Meet the ‘maskfluencers’ helping to spread the cover-up message
If mandatory face covering is going to work, it needs support from the highest places, says Emily Cronin
So, you’re going to need a mask. The trouble is that wearing one isn’t easy or pleasant. It can feel claustrophobic, anonymising, steamy. The Government waited so long to mandate mask-wearing (they have been compulsory when on public transport and while shopping in Germany since April) that many people remain sceptical of their efficacy, as well as annoyed that they have to wear one at all.
To flip the social norm from not wearing masks to wearing them, the Government will need the soft support of some well-positioned “maskfluencers” – who make mask-wearing look appealing enough to nudge us towards covering up.
The Queen and Sir David Attenborough have been floated as ideal maskfluencers – public figures beyond reproach, who can sway the attitudes of a nation. Just think of what Attenborough did for plastic.
Who else would get the most people to mask up? Celebrities, says Tory
Burch, the American fashion designer who launched a social media campaign encouraging her high-profile friends to post masked selfies. So far, Jennifer Aniston, Kerry Washington and Julianne Moore are among the dozens who have answered Burch’s call to #Wearadamnmask.
In the fashion world, Instagram star Eva Chen is waving the flag for mask-wearing, with daily photos of herself getting ready to leave her New York flat in a stylish mix of streetwear, luxury accessories – and $100 (around £80) Collina Strada masks. Because what better way to make mask-wearing aspirational than to make it out-of-reach expensive? And Sarah Jessica Parker is running her own one-woman mask-marketing campaign, having tied a silk scarf around her face (Amber Heard-style) for photo ops at her new SJP Collection flagship store in New York City. She’s certainly attracted attention; much of it in the form of online jeering rather than cheering.
The problem with celebrities is that they can alienate as big a constituency as they bring on side. And mask-wearing has become a political issue rather than a purely public-health one. Especially in the US, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi matches her many patterned masks to her suits, and where President Donald Trump resisted wearing one (and mocked Democratic rival, Joe Biden, for doing so) until this weekend. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, has become an especially diligent maskwearer, but the response from Trump’s base suggests her efforts have not converted many of the maskaverse.
A truly compelling maskfluencer would be one who could turn around recalcitrant anti-maskers with one wear: which is why a Government adviser’s suggestion that the Queen and Sir David should be encouraged to pose in masks is so spot on.
“I’m surprised how little use has been made of role models,” said Prof Robert West of the Government’s SPI-B behavioural science advisory group.
The Duke of Cambridge and Countess of Wessex have both worn masks for public engagements, and European royals have all gone about their duties with face coverings. So there’s precedent, but none of this mid-level royal maskfluencing could approach the scale of a statement from the very top.
Social psychologists say it takes
Picking up a mask could become as automatic as grabbing your keys, phone and wallet
an average of 66 days (not the often miscited 21) to form a new habit, so most of us are still in the early days of acclimatising ourselves to masks. Only a third of Britons have worn face coverings regularly, compared with as many as three quarters of the citizens of Italy, France and the United States, where governments mandated mask-wearing months ago.
Having the right people wear them in public could be just the nudge. Convince enough of us, and the very British abhorrence of being conspicuous will do the rest – which could make picking up a mask on the way out of the door as automatic as grabbing your keys, phone and wallet.
So please, Your Majesty (and the Duchess of Cambridge, and David Beckham, too), wear a mask. Your country needs you to.