Face Mask Design Has a Long Way to Go

Summary

The article discusses the challenges faced by individuals with unique ear shapes and hearing aids in finding well-fitting face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

The author describes the difficulty her father, who has a reconstructed ear, and her mother, who uses hearing aids, experience with traditional mask designs. The father's ear lacks a proper helix, causing ear loops to slip, while the mother's hearing aids compete for space behind the ears with mask straps. The author also shares her own struggle with masks that are too large for her family's faces, necessitating modifications to ensure a proper fit. Despite various hacks and the possession of a few well-fitting masks, the author laments the lack of mask designs that accommodate diverse facial features and the slow market response to this need amidst the pandemic.

Opinions

The author's father's ear reconstruction poses a significant challenge for wearing masks with ear loops.
The design of masks with head straps is inadequate for the author's father due to his flat head and thin hair, causing the straps to slip.
The author's mother faces difficulties due to the lack of space for both her hearing aids and mask elastics, leading her to replace thicker straps with thinner ones from disposable masks.
The author is dissatisfied with the fit of masks she purchased, finding them too large and ill-designed for her family's facial structure.
The author has had to modify mask straps to achieve a better fit, although the results are not ideal.
The author values the few N95 masks they have for their proper fit and effectiveness in public spaces.
The author appreciates a reusable cloth mask received from her workplace for its adjustable straps and contoured design, wishing for more of such masks.
The author is skeptical about whether the market will improve mask designs to cater to various needs before a vaccine for COVID-19 becomes widely available.

Will the marketplace of ideas have enough time for significant improvements?

My father has one regular ear and one misshapen ear. It’s not really an ear, but a series of grafts upon grafts that plastic surgeons shaped into something suggestive of an ear after my dad lost it in a burning accident when he was a child.

My dad’s reconstructed ear barely has a helix, the outermost part of the cartilage we can bend and twist any which way. The near absence of this tissue has turned out to be a real inconvenience these days, what with COVID-19 and the need to wear a face mask, a precaution both my parents take very seriously. There’s not enough of a fold between my dad’s ear and head so the elastic slides out.

Masks with straps that wrap around the head would seem like a better option for him. Thing is, the back of my father’s head happens to be quite flat and his hair’s wispy and thin, so the elastics slide down and end up around his neck. Given the design of such masks, when the elastics don’t stay where they’re supposed to, the mask doesn’t cover the mouth and nose properly.

No good solution has been found.

My mother has tried various hacks. The best one has been to connect the elastics that should go around each ear with a third elastic (or detachable bra strap) to go around the back of my father’s neck.

My mom has faced quite a different kind of inconvenience. Her hearing aids wrap around her ears and there’s not enough space for both the aids and the mask elastics unless they’re the thin thin type found on disposable masks. Being the great problem solver she is, my mom has saved said thin elastics and used them to replace the thicker ones from washable masks.

The only masks I’ve bought turned out to be a joke.

It’s possible, I guess, that this particular seller’s masks come in small, medium and large and I didn’t notice. Perhaps my husband, son and I all have tiny faces. Or, it