THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF
WEARING YOUR FACE MASK
A FOSSIL PRESS LITTLE RED BOOK
THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF
WEARING YOUR FACE MASK
Hey folks, President Elect Joe Biden from Scranton here. As you probably already know, I’ll be asking everyone in America to wear a mask at all times for a hundred days following my installation on January 20, 2021. I’m asking because I really don’t need to order it. I’ll rely on your neighbors and your children to make sure you all comply. LOL. Haha. Anyway, I thought it would be helpful to hear from a selection of ordinary Americans like you and me talking about the benefits of wearing our masks, beyond saving ourselves from almost certain positive test results. Turns out there are many benefits you may not have thought about. So here’s the deal: read this book and share it with your family and friends. And then put your damn mask on and shut the fuck up. Your friendly 46th president, December 5, 2020
We asked ordinary Americans to answer a simple question.
What do you enjoy most about wearing your face mask, beyond the obvious saving of lives, and helping the world to heal, and everyone learning to love one another, and Amazon stock price, and getting rid of Trump, and all those kinds of undeniably good things?
I can skip shaving that difficult part just under my nostrils.
I can avoid blushing at the embarrassing fawning of my countless female admirers whenever I step out into the public square.
I can hide my weak chin, at long last.
I finally have something interesting to discuss every day at the coffee machine.
I can lip-sync my favorite tunes when riding public transportation without anyone noticing.
I can spend my entire makeup budget on the upper half of my face.
I can intimidate my colleagues by threatening to remove my mask whenever I don’t get my way.
We can have group sex and not have to look one another in the face the next morning.
I can pretend I’m the International Man of Mystery.
It puts my natural passiveaggressiveness on steroids.
It lets me call special attention to my magnificent “Hollywood Golden Age” slicked-back hairstyle.
It makes it less painful to watch them eat their stupid cake, fucking peasants!
It finally gives me an excuse to wear my country’s flag on my face!
It ensures I always have Beethoven’s Ode to Joy playing in my head when I’m out among my brethren.
It makes me especially scary to my first graders.
It keeps everyone at a safe distance from me, especially if I emit a high-pitched squeal as I walk by.
It provides a perfect smokescreen of plausible deniability when I contradict the expert medical advice I gave you yesterday.
I can back-seat drive and claim it’s really some invisible person sitting in the back seat, instead of your annoying mother.
It lets me fuck with your mind the way you and I have always enjoyed.
It makes my dull life seem a bit less dull.
It makes me feel like I’m being heroic, even when I’m just standing around, or even just sitting.
It’s fun to pretend we are brain surgeons on our way to the OR, when in fact we are just going for coffee at Starbucks.
A little drop of perfume in the mask makes New York smell like we thought it did when we dreamed about it as teenagers in Gary, Indiana.
It hides the fact that I have been almost constantly gritting my teeth whenever I’m in public view for five long years.
As long as I can text, and show a little bit of cleavage, I’m totally happy. No need to fake smile at anyone anymore.
It let us get him completely off his Ritalin.
I never knew what to do with the leftover scraps of fabric. Now, I start with the mask, and if I run out of fabric, I really don’t seem to care.
If I’m being perfectly honest, I get more aroused when I look into the cameras and tell everyone to shut the fuck up and put on their mask than I ever did by any woman, regardless of how much she may have worshiped me.
About the author Frank Cost is the James E. McGhee Professor of Visual Media in the School of Photography at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has taught a wide variety of courses in the field of visual media for more than three decades. Frank has been photographing professionally since 1975 and has authored both textbooks and experimental photobooks exploring new forms of graphic expression enabled by digital technologies. He can be contacted at frank.cost@rit.edu.
Books that gain value with the passing of time. frank.cost@rit.edu 100 Parkwood Avenue Rochester, NY 14620