COVID-19 Mask
date: label: date made
content: 2020
label: used date
content: 2020
notes: label: Description
content: On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the COVID-19 outbreak had become a pandemic. In the immediate wake of this declaration, state and local governments issued rudimentary guidelines to parents about how to best protect their children; many schools also closed. On April 3rd , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a formal recommendation that Americans wear face masks on April 3rd. However, they failed to provide any guidance or recommendations regarding children and the use of face masks at that time. In the absence of this guidance, newspapers and the American Academy of Pediatrics noted that for “parents of children who are 6 or under, much of what you decide will depend on where you live, your child’s personality and the places you frequent.”
label: Description
content: Although children were less likely to experience a severe case of COVID-19, many parents did opt to have their children wear masks beginning in the spring of 2020. Seeing a lucrative market for children’s masks, stores, both brick and mortar and online, began creating and selling child-sized masks, many of which used brightly colored fabrics featuring popular cartoon characters. However, production of these items lagged behind demand, causing many crafters and parents to make masks for children during the early to late spring of 2020.
label: Description
content: Typically, crafters turned to newspapers, Youtube videos, craft web sites, and health departments for guidance on making cloth masks for themselves and their family members. Amity Sinclair represents this trend among crafters and parents.
label: Description
content: In the spring of 2020, Sinclair and her spouse, along with their two children, lived in Montrose, CA at the foothills of the Angeles Crest National Forest. At the time, her son was 8 and her daughter was 4. When schools and day care centers in her community closed, Sinclair became concerned about how to best protect her children as they lived in a heavily populated area. Noting that “you could not simply pick up a mask at any retail outlet or order them in child sizes from Amazon,” Sinclair worried that her choice was either to keep her children strictly quarantined or inadvertently expose them to COVID-19.
label: Description
content: Determined to protect her children, she researched mask-making: she deconstructed a disposable mask she had obtained from her work to determine how it was made, researched and studied patterns she found online, and then created her own pattern. Her first mask used left-over fabric from outfits her mother-in-law had made for her daughter and son. The fabrics she used were colorful, fun and drew on children’s cartoon culture. The outfits and accessories such as a hair bow that matched the masks added to the fun. She believed that these colorful masks “took some of the fear out of [the pandemic] for the children.” More importantly, the masks enabled the children to resume some aspects of their normal life; in simple terms, she has said that the mask “was freedom” for the children.
label: Description
content: While parents and crafters took a range of different approaches to mask making, Sinclair’s masks and her experience are representative of a major turning point in responses to COVID-19. Her early response---making masks for her children in March of 2020 as schools and day care centers closed---reveals how some parents began sewing masks even before official recommendations for mask wearing were adopted. By creating her own masks at a time when these were in limited supply, she, like many parents, was attempting to safely free her children from the constraints of the pandemic. By enabling children to resume some semblance of normalcy during the pandemic, masks such as these alleviated many parents’ and children’s fears about COVID-19 during the spring and summer of 2020.
label: Description
content: This mask was created for her son. A shirt made of the same fabric completed the outfit.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: used
content: United States: California, Montrose
label: worn
content: United States: California, Montrose
topic: label: used
content: COVID-19 (Disease)
label: related event
content: COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Amity Sinclair and Skye Sinclair
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2022.0025.02
label: accession number
content: 2022.0025
label: catalog number
content: 2022.0025.02
objectType: label: Object Name
content: face mask
label: Object Name
content: Mask
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: cotton (part: mask material)
label: Physical Description
content: elastic (part: ear loops material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 in x 10 in; 7.62 cm x 25.4 cm