This Is Us
I Miss Having a Full Face and I Miss Seeing Yours
Our eyes are tired of communicating, and our pixelated faces are so 2020
I must admit something. I have Covid-19-inspired face lust.
We’ve been watched by the walls of our homes since March 2020 and have seen too few real, in-person faces. It’s all been face porn, watching characters on TV as our pets stare on. “Faces” are not the flat, pixelated images of co-workers on Zoom, nor are they the tiny 2D versions of your parents or friends on FaceTime.
I need faces. The full, fleshy cheeks, eyes, noses, and mouths of loved ones — even strangers—are what I want. If I sound like I’m about to become face promiscuous, it’s because I am.
It’s been over a year since naked faces were in public. We are socially nothing more than a lonely pair of frantic eyeballs when masked in public, smiles unseen while smizing and yelling through fabric or over-gesturing with our arms. Our public sparring partners wildly flailing and eyeball-communicating back. Eye faces with mime arms. That’s what we’ve become.
What’s a wide-eyed gaze without a mouth dropped open? Or a wink without a smirk? From wrinkles to freckles to moles to made-up faces to the face-lifted — our histories are told by the…
