s hunting gear .
It ’ s always related to hostility .
It ’ s never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says .
Except that , after the first Gulf War , it did .
“ Now it ’ s part of fashion print vocabulary.
” There is pink camouflage and blue camouflage and camouflage with rainbows .
Originally , sunglasses were utilitarian protective gear , and they are still protective gear , but now they are also so much more .
“ We have made them into a stylish piece of the wardrobe , ” Deihl says .
“ They ’ re everything from buy-it-at-the-drugstore , super-cheap street vendor to luxury.
” When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a masked near-future , Deihl found the prospect grim .
“ But I ’ m evolving very rapidly on this .
And why shouldn ’ t you have a nice one ?
A black one , if you want to wear a dark coat , or one that ’ s a little bit lighter weight in the summer , ” she says .
“ I think it might become like sunglasses.
” “ I think [ masks ] might become like sunglasses ” In the right light , says Chris Hosmer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , athletic-looking masks for the Chinese market well before the coronavirus crisis , sunglasses seem far-fetched , too .
“ If sunglasses didn ’ t exist today and you were going to pitch an investor on sunglasses , you would sound insane , ” he told Rose Eveleth at Vox last year .
“ ‘ Hey , we ’ re gon na put this thing that covers , like , the window to your soul , the most communicative part of your body ; we ’ re gon na put something in front @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t see it , and that thing is gon na essentially be able to protect you from your environment.
’ They would be like , ‘ What ?
That ’ s stupid .
No one ’ s gon na do that !
’ ” Masks have hovered around the edges of fashion for years now , but they have not secured a place in the pantheon of luxury accessories .
Alexander McQueen featured ( relatively ) wearable ones , and Martin Margiela has shown several notably less practical interpretations .
In 2014 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ smog couture ” collection .
They are still so far from being sunglasses .
That doesn ’ t mean designers aren ’ t trying .
“ I see it as the most important accessory of the coming year , ” says Lia Kes , a New York City-based sustainable designer whose clothes I can ’ t afford , but whose masks I could .
( Masks , like perfume and also sunglasses , are an entry-level item . )
Like the rest of the fashion industry , she started making masks because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now , she says , she can picture a place for masks in our post-pandemic future .
“ I haven ’ t completely figured out what it will look like a year from now , but this is my feeling , ” she says .
“ Even after all this , I can not imagine myself boarding a flight without a mask on.
” And for all their many drawbacks , face coverings do afford some arguable benefits .
They allow a certain relaxation of beauty standards , for example .
They offer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like headphones for your face .
So many of the standard ways we used to signal identity have been tabled .
There is no reason to dress up because nobody is going anywhere .
We used to express ourselves with our mouths and noses , but now we keep those neatly under wraps .
The bold lip is definitively over , as a fashion statement , on account of nobody seeing it .
“ So what do you do ?
” asks Alison Matthews David , a fashion historian at Ryerson University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to find other ways to be creative with your appearance.
” For example , have you considered masks ?
We are only just beginning our collective mask journey .
It is a process of discovery .
Of all possible garments , masks are singularly intimate , a cross between underwear and your actual face .
“ This is a moment not only for designers but for the textile industry , ” says David .
“ What are the weave structures ?
Can we design new fabrics ?
” On the whole , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but what if they weren ’ t ?
“ I ’ m still wearing the same mask I wore in medical school , ” says Fields .
“ And literally , in three weeks , the nurses and the lay staff I work with figured out how to create masks that are more comfortable , and in all honesty , more fashionable.
” There ’ s no reason to think the masks we have now are as good as masks could ever get .
“ I ’ ll bet if you have this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” he tells me , “ you ’ re going to hear things that you couldn ’ t even have imagined today.
” Niedenthal , the affective psychologist , is skeptical there is a textile innovation so transformative that it could turn masks , a symbol of mass death , into sunglasses , a symbol of the beach .
A mask “ means there ’ s a problem , ” she tells me .
