Get Your Tapaboca On
Swine Flu Starts a Trend in Mexico: Face Masks (LA Times)
Newspapers here have carried graphics showing how to turn a piece of scrap cloth into a mask. Some people have tried to add a splash of personality by painting their masks with skeleton faces or colorful butterflies...The tapaboca phenomenon in Mexico has yielded some incongruous images: the motorist with face covered, though alone in his car; the couple aboard a motorcycle, masked but not wearing helmets; sunbathers wearing swimsuits and surgical masks.
Newspaper columnist Juan Villoro said the mask, by revealing only the eyes, added a touch of the exotic to Mexican life. "Those who are not good-looking at least have become mysterious," he quipped in Friday's edition of the Reforma newspaper.
It's telling that this fad has been indulged in Japan for decades.
Newspapers here have carried graphics showing how to turn a piece of scrap cloth into a mask. Some people have tried to add a splash of personality by painting their masks with skeleton faces or colorful butterflies...The tapaboca phenomenon in Mexico has yielded some incongruous images: the motorist with face covered, though alone in his car; the couple aboard a motorcycle, masked but not wearing helmets; sunbathers wearing swimsuits and surgical masks.
Newspaper columnist Juan Villoro said the mask, by revealing only the eyes, added a touch of the exotic to Mexican life. "Those who are not good-looking at least have become mysterious," he quipped in Friday's edition of the Reforma newspaper.
It's telling that this fad has been indulged in Japan for decades.