Masks no longer needed in schools, but some New York students feel anxious about showing their face

NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - Student Tanushri Sundaram, 17, thinks everyone at her school is a bit of a "mask fisher", or someone who uses facial coverings to cover up what they really look like.

She said: "When you have a mask on, you only get to see the forehead, the eyes, and when you're only seeing that, you just kind of have an image in your head of what someone's supposed to look like. So when you take that mask off, it's like a new person you're looking at."

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, face masks had become reliable shields for Tanushri and her classmates in New York City. In addition to protecting against the spread of Covid-19, they had obscured all kinds of transformations teenagers may feel inclined to hide: braces, pimples, acne scars, the first growths of facial hair.

Now that the city has ended its mask mandate for public schools, students are dealing with old anxieties about appearance and the pressure to fit in. And as they get a closer look at each other's faces, they are finding out who among them has been mask fishing.

The term is a play on "catfishing", the slang for misrepresenting one's identity online. For a generation that has grown up with smartphones and Instagram, it is an apt reference.

"Some of these people really haven't seen my face outside of social media and things like that," Damia Whyte, 17, said. "What I post on social media is a little bit different than what I look like on a day-to-day basis."

Said Jasper, 15: "The only people I really know that I've seen without their mask on are people I see outside of school and people I see either when they're eating.

"So the majority of the people in my classes that I don't see outside of school or stuff like that, I don't know what they look like without their mask."

The slang term, one of many that emerged during the pandemic to describe new social dynamics, took off on TikTok last year. Of the nearly 40 New York City public school students interviewed for this article, several expressed doubt that it was more than an Internet gag.

"Some of my peers believe a lot of people are trying to mask fish and hide their face with their mask, but I don't think that's really a very common thing," Mr Marc Duggan, 18, said. "I feel like the vast majority of people wear masks because they feel they're supposed to or because they want to take precautions from Covid."

Mr Russell Silverman, 18, said that some people just have got so use to it that he guessed they did not want to show their face. "And some people still think Covid is a big problem in the school and they're just taking the necessary precautions," he added.

Other students, such as Clementine Elorriaga, 17, are not worried about mask fishing as their priority is being safe from Covid-19. She herself has become known around school for embracing the mask as a fashion accessory.

"I colour-coordinate my outfits with my masks," Clementine said. "So with the K95, I have the blue one, I have dark light blue, dark blue, a pink, a red and then I also have the black."

For Ebenezer Hagan, 14, the only thing for him would probably be chapped lips. But the idea of revealing his face to his classmates did not seem to bother him much.

"I do care a little bit, but it's not one of my main concerns," Ebenezer said. "People obviously have opinions regardless of what you do, so you can see my face however you want."