Mask

What is a mask?

A fetish mask (or simply a mask) is a covering of the face, whole or partial. A mask does not close the head off: ears, hair and the back of the head stay free, so it works on one thing, recognizability. In BDSM a mask is worn for anonymity, for a role, or because the material itself is the fetish.

Where the word mask comes from

From theater and mockery. The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands records the Dutch masker in Middle Dutch already as mascher, “covering of the face, disguise”, in the expression in maschre from before 1492. The forms without a final r came in via the French masque (1514), the forms with a final r straight from the Italian maschera (1348-1353). Behind that lies medieval Latin masca, which earlier meant “apparition”, and probably the Arabic masḵara, “buffoon, object of mockery”, from the verb saḵira, “to laugh, to mock”.

Attached to that origin is a detail the dictionary itself names: the branch that has to do with lampblack and soot is said to go back to the fact that buffoons and actors once wore no masks but smeared their faces with soot.

When a mask becomes edgeplay

The moment it covers the breathing opening, and only then. A mask that lies only over the eyes, the cheeks or the forehead is a prop: it takes away recognizability and nothing else. A closed latex mask with no nostrils, or a gas mask whose intake is pinched off, steers the breathing. That is breath control, with the rules that come with it.

People say things behind a mask that they don’t say bare-faced. That is the gain and at the same time the trap, because you also no longer see from someone’s face when it’s enough. So ask it out loud, more often than you’re used to.

Where this fits on this site

Wanting to be anonymous and still wanting to come close is not a contradiction; for many people it is exactly the reason to start here. How I handle discretion and how an evening is prepared, you can read on the BDSM date.

Sources

• masker. Etymologiebank, hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, with the entry from the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Philippa et al., 2003-2009). The national etymological authority for Dutch. Gives the Middle Dutch form mascher “covering of the face, disguise” with the citation in maschre from before 1492, the borrowing of the forms without a final r via French masque (1514) and of the forms with a final r straight from Italian maschera (1348-1353), the tracing to medieval Latin masca “mask”, earlier “apparition”, the probable origin from Arabic masḵara “buffoon, buffoonery, object of mockery” from the verb saḵira “to laugh, to insult, to mock”, and the explanation that the element “lampblack, soot” is said to have to do with the fact that buffoons and actors in the past wore no masks but smeared their faces with soot.
• Mask. Wikipedia. Gives the general description of a mask as an object normally worn on the face, usually for protection, disguise, performance or entertainment, and often used in rituals, plus the finding that masks can also be worn elsewhere on the body for effect.

Related terms

A mask is the lightest object in the family of face coverings, and the only one that still lets you breathe, hear and talk.

• Hood. The heavier neighbor that closes off the whole head, with the panic that comes with it, and the entry where it’s about rubber, PVC and leather.
• Blindfold. The lightest step of all: only sight gone, the rest of the face free.
• Gas mask. The only mask with a filter canister, where the breathing joins in right away.
• Breath control. What a closed-up mask turns into, and why that is a separate conversation.
• Dollification. The roleplay in which a mask replaces the face instead of hiding it.
• Sensory deprivation. Where this family of objects ends up once the goal really is sensory loss.