Full-facial nudity: the terror of the forgotten mask

Remember distant prehistory, before masks became part of our everyday attire? Around April, it was, when we were being told to be responsible about Covid-19, but nobody quite knew what that meant yet.

There was talk about masks, but the shops weren’t stocking them yet, and this was way before the days when you could pick one up at every second traffic robot.

Then the mask eased its way into our popular consciousness. At first, we felt awkward. The mask felt like a barrier, interrupting our engagement with other people. It muffled our voices. How would we communicate? How would we breathe!

But it proved not to be such a big deal, and soon a mask was part of our usual daily wardrobe, along with a pair of sweatpants, some slops and a baseball cap because we’re just going to the shops quick.

In these paranoid times, our masks provided psychological as well as medical protection. We knew these little cloth items were shielding us from the possibly deadly droplets of our neighbours in the socially distanced supermarket queue, and protecting them from ours.

“I’ll keep my Covid to myself, and you hang onto yours” was the unspoken social contract.

This is a reassuring arrangement, founded in compassion for our fellow citizens. It comes from a place of caring. It also makes us feel safer.

Within a few months, we South Africans had embraced the mask like a national icon. Shweshwe masks, faux silk masks, neoprene masks, masks with valves, sequinned masks… These were like the new South African trademark, like vuvuzelas you could wear on your face.

Today, to be South African is to have a mask on. We began to feel offended by naked faces. Period movies from 2019 were shocking for all the people flagrantly displaying their faces. Even on contemporary television, we looked sceptically at show hosts baring their faces at us. “Are they really entitled to such full-facial nudity?” we grumbled to ourselves.

But sooner or later, the worm turns, and we find ourselves exposed. Perhaps we’re late for an appointment with a lady which may or may not be a date. Some work arrives and we charge out of the house having forgotten our facewear.

We find ourselves en route to a remote, West Rand destination, suddenly realising we have no mask. Surely a beer and burgers venue will insist on a mask. They might not let us in! And arriving without a mask would be a terrible first impression.

We might get mistaken for someone who chooses not to wear a mask!

We screech into the parking lot of a Pick n Pay that hasn’t closed yet, emerging from the Hagenwagen with a face as naked as the day we were born. Sheepishly, furtively, we skirt around to the entrance, averting our gaze.

“Hey! Hey! You can’t go in without a mask!” asserts an officious man brandishing a large sanitiser bottle and a bunch of surface wipes.

This is the catch-22, of course. One can’t get into the shop to buy a mask, without a mask.

And thus we stand, barefaced in the entrance, fielding disapproving glances from masked patrons, ashamed as all hell and totally onboard with the mask project. Just absent minded.

Meanwhile, in Radiokop, a possible date awaits the arrival of her dinner companion. She is not wearing a mask. The place is pretty chilled about masks, as it happens. Things are starting to relax.

Hagen Engler. Picture: Supplied

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