“ It ’ s not going to be something we do when everything is fine.
” What is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There will still be colds .
Flu season will still come every year .
I hope I never wear a mask again .
I also picture all the droplets from the diagrams .
“ In general , there ’ s a lot of forgetting around epidemics , even when that seems absolutely impossible , ” Lincoln tells me .
Masks faded quickly after 1918 ; we could forget again .
Deihl sees it playing out another way .
We will normalize masks because we have to make reality more bearable .
“ Underlying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to — even when things are wrong — we want to put literally our best face on them , ” she says .
We want masks to mean something different , and so we ’ ll try to make them .
“ That ’ s why I think there ’ s going to be a transition , ” and what was protective will become “ a seasonal accessory.
” David puts it simply : “ Fashion , ” she tells me , “ is good at transforming function into style.
” Every day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

On our daily walk, my small dog barked at a big dog, and I did what I always do: smile meaningfully, in a manner I hope communicates, “She’s friendly!” and, “I’m sorry!” and, “I don’t think that was an appropriate response, either!” but then I realized I was masked. How did the big dog’s companion feel about it? I couldn’t tell. He was also masked. I worried a woman with a poodle was mad at me for allowing my dog to sniff her dog. “You can see it in her eyes!” I told my boyfriend. “No,” he said. “You can’t.”
Masks mean something is wrong; we’re wearing them because things are not okay. For a while, this is all they said, I thought. “Nothing is normal!” I’d think, looking out over the mostly empty streets.
But we are going on three months. The streets sometimes have people in them. Masks still mean something is wrong, but now they’re also just a fact of living, and what was a siren has mellowed into a low unsettling hum. It is very hard to say anything definitive about what the next year or month or week will look like, but by all expert predictions, we can say this: It is almost certain that the future will be masked.
In the first days of the coronavirus pandemic, we were told masks weren’t necessary, maybe even counterproductive, despite the fact that they’d been common in Asia for years. Then a chorus of medical experts began raising alarm bells: Yes, of course we should wear masks, they argued, in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. In early April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) amended its guidelines, recommending that people wear “cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.” In June, the World Health Organization stated that the public should wear masks “on public transport, in shops, or in other confined or crowded environments,” with medical masks preferred for people over age 60 or with preexisting conditions.
So now, with certain high-ranking exceptions and some public consternation, we’re wearing masks, and we will be wearing masks for the foreseeable future. As the economy opens up and we spend more time in public settings, it seems possible that we will only wear more masks, trading the freedom of exposing our full faces for the freedom of rejoining some semblance of the world. Office workers will wear masks. Commuters will wear masks.
Rationally, it should be a small change: Masks, for one thing, aren’t very big. There is a lot we still don’t know about how well masks work and under what circumstances, but there is mounting evidence that even non-medical grade fabric masks help prevent the coronavirus from spreading, which is logical: If the virus spreads mainly through infected droplets, then yes, let’s do our best to contain them before we cough or sneeze or talk them out into the world. So this is what we’re doing now, and if it helps at all, then it’s obviously worth it. I have never especially liked my chin, anyway.
But already, it has changed things. The most jarring changes are not physical, although I liked it better when I spent less time marinating in the heat of my own breath. It is the dog encounter. It is the sense that I don’t have the access to other people that I did before, that everyone I pass is just slightly more removed. (This is exacerbated, probably, by the fact that it is true — 6 feet!)
It isn’t just a feeling. It is, according to Paula Niedenthal, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies emotional processing, simply true. We really do lose information when we’re operating without the benefit of the lower half of our face, she tells me from her home in Madison, where she has been experimenting with her own growing mask collection. Eyes may be the window to the soul, but mouths and chins, it turns out, are also quite useful.
When the lower half of someone’s face is obscured, she explains, we tend to see their emotions as more muted. Happy babies seem less happy if their mouths are obscured by pacifiers. Smiling women are perceived as less smiling when their mouths are covered by veils. This is true, even accounting for cultural biases against niqabs or pacifiers: Without the lower face, we tend to read even strong emotions as muted ones.
