Item

2020 Grocery Store Fashion

Title (Dublin Core)

2020 Grocery Store Fashion

Description (Dublin Core)

“This morning’s grocery store fashion,” I wrote on April 10, 2020 when I posted this photo to Instagram. I tagged #socialdistancing #maskedcrusader and #newyorktough. This was the first time I wore a mask when I left the house and it was one of only a few times I’d gone farther than my backyard or front stoop since lockdown began the month prior. I had been listening to public health officials who advised wearing “face coverings” to help “flatten the curve” (reduce the number of new infections to prevent overcrowding in hospitals). I also followed their advice to opt for cloth and save the real masks for health care workers on the “front lines” of the pandemic who were facing a shortage of “PPE - personal protective equipment.” So many new words and phrases had entered the lexicon and I was struggling to keep up. Masking felt like a way I could protect myself and family and contribute to the effort to squash Covid-19. I found a video tutorial for how to make a “no sew” mask using a bandana folded over hair ties for ear loops. I added a coffee filter in the middle of the folds for good measure. I used this type of mask into the summer of 2020 when I realized masks weren’t going away anytime soon and started wearing more fitted cloth versions. I remember masking felt strange and changed the way I interacted with people I passed who couldn’t see my customary polite smile of acknowledgment. I started nodding slightly and learned to squint my eyes to indicate a smile when I passed people to make up for this impediment. Masking made it difficult to be heard and understood especially through other precautionary barriers like plexiglass shields at checkout counters. These days when I encounter people I first met when masking was more widespread, I sometimes don’t recognize them because I’ve never seen the bottom half of their face. It’s a bizarre set of circumstances. Now I usually only mask if I have respiratory symptoms or if I am around someone particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. When I do mask, I choose an N-95 respirator which is readily available and more effective than my cloth mask and coffee filter creation of April 2020.

Date (Dublin Core)

April 10, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

self

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Gabriella Leone

Type (Dublin Core)

Photograph

Link (Bibliographic Ontology)

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Biography
English Public Health & Hospitals
English Social Media (including Memes)
English Clothing & Accessories
English Health & Wellness

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

mask
Instagram
grocery store
barrier
DIY
lockdown
New York

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

mask
New York
Staten Island
resilience
care
ppe
adaptation
precautions
protection
social
distance
isolation

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

02/27/2023

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

03/13/2023

Date Created (Dublin Core)

04/10/2020

Item sets

This item was submitted on February 27, 2023 by Gabriella Leone using the form “Share Your Lockdown Staten Island Story” on the site “Lockdown Staten Island”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/lockdown-staten-island

Click here to view the collected data.

New Tags

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