Is wearing a mask under the nose a male practice? This is the question posed by a journalist from the “New York Times”, who equates it with “manspreading”, or the habit that men have of spreading their legs a little too much when they are seated.
- Wearing the mask without covering your nose is called “manslipping”
- This practice would be more widespread among men
“Call it manslipping”. In any case, this is how James Gorman, science journalist at the New York Times, calls the way some people wear their mask under their nose. In this case, he points out, often men.
James Gorman explains that he noticed that it was an almost exclusively male practice during the inauguration of Joe Biden. During the ceremony, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, but also Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, were caught in the act, their masks poorly positioned on their faces.
“Experts continually remind us that to protect ourselves and others from coronavirus, a mask must cover our face from the bridge of the nose to below the chin. But too many of us let our masks slip off”, writes the scientific journalist, who compares the fact of wearing your mask incorrectly to manspreading, this tendency that some men have to spread their legs when they are seated in public transport to be comfortable, without worrying about take up all the space. Hence the name that James Gorman finds for wearing his mask badly: manslipping, contraction of “man” (“man”) and “mask slipping” (“mask that falls”).
Manslipping, a discipline for men?
If all men are not affected by the phenomenon of manslipping, James Gorman wonders however: what drives them to defy health recommendations by wearing their mask under their nose? He first wonders if these men have the mask falling off due to a too prominent nose, but quickly disproves this theory. “That can’t be the case because a lot of the doctors are men and the doctors, although they can sit wide in the subway, actually know what viruses do and they get to see what the coronavirus can do. So their natural tendency to breathe in all the air available in a given room is tempered by both the Hippocratic oath and fear of death, and they don’t let their masks slip off.”he wrote.
Could it be that men practicing manslipping cannot breathe properly with their mask on? That’s not it either, since “you can breathe through a mask”affirms James Gorman even if it is not “not as pleasant as breathing without a mask”.
Finally, he argues that men may not know how to wear their mask because they are not treated. But there again, this theory kicks in touch.
So, concludes James Gorman, male manslippers do it just because they are men and have the ability to do it – like spreading their legs a little too wide on the subway.
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