We really do lose information when we’re operating without the benefit of the lower half of our face
This does not affect all feelings equally. Fear and anger, for example, are big upper face emotions, Niedenthal says; a mask doesn’t change wide eyes or furrowed brows. But happiness and sadness — lower face emotions — are harder to read.
You can see that someone’s smiling, sort of, but how are they smiling? You don’t really know. “You wouldn’t be able to tell, really, if I was smiling in a polite, affiliative way, or with a smirk of dominance. I could have any number of kinds of smiles going on,” she tells me.
Now, there are new ways to misunderstand each other, and we already had so many good ones before. Facial mimicry is a form of communication, she explains: You smirk at me, I smirk back, you see me mirroring your smirk, confirming that I saw you, and now we have reached an understanding. We are, together, smirking. “That’s what we can’t have with masks,” she says. “If I’m making a smile of dominance, and you’re thinking I’m being affiliative,” then “whatever you’re doing back to me is not what I’m doing to you,” and masks or no masks, “it’s going to be perceived as an error by both of us.”
Presumably, this is an issue everywhere, to some extent. But Niedenthal suspects it may be particularly pronounced in the US. There is a lot of ancestral diversity here, and one result of this is that our social norms are relatively loose, which means it’s hard to know how anybody’s going to react to anything, and we need as many cues as we can get. In countries with low ancestral diversity, “you already know what people are feeling because there’s a prescription for the feeling there.”
But here, mostly, there isn’t, and when we search each other’s faces now, we are often staring into each other’s masks.
“You could imagine people becoming more gestural with their hands”
Luckily, we are nothing if not endlessly adaptive, and there are other ways to communicate, such as with words. I find myself chuckling audibly when I would have smiled before. It does not feel natural yet, but I would say it is increasingly unforced. “You could imagine people becoming more gestural with their hands,” Niedenthal proposes. “It could be we’re going to convey a lot more information with head inclination.” We could just talk more, although this is a somewhat less helpful solution for people who depend on reading lips.
It’s also possible that we’ll get better at reading the parts of other people’s faces that are visible, becoming attuned to minute brow movements we used to overlook. Niedenthal is skeptical. “You could say, hey, try to make more eye contact, but I don’t know how much of a signal is there that we were missing before.”
Riza Khamal has been thinking about all of this for years. A writer and social media strategist originally from the Philippines, she started wearing a niqab when she moved to Canada, intermittently at first, and then all the time. One weird byproduct of the coronavirus, she tells me, is that suddenly she’s not an outlier. “It’s kind of nice on my part, because I can go out and nobody will look down [on] me as [the] strange one,” she laughs. “I am the trend now.” By now, she’s figured out most of the communication issues. “I’ve experimented just out of curiosity,” she tells me. She’d smile at people in public, and if they smiled back, she’d ask them about it. “I would be like, ‘Hi, you smiled at me back then. Why?’ And they’d say, “Because you smiled at me!’”
But then Khamal is, she tells me, an exceptionally smiley person.
It is possible to communicate with our faces covered. Vast swaths of the world have been doing it for years.
In 1910, a respiratory illness called the Manchurian Plague ravaged northeastern China. Most experts were pretty sure the disease was spread by rats, but Wu Lien-teh, the young doctor who’d been put in charge of China’s plague response, had another idea: The disease, he argued, was spread through droplets in the air. This, according to medical anthropologist Christos Lynteris, was “heresy,” but it was also right. In an attempt to keep the disease contained, Wu began turning existing surgical masks into “easy-to-wear protective devices,” mainly for doctors, nurses, and patients.
People were skeptical, until a doctor who’d refused to wear one died. And then, as Lynteris tells it, people changed their minds. The masks — which look more or less like modern surgical masks — became symbols of modernity and reason, and good hygiene, proof that China was “trailblazing ahead of Western medicine.” (The dead doctor had been French.)
