Facemask Porn: Taboo Or Object Of Cultural Obsession?
Hygiene measures Actors in Hollywood wearing masks when kissing a film partner in order to prevent infection by flu viruses,1937 - published by: 'Die Gruene Post' 8/1937, property of Ullstein Bild
Porn is always a tricky subject to write about. What is “taboo” in one culture is bread and butter in another. Pompeii famously had statues of the god Pan having a very intimate jumble with a goat (you can still see one from the 1st century CE for yourself at the Naples National Archaeological Museum). Japanese shunga (春画) art from the Edo period (1600ish-1868) depicting clothed men embracing was highly erotic; nudity was not inherently sexual and sexuality was not as strictly hetero as western pictures of the beast with two backs. And whilst diving in the bushes (oral) is still illegal in the state of Georgia, USA, the Moche people of Peru were memorialising fellatio in ceramic pot form way back in 700 BCE.
In contrast, European erotic art drew heavily from classical Greco-Roman art, focusing on the naked form and a more realistic depiction of people doing the blanket hornpipe than in East Asia. But, inevitably, the Church stepped in and decided that a good old visual how-to guide for people having some amorous congress was sinful and corrupting. This backfired somewhat, and priests quickly found themselves the subjects of the very images they were trying to save their congregations from (the Marquis de Sade’s 1791 novel, Justine, is notorious for its graphic depictions of monks committing sadism and rape).
The Church’s resistance to a bit of visual honking was, unsurprisingly, utterly ineffective. Any trawl through some historical porn (which I highly recommend when you need a bit more sex-positive, body-positive fun in your life) reveals that people have always had fun, kinky, adventurous sex. The Victorians knew all about bondage, pegging, threesomes and spanking, and even made good use of a leopard print rug well before the era of 1970s decor. The Austro-Hungarian artist, Oskar Kokoschka, had a lifesized sex-doll commissioned well back in 1916, and sexting acronyms were as rife as venereal disease in the Second World War (although if your Tinder match asks you to NORWICH because they’re EGYPT, double-check for any double entendres before you agree to anything).
A Victorian Day Out (author’s edits!)
On Pornhub, the last three months have produced 1670 videos with the tag “coronavirus”, 1396 with “Covid”, and 1050 with “quarantine face mask”. Although this explosion might seem like we’re kinkier than ever and obsessed with pushing sexual taboos (or taboobs to coin the term), this particular face mask epidemic is less to do with breaking taboobs, and more to do with a defining object of our current culture.
The emoji of 2020 is a face mask. The must-have fashion accessory is a face mask in every coordinating colour. No one in 2019 could have predicted the 153% rise in the global face mask market, and yet here we are. Face masks are pretty much ubiquitous, whether you want to wear them in the bedroom or just keep them outside. They are more than a fad - they are here to stay - and remembering to take your mask when you leave the house - something that seemed odd, unnecessary, and out of place a few months ago - will be a natural habit. Almost like riding a bike.
In fact, (subtle link) riding a bike is a surprisingly apt comparison when it comes to trends in porn. The 1880s saw the invention of the safety bicycle and, immediately after, bike-themed porn. Riding, straddling, even just sitting, the Victorians couldn’t get enough fat-bottomed girls on their bikes. Bikes also brought a great deal of public health furore, not unlike the endless debates about whether masks are a help or a hindrance (TL:DR they help. Wear a mask.). Where today’s op-eds pontificate on the morality of mask-wearing, Victorian newspapers were full of fear about the potential of bikes to corrupt and damage young women and their “organs of matrimonial necessity”. In the American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, Dr Robert Dickinson wrote:
A very grave objection has been made to the use of the bicycle among women… it has been said to beget or foster the habit of masturbation. … A pupil, who claimed a rather varied experience in sexual pleasures, said that she could not ask a more satisfactory development than could be obtained from the saddle of her bicycle.
A tweet from ‘Whores of Yore’ depicting sex workers during WW2
Despite the uproar, common sense won and it was eventually accepted that women weren’t going for bike rides for “impure purposes”. What bikes did provide, however, was a new means of freedom and independence. The tiny corseted waists and voluminous crinoline skirts that defined the early Victorian silhouette began to be replaced by clothes which actually allowed women to move freely, with some women even *gasp* wearing trousers. Women were more able to move away from traditional social markers of femininity, blazing a trail that never really slowed down.
In a strangely similar way, the wearing of face masks has restored freedoms that we had to sacrifice in the early days of the pandemic lockdown. Lipstick and artfully contoured makeup simply don’t work as social markers of femininity when you wear a mask. The contrast between the mask-wearing Black Lives Matter protestors, defining a generation of protest and anger, and the (largely) white protestors demanding access to haircuts and refusing to wear masks could hardly be starker. Face masks are, like it or not, defining our era in much the same way as bikes defined the late nineteenth century.
With this in mind, it’s pretty clear that face mask porn is, strangely enough, Not Just A Kink Thing. Nor is it particularly taboob - as far as I know, no one is claiming that wearing a mask makes you have an orgasm in public. Pornhub’s empire of internet porn may be violent, sexist and racist, but porn as a vice and a medium is still as ridiculous, beautiful and joyful as the photos of Victorian ladies bending over their bikes. It feels strange to think about face masks becoming a prop in future porn productions set in 2020 but, hey, at least it’s hygienic.
Further resources:
Twitter page Whores of Yore: https://twitter.com/WhoresofYore
‘A Curious History of Sex’ by Kate Lister: https://unbound.com/books/curious-history-of-sex/
The World Museum of Erotic Art: https://ameanet.org/
The Erotica Archives: https://www.deltaofvenus.com/
[Cycling quotes & references from Dr Kate Lister’s A Curious History of Sex (2020), pp.194-200]
