These surprisingly relevant vintage ads show how officials tried to convince people to wear masks after many refused during the 1918 flu pandemic
- Mask-wearing was enforced during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, but many refused, citing the government mandates as threats to their civil liberties.
- Men needed more convincing to wear masks than did women.
- Men didn't practice proper personal hygiene and also thought wearing masks was too feminine, so public health officials set forth to rebrand personal hygiene as a display of red-blooded patriotism.
- Men and boys were primarily depicted in public health advertisements and cartoons during the 1918 pandemic when the Spanish flu swept the nation.
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As the Spanish flu swept through the US in 1918 and 1919, face masks became ubiquitous to help in preventing the spread of the disease, much as they have today during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, many refused to wear them in 1918, saying that government-mandated mask enforcement violated their civil liberties. An "Anti-Mask League" was even formed in San Francisco to protest the legislation.
But men, it turns out, needed more convincing than did women to heed the advice of public health officials.
Some men associated masks with femininity, and behaviors like spitting, careless coughing, and otherwise dismissal of hygiene made men the "weak links in hygienic discipline" during the 1918 pandemic, according to a 2010 report published in the US National Library of Medicine. So public health leaders rebranded personal care as a display of patriotism and duty to incentivize men to wear masks.
"The influenza pandemic offered a teaching moment in which masculine resistance to hygiene rules associated with mothers, schoolmarms, and Sunday school teachers could be replaced with a more modern, manly form of public health, steeped in discipline, patriotism, and personal responsibility," reads the report.
It's yet another instance of history rhyming. Fast forward to the present-day coronavirus pandemic and anti-lockdown protests dot the US, with many — men and women — refusing to wear masks and citing their civil liberties as a reason for defying public health orders.
Many of the adverts and public health messaging during the 1918 pandemic encouraging the public to practice good hygiene depicted men and young boys. Here's what some of them looked like.
Read the original article on Business InsiderPeople want to wear something that fits their personal identity, as The Atlantic reports.
Men's grooming company Old Spice — founded in 1938 — has long embraced a masculine approach to its marketing.
Men were seen as weak points in disease control due to lack of hygiene, and recent studies have shown that men still tend to be more careless.
As for the effectiveness of wearing gauze masks during the 1918 pandemic, experts debated if they even helped in combatting the spread of influenza.
Others were more lighthearted, like a cartoon depicting an interaction between two boys, with one proudly brandishing a "hankachif" made for him by his mother.
One Oregon newspaper clip reads: "We appeal to your civil patriotism to co-operate with us in our effort to stamp out the Spanish Influenza or "Flu" Plague in Portland by wearing a mask."
Men and boys were also seen as the "weak links in hygienic discipline" during the interwar period of 1918 through the 1930s, according to the report.
But it's also likely that men saw masks as a threat to their masculinity, associating the gauze with passive motherly figures and the like.
Men were also shown in ads calling for an end to spitting, which made it easier for the disease to be transmitted.
The Spanish flu outbreak coincided with World War l. Male soldiers returning home from Europe dispersed to their home states and stations, spreading the disease in the process.
One precaution taken to quell its spread through the US was enforcing mask-wearing, or at least covering the mouth with handkerchiefs to prevent the disease from being transmitted.
The Spanish flu of 1918 was one of the worst pandemics in history, eventually killing 50 million people worldwide.
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