It wasn’t until the first wave of the 1918 Spanish flu hit the US, though, that anti-epidemic masking went mainstream, explains Mitsutoshi Horii, a sociology professor at Japan’s Shumei University who is based in the UK. Regular people wore them. Health authorities mandated them. Protesters objected to them, citing their constitutional rights.
And then, for reasons that are somewhat hard to pinpoint, the histories diverge. In the US, mask use fizzled out. In China, as in much of East Asia, masks remained.
Masks were something they could do, a ritual of modern science
Horii, who studies mask use in Japan specifically, says that their widespread acceptance in the country emerged — ironically — amid a major push to westernize Japan in the 1920s. The folk rituals people used to perform, the ones that allowed them some feeling of control over uncontrollable situations — outbreaks of disease, for example — were now banned. “People didn’t know what to do,” Horii says. “They had their own practices that they used to do, but now they’re not allowed to do it.” There was an opening. Masks were something they could do, a ritual of modern science.
It’s not that everyone loved masks immediately: A common theme in medical mask history is that nobody anywhere loves medical masks. “So many people ridiculed mask-wearing in the beginning,” he says. They looked weird. They were a sign of weakness. Why did healthy people need to wear masks? But masks are actionable. “By putting on a mask,” he tells me, “people feel a sense of control over the situation.” And so for the next several decades, masks cycled in and out of favor in Japan, “always there, in the background,” mostly enlisted to help prevent the flu.
And then came SARS, and with it the beginning of modern mask history. The epidemic, which was concentrated in East Asia in 2002 and 2003, “led to the massive adoption of face masks as personal anti-viral protection” in the region, writes Lynteris. Before SARS, anthropologist Judy Yuen-man Siu told the Atlantic, masks were uncommon in Hong Kong, where she is based; now, she says, they’ve been “widely adopted,” both as a medical strategy and a social symbol. When the novel coronavirus broke out, there wasn’t even a question: Yes, masks, of course.
In the US, many of us are still adapting to navigating public life without our chins, and one result of this is that masks have not yet matured into the fabric of American life. It has only been nine weeks since the CDC began advising Americans to wear them.
If it has been an uphill battle to acclimate the country to our new masked life, there is a deep-seated reason for it. “In some countries, the moral significance of masks has been understood to be pro-social,” says Martha Lincoln, a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University, pointing to China and Vietnam as examples. “Whereas in the US, I think we have a sense that wearing a mask is an anti-social gesture.” Masked figures tend to get read not as communitarian, but criminal. “A person wearing a mask may have a nefarious motive, may be an outlaw, may be a member of an anarchist black bloc,” she says. To subordinate your own identity doesn’t make you civically responsible; it means you’re hiding something.
Or, at least, it used to. Now that is changing, but not everywhere, not evenly, and not all at once. As a result, masks themselves have become a form of communicative shorthand. There is, of course, the obvious: As masks have become a “flashpoint in the virus culture wars,” wearing one or not becomes a very visible indicator of what kind of person you think you are. They are a tangible acknowledgment that we are all living amid the same disaster, and we care, and we’re trying. But maybe they could do more?
Clive Fields, a primary care physician and the chief medical officer at VillageMD in Houston, is optimistic that masks could maybe, in their own way, help bring people closer. “I had a plastic surgeon come down here literally an hour ago to show me his new University of Texas face mask,” he tells me. “All of a sudden, instead of being barriers, masks become initiators of conversation because you either have something in common or it’s a friendly common foe.” In the void where sports used to go, we can at least have sports-adjacent masks.
He predicts a future where we’ll all have a small wardrobe of masks we wear for different things: a home mask, a work mask, a looser mask for running. “There’ll be expensive masks and cheap masks, and they’ll be used as status symbols and non-status symbols, and it’ll become part of the way we dress,” Field hypothesizes. “No one thought about the watch as a fashion statement or a status symbol or as a way to convey other types of information,” he says, and now look where we are.
It is hard for me to imagine this future, where masks are as unremarkable as watches. But then, my conception of what is and is not imaginable is changing very quickly.
There is some precedent for this. As Nancy Deihl, head of costume studies at New York University, points out, fashion has repeatedly taken what once seemed inextricable from its initial context and transformed it into an aesthetic choice, directing me to camouflage. “You might have thought camouflage is military or paramilitary. It’s hunting gear. It’s always related to hostility. It’s never going to become fashionable,” she says. Except that, after the first Gulf War, it did. “Now it’s part of fashion print vocabulary.” There is pink camouflage and blue camouflage and camouflage with rainbows.
Originally, sunglasses were utilitarian protective gear, and they are still protective gear, but now they are also so much more. “We have made them into a stylish piece of the wardrobe,” Deihl says. “They’re everything from buy-it-at-the-drugstore, super-cheap street vendor to luxury.”
When she’d first considered the possibility of a masked near-future, Deihl found the prospect grim. “But I’m evolving very rapidly on this. And why shouldn’t you have a nice one? A black one, if you want to wear a dark coat, or one that’s a little bit lighter weight in the summer,” she says. “I think it might become like sunglasses.”
“I think [masks] might become like sunglasses”
In the right light, says Chris Hosmer, whose company Airpop, was making slick, athletic-looking masks for the Chinese market well before the coronavirus crisis, sunglasses seem far-fetched, too. “If sunglasses didn’t exist today and you were going to pitch an investor on sunglasses, you would sound insane,” he told Rose Eveleth at Vox last year. “‘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 have hovered around the edges of fashion for years now, but they have not secured a place in the pantheon of luxury accessories. Alexander McQueen featured (relatively) wearable ones, and Martin Margiela has shown several notably less practical interpretations. In 2014, Chinese designer Yin Peng did a whole “smog couture” collection. They are still so far from being sunglasses.
That doesn’t mean designers aren’t trying. “I see it as the most important accessory of the coming year,” says Lia Kes, a New York City-based sustainable designer whose clothes I can’t afford, but whose masks I could. (Masks, like perfume and also sunglasses, are an entry-level item.) Like the rest of the fashion industry, she started making masks because people she knew needed masks. But now, she says, she can picture a place for masks in our post-pandemic future. “I haven’t completely figured out what it will look like a year from now, but this is my feeling,” she says. “Even after all this, I cannot imagine myself boarding a flight without a mask on.” And for all their many drawbacks, face coverings do afford some arguable benefits. They allow a certain relaxation of beauty standards, for example. They offer a sense of protection from the world, like headphones for your face.
So many of the standard ways we used to signal identity have been tabled. There is no reason to dress up because nobody is going anywhere. We used to express ourselves with our mouths and noses, but now we keep those neatly under wraps. The bold lip is definitively over, as a fashion statement, on account of nobody seeing it. “So what do you do?” asks Alison Matthews David, a fashion historian at Ryerson University in Toronto. “You’ll have to find other ways to be creative with your appearance.”
For example, have you considered masks?
We are only just beginning our collective mask journey. It is a process of discovery. Of all possible garments, masks are singularly intimate, a cross between underwear and your actual face. “This is a moment not only for designers but for the textile industry,” says David. “What are the weave structures? Can we design new fabrics?” On the whole, masks are still hot and miserable, but what if they weren’t?
“I’m still wearing the same mask I wore in medical school,” says Fields. “And literally, in three weeks, the nurses and the lay staff I work with figured out how to create masks that are more comfortable, and in all honesty, more fashionable.” There’s no reason to think the masks we have now are as good as masks could ever get. “I’ll bet if you have this conversation with somebody a year from now,” he tells me, “you’re going to hear things that you couldn’t even have imagined today.”
Niedenthal, the affective psychologist, is skeptical there is a textile innovation so transformative that it could turn masks, a symbol of mass death, into sunglasses, a symbol of the beach. A mask “means there’s a problem,” she tells me. “It’s not going to be something we do when everything is fine.”
What is fine, though, after this? There will still be colds. Flu season will still come every year. I hope I never wear a mask again. I also picture all the droplets from the diagrams. “In general, there’s a lot of forgetting around epidemics, even when that seems absolutely impossible,” Lincoln tells me. Masks faded quickly after 1918; we could forget again.
Deihl sees it playing out another way. We will normalize masks because we have to make reality more bearable. “Underlying so many things is this human need to — even when things are wrong — we want to put literally our best face on them,” she says. We want masks to mean something different, and so we’ll try to make them. “That’s why I think there’s going to be a transition,” and what was protective will become “a seasonal accessory.”
David puts it simply: “Fashion,” she tells me, “is good at transforming function into style.”


vox--2020-06-08--To protest and (refuse to) serve

To protest and (refuse to) serve

On July 4 , 2019 , Tempe , Arizona police officers were outraged .
After entering a local Starbucks in uniform and hanging around with their drinks , a barista came over and asked them to move or leave , saying their uniformed presence was making another customer uncomfortable .
The officers left , but quickly took to social media asking people to “ DUMP STARBUCKS ” as “ making the request at all was offensive.
” In a statement , Starbucks condemned the barista ’ s behavior , saying the officers “ should have been welcomed and treated with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ partners ( employees ) .
” This incident of officers not being treated to their preference is one of many , whether it ’ s a polite request to leave , having the word “ PIG ” written on their coffee cups , or being momentarily ignored in a busy Starbucks ( to which Starbucks admitted in a statement that “ two Riverside deputies were ignored for nearly five minutes ” ) .
In recent years , cops were denied service at an Arby ’ s in Florida , and at a Whataburger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to serve them because she said cops had beaten up her boyfriend .
Each time , the food establishment usually reprimands or fires the employee responsible , and issues some statement about how police deserve our utmost respect .
That law enforcement could be disrespected in public was shocking to many , most of all the officers involved .
We ’ ve all probably been in a restaurant or cafe where a beat cop , gun prominent in its holster , has been given preferential treatment because of their job and the long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protectors .
But police brutality has been an issue for decades , and something about the protests around the killings of George Floyd , Breonna Taylor , and Tony McDade feels different .
Demonstrations against police brutality and anti-black violence have been happening continuously for over a week now , despite curfews , police violence , and groups of vigilantes on “ patrol.
” There ’ s been a palpable shift in public opinion about police , to the point where multiple cities are considering dramatic budget cuts for their police forces — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was killed , a city council member is now outright calling to disband the police entirely .
Understandably , those in the service industry aren ’ t immune from anger towards law enforcement .
And because of that , some restaurant employees are speaking out against serving identifiable police officers , whose presence increasingly make them and their customers feel unsafe .
On Tuesday , employees walked out of work at Condado Tacos , an Ohio-based chain , after being asked to fulfill an order for Ohio Highway Patrol officers in the midst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just didn ’ t feel comfortable making that order , ” one employee told Eater .
They and their coworkers were told that not participating in the order was fine and no one would lose their jobs for choosing not to fulfill it .
However , they recount that a district manager initially said that those who refused to make the meals would be fired , and then “ chased us down and basically made it clear that we ’ re not being fired : If we ’ re choosing to leave , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has inspired other Condado employees to make a public statement against management , demanding they donate to the Minneapolis Freedom Fund and other causes , and the termination of the district manager .
They have not demanded an end to fulfilling all law enforcement orders .
On Wednesday , employees at Philadelphia sandwich shop Di Bruno Bros. also spoke out against serving the police .
A location of Di Bruno Bros. had posted a sign in its boarded-up window earlier in the week offering free lunch and drinks to all on-duty officers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , employees explained that Di Bruno Bros. had also exempted police from wearing masks inside the business , a violation of state rules , and gave them other preferential treatment .
By Thursday , the company apologized and announced it would revoke the free meal policy , saying in a statement , “ We appreciate our employees and community for encouraging dialogue and growth… We recognize that our ability to rely on the assistance of the police to protect our store in times of unrest is a privilege that many in our city @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s not hard to see why food service workers would be reticent to serve uniformed officers , even outside of a week of protests against police brutality .
Studies regularly show that people , especially black people and other people of color , feel less safe in the presence of police .
And given that minority workers make up a disproportionate amount of the food industry , even a uniformed police officer picking up a coffee could easily make an employee worry for their safety .
According to the Federal Civil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illegal for a privately owned place of public accommodation like a hotel or restaurant to refuse service to someone based on their race , color , religion , or national origin .
The ADA prohibits refusal of service based on disability , and the courts are still deciding about sexual orientation and gender identity .
But while Louisiana has passed a law making it a hate crime to target a police officer , refusal of service based on one ’ s profession or outfit is not generally considered discrimination .
However , refusing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also requires the presence of police officers to begin with , something that , for many non-chain or less casual restaurants , is not an issue .
Josey Baker , co-owner of the Mill in San Francisco , says that while no staff member is required to engage in a customer interaction that makes them feel unsafe , “ the reality is that we hardly receive any police officers as customers , ” so a policy of refusing to serve them would be more of a symbolic gesture .
“ We think action @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from people with white privilege , ” he said .
Instead , the Mill is focusing its efforts on donating to bail funds and local organizations doing anti-racist work .
For many restaurants , giving free food and expedited service to police was way to thank them for their service , with the service being understood as an unmitigated good .
But it always had an undercurrent of quid pro quo — take care of them and they ’ ll keep an eye out for you .
An expected gesture given under the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hovering somewhere offstage .
But of course , even that weak promise of being taken care of isn ’ t the case for everyone .
David McAtee , who ran a barbecue stand in Louisville , Kentucky , used to regularly give free food to cops , according to other locals .
He was shot and killed by police on June 1 , after serving food to protesters .
At the very least , the reactions from these food workers might signal a change happening in the mainstream , public perception of police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many feel so unsafe in their mere presence .
That ’ s a tall order , but at least they can pay for their own sandwiches .

On July 4, 2019, Tempe, Arizona police officers were outraged. After entering a local Starbucks in uniform and hanging around with their drinks, a barista came over and asked them to move or leave, saying their uniformed presence was making another customer uncomfortable. The officers left, but quickly took to social media asking people to “DUMP STARBUCKS” as “making the request at all was offensive.” In a statement, Starbucks condemned the barista’s behavior, saying the officers “should have been welcomed and treated with dignity and the utmost respect by our partners (employees).”
This incident of officers not being treated to their preference is one of many, whether it’s a polite request to leave, having the word “PIG” written on their coffee cups, or being momentarily ignored in a busy Starbucks (to which Starbucks admitted in a statement that “two Riverside deputies were ignored for nearly five minutes”). In recent years, cops were denied service at an Arby’s in Florida, and at a Whataburger in Texas, where an employee refused to serve them because she said cops had beaten up her boyfriend. Each time, the food establishment usually reprimands or fires the employee responsible, and issues some statement about how police deserve our utmost respect.
That law enforcement could be disrespected in public was shocking to many, most of all the officers involved. We’ve all probably been in a restaurant or cafe where a beat cop, gun prominent in its holster, has been given preferential treatment because of their job and the long pervasive perception of police as peacekeepers and protectors.
But police brutality has been an issue for decades, and something about the protests around the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade feels different. Demonstrations against police brutality and anti-black violence have been happening continuously for over a week now, despite curfews, police violence, and groups of vigilantes on “patrol.” There’s been a palpable shift in public opinion about police, to the point where multiple cities are considering dramatic budget cuts for their police forces — and in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, a city council member is now outright calling to disband the police entirely. Understandably, those in the service industry aren’t immune from anger towards law enforcement. And because of that, some restaurant employees are speaking out against serving identifiable police officers, whose presence increasingly make them and their customers feel unsafe.
On Tuesday, employees walked out of work at Condado Tacos, an Ohio-based chain, after being asked to fulfill an order for Ohio Highway Patrol officers in the midst of protests. “Immediately, I just didn’t feel comfortable making that order,” one employee told Eater. They and their coworkers were told that not participating in the order was fine and no one would lose their jobs for choosing not to fulfill it. However, they recount that a district manager initially said that those who refused to make the meals would be fired, and then “chased us down and basically made it clear that we’re not being fired: If we’re choosing to leave, you’re quitting.” The incident has inspired other Condado employees to make a public statement against management, demanding they donate to the Minneapolis Freedom Fund and other causes, and the termination of the district manager. They have not demanded an end to fulfilling all law enforcement orders.
The owners of our company have been extremely tone-deaf with the situation and have sent out multiple PR crisis emails. So my entire staff got together and we sent them this. The company is Condado Tacos. The change starts with us and we'll be damned if we stay silent. pic.twitter.com/8f5OwiuPax — sammie (@someaireeuh) June 2, 2020
On Wednesday, employees at Philadelphia sandwich shop Di Bruno Bros. also spoke out against serving the police. A location of Di Bruno Bros. had posted a sign in its boarded-up window earlier in the week offering free lunch and drinks to all on-duty officers. In an open letter condemning the giveaway, employees explained that Di Bruno Bros. had also exempted police from wearing masks inside the business, a violation of state rules, and gave them other preferential treatment. By Thursday, the company apologized and announced it would revoke the free meal policy, saying in a statement, “We appreciate our employees and community for encouraging dialogue and growth… We recognize that our ability to rely on the assistance of the police to protect our store in times of unrest is a privilege that many in our city and country have not been afforded.”
It’s not hard to see why food service workers would be reticent to serve uniformed officers, even outside of a week of protests against police brutality. Studies regularly show that people, especially black people and other people of color, feel less safe in the presence of police. And given that minority workers make up a disproportionate amount of the food industry, even a uniformed police officer picking up a coffee could easily make an employee worry for their safety.
According to the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is illegal for a privately owned place of public accommodation like a hotel or restaurant to refuse service to someone based on their race, color, religion, or national origin. The ADA prohibits refusal of service based on disability, and the courts are still deciding about sexual orientation and gender identity. But while Louisiana has passed a law making it a hate crime to target a police officer, refusal of service based on one’s profession or outfit is not generally considered discrimination.
However, refusing or protesting preferential treatment for police officers also requires the presence of police officers to begin with, something that, for many non-chain or less casual restaurants, is not an issue. Josey Baker, co-owner of the Mill in San Francisco, says that while no staff member is required to engage in a customer interaction that makes them feel unsafe, “the reality is that we hardly receive any police officers as customers,” so a policy of refusing to serve them would be more of a symbolic gesture. “We think action is more effective and necessary, especially from people with white privilege,” he said. Instead, the Mill is focusing its efforts on donating to bail funds and local organizations doing anti-racist work.
For many restaurants, giving free food and expedited service to police was way to thank them for their service, with the service being understood as an unmitigated good. But it always had an undercurrent of quid pro quo — take care of them and they’ll keep an eye out for you. An expected gesture given under the guise of kindness, with a threat hovering somewhere offstage. But of course, even that weak promise of being taken care of isn’t the case for everyone. David McAtee, who ran a barbecue stand in Louisville, Kentucky, used to regularly give free food to cops, according to other locals. He was shot and killed by police on June 1, after serving food to protesters.
At the very least, the reactions from these food workers might signal a change happening in the mainstream, public perception of police, and make police consider why so many feel so unsafe in their mere presence. That’s a tall order, but at least they can pay for their own sandwiches.