Keep the Masks On

The year of COVID-19 has been the year of terrible loss for so many. The stories are a heartbreaking series of losses: of life, of loved ones, of work, of connection and touch, of normalcy. The year of the curse. But we also know that a curse can, in strange and unexpected ways, also be a blessing. In my case, “blessing” may be too strong a word, but the year turned a weakness into a strength.

No, I don’t mean that the COVID-19 antibodies within me have morphed into an uber antibody that protects me from all viruses for all time. Or that in contemplating the implications of COVID-19 I stumbled on the ultimate meaning of life. Or that I intuited that people would be watching more movies at or working from home during society’s shut down and therefore I threw my life savings into Netflix and Zoom stocks at just the right time. It’s nothing that earth shattering. I simply learned that it could be a plus to live in a world with masks.

With a mask on, I look 15 years younger. In fact, everyone who wants to look younger does look younger. Wrinkles, skin splotches, and birth marks all disappear. My wife tells me that I am losing my hearing. With masks on, I can tell someone to speak up because their voice is muffled by their mask, without ever giving away that I am hard of hearing. I have always wanted a more inscrutable face. Without a mask, my thoughts are a dead giveaway, which is one reason I have always been a bankable loser at poker. Now, with a mask on, no one knows my reaction to what they are doing. I now have the ultimate poker face.

I am told that our facial expressions are controlled by 42 different muscles, and they may be capable of more than 10,000 configurations, with 3000 relating to emotions alone. I have a hard time believing those numbers, but that is what the scientists say. I have control over only a few facial emotions—fear, anger, surprise, delight and confusion. By wearing a mask, I conceal my inability to communicate all those emotions scientists tell me I am capable of showing.

Of course, there is also the saving grace of eliminating spittle, one of the more disgusting by-products of face-to-face communication in a maskless society. I am equally spared having to look at some of the worst dentistry imaginable—clearly another benefit of a masked culture. And finally, the one benefit we can all agree upon: throw out the mouthwashes, nasal rinses, anti-bacterial toothpastes, tongue scrappers, dry mouth cocktails and other-over-the counter remedies. Halitosis be gone. While the virus may still get through a mask, bad breath can’t escape. I can’t imagine a better solution.

But for me it goes even further. I labor under an inability to distinguish faces. About fifteen years ago, as I was in transit from Honolulu to Maui, I read a newspaper article about a man who had difficulty distinguishing faces. It was only then I realized that I too suffered from prosopagnosia, or, as it is commonly known, face blindness. It afflicts about 2.5 percent of the population. I often confuse people, even people I know somewhat well. When someone approaches me and starts talking as if we know one another, instead of the blank stare or the ever awkward, “Do I know you?” I will try to ask non-obvious probing questions to figure out who it might be.

Most embarrassing is when I approach someone I think I know and realize, from their startled reaction, that it’s a case of mistaken identity. In other instances I am with a friend when I run into another person who obviously knows me, and I squirm with anxiety in my inability to introduce my friend to this person because I haven’t the foggiest clue who he is. I am also a terrible companion for a movie. I often cannot tell the actors apart from one another. I try to refrain, but seldom succeed, from asking my companion a barrage of questions seeking to know which actor is which as each scene melds into the next.

Don’t get me wrong. This does not mean I lack all ability to tell people apart. If I am quite familiar with a person, I can usually identify them by their appearance. For people who are acquaintances or who I have met a sufficient number of times, I rely on crutches. I might distinguish them by voice, hair color or style, shape of nose or ear, placement of eyes, skin color, body shape, mannerisms, clothing, and other clues. But when it comes to those I have met only once or twice, I am clueless when I happen to meet them again as we have had insufficient contact for me to associate faceless clues with them. Until I read the article about prosopagnosia, I had no idea that I was lacking in the typical ability to distinguish one face from another.

COVID ushered in the era of masks. People everywhere put them on, covering their nose, mouth, chin, cheeks or more than half their face. This great cover-up masked not only our appearances, but also our emotions—you know, those 3000 emotional facial expressions that are now invisible to everyone. Yes, our eyes are still visible and one can still have a clue to appearance and emotions by reading them. St. Jerome knew the power of being able to read eyes when he said, “The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.” But the eyes are an incomplete decoder and a potentially distracting one at that. Eyes can be covered up or distorted by glasses, dust, weak eyelid muscles or makeup.

Let’s face it. Cover the face and most people are adrift in being able to recognize a person or to decode their emotional state or intentions.

That is where my prosopagnosia has become a strength. My impaired face-reading skills have been a huge benefit during the COVID mask-on imperial rule. I am able to identify friends and other acquaintances who now move around us looking like masked bandits. I can intuit by the shape of the head, bodily gestures, skin color, hair color and style, shape of the ears, eyes, tilt of the head, and so on the identity of the person in my field of vision, or, as we now say, in my field of Zoom. I focus not only on the eyes, but changes in skin color on the exposed parts of the cheeks and ears, small movements of the head, non-facial gestures, visible veins, and other clues to detect emotion.

Recently, my wife and I were watching religious services online. Everyone in the audience was wearing a mask. She had a hard time identifying the people she knew. We watched a man help people to their seats. We got into a disagreement over who it was. Finally, I said, “Can’t you tell by his pointed ears that it is him?” She had no idea he had pointed ears. Similarly, when we saw a woman in a white coat, my wife thought it was a friend of hers but could not be certain because the mask obscured her face, and she had a covering over her head. “That is not your friend,” I said with conviction, “it is Michael’s wife.” “How do you know?” my wife asked. “Look at the way her head leans to the left to compensate for her right shoulder that is lifted higher than it should be,” I responded convincingly. I was right. Then there was the masked guy who had recently dyed his hair the color of black shoe polish and wore sunglasses despite being indoors. I had no idea who it was until I saw the elbow patches on his jacket. Can’t fool me.

Various companies sell incredibly accurate facial recognition software. I recently attended a Zoom presentation by a hedge fund business about an Israeli company that markets an AI version that is capable of recognizing faces covered by masks. When a demonstration of their software correctly identified people despite their masks, the would-be investor crowd murmured approvingly. I shrugged my shoulders. I could do that.

Cary Lerman is on the Board of Directors of Sinai Temple, a partner of Munger Tolles & Olson and frequently teaches at law schools in Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan.