I don't know, do you think this facemask restricts my personal freedoms?
I know, might be hard to tell. That's the point of Naked Fridays. Let's think outside the masks that society asks us to wear.
I know that many of us have our knickers in a twist over the new requirements that ask that you please wear a facemask in order to enter their establishment. Or even to ask that you wear one if you're just going to engage in public at all. We have thousands of Americans who are on the frontlines risking their lives every day to provide us with the basic necessities to allow our country to function, many of whom have shown up without proper protection and now we have entitled citizens protesting over being asked to wear a piece of fabric over their mouth and nose while in public. I want to say that while I'm the first person to say that I acknowledge that I'm all about personal choice and personal freedoms, I also am a woman who encourages public health and safety. In this particular case, science says that a facemask is helpful to protect us from one another and this unseen virus.
Wearing a mask in public in America, I feel, is going to be similar to wearing a seatbelt and not smoking while we're indoors. Initially, none of us wanted to ever do it. As a child, I never wore a seat belt and have memories of sliding all over the vinyl backseats of our big Ford station wagon as my father purposely took corners a little too fast and my mother was smoking like a chimney sitting next to him, clouds of noxious smoke filling the entire car. Now we all wear a seat belt and the smokers refrain from smoking in places where we all gather together indoors. It's mandated in the public safety laws of every state and none of us would think of putting our child or grandmother into the front seat of a car without strapping them in safely or lighting up and smoking in the middle of a crowded restaurant or grocery store.
Are you going to send your grandmother, or your own mother, or your teenager or your child to the store unmasked? Just to prove a point? Just to say that no one, no one is going to tell you that you have to wear a mask? For the safety of your community? To perhaps save a life?
A vaccine is not imminent. It's important that we make our public places safe for all of us, not just a few of us. We're not helpless, we actually do have far more power than we realize. You are a real participant in making this society functional...right now. If you choose to participate. If you choose.
My mask protects you. Your mask protects me. It's science and it's compliance.
Your life is important enough to me that I will wear my mask even when I choose not to wear anything else at all. That is my promise.
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