The Biggest Anti-Maskers Are Attractive People

Although masks were highly politicized during most of the pandemic, nowadays you don’t have to lean right to hate wearing them — you just have to be really, really, really ridiculously good looking. To that end, new research reveals that people are less likely to wear masks when they perceive themselves to be attractive, because they don’t want their face covering to cover up their stunning features. 

Through a series of three studies of 1,030 people total, scientists asked participants to evaluate how attractive they thought they were, and then rate how likely they were to wear a mask in two hypothetical scenarios: 1) a job interview; and 2) walking a dog. The results indicated that the more attractive a person thought they were, the less likely they were to want to wear a mask during a job interview. 

Many hot participants also admitted that the mask would get in the way of their good looks, or were “less likely to endorse the belief that mask-wearing enhances their perceived attractiveness,” study authors wrote. “Our findings suggest that mask-wearing can shift from being a self-protection measure during the COVID-19 pandemic to a self-presentation tactic in the post-pandemic era.”

The good news for anti-maskers is that there’s also evidence that attractive people have stronger immune systems. So as long as their perception of their stunning features is accurate, they will probably remain unscathed by their public health habits. But since good looks aren’t as contagious as airborne illnesses, everyone else should mask up.