Research shows: Medical Masks Increase Facial Attractiveness
Have you ever wondered how attractive you look to other people while wearing a face mask to help flatten the curve and stop the spread of milder coronavirus variants? As it turns out there are scientifically proven differences as some masks increase facial attractiveness more than others!
Cognitive Research Journal: Beyond the Beauty of Occlusion
The Springer Open Cognitive Research Journal recently published a research article about the attractiveness of wearing face masks. The research shows that the wearing of medical masks makes one more attractive as opposed to other facial coverings such as cloth masks and notebooks.
The sanitary-mask effect is the finding that medical face masks prompt an image of disease and thus result in lower ratings of facial attractiveness of the wearer. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, medical masks have been found to increase attractiveness although this could have been a general effect of occlusion.
To further explore this issue, female participants were presented with a series of male faces of low or high attractiveness that were occluded with a medical mask, cloth mask, book or not occluded and asked to rate them on attractiveness.
The results show that faces were considered as most attractive when covered by medical masks and significantly more attractive when occluded with cloth masks than when not occluded.
Trusting the Science
The reasons why people voluntarily wear face masks vary. Some people actually think they offer protection against virus infection while others are convinced it will help to prevent the spread of the virus to others. However, there are studies that demonstrate masks fail to prevent the spread of viruses during surges, and they may even increase the likelihood of infections and contribute to poor respiratory health.
"Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis"
It's not clear what the scientific and clinical basis for wearing facemasks as protective strategy, given the fact that facemasks restrict breathing, causing hypoxemia and hypercapnia and increase the risk for respiratory complications, self-contamination and exacerbation of existing chronic conditions.
Former Baltimore health commissioner on CNN Live:
Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic. It's not appropriate for Omicron, it was not appropriate for Delta, Alpha, or any of the previous variants either, because we're dealing with something that's airborne.
Why are governments still mandating masks?
Despite the scientific research and health professionals stepping forward, many European countries such as The Netherlands are still requiring people to wear facemasks on pain of a fine. Even though immunologists such as Dr. Ir. Carla Peeters and other medical professionals have come to the conclusion that mask mandates are a failed "behavioral experiment".
@carlapeeters Masks on children is a form of emotional and physical child abuse. That is very clear.
Some people have suggested that the mandated participation in this "behavioral experiment" violates the Nuremberg Code, which is a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation.
But you know what, at least we learned something today. Wearing the medical masks instead of the cloth ones makes us look more attractive. That's always good to know. Unfortunately those same disposable medical masks as shown in the picture are also the type of mask that may contain nano particles and chemical pollutants.
An investigation into the leaching of micro and nano particles and chemical pollutants from disposable face masks - linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0043135421002311
Which do you find more important? Facial attractiveness, or respiratory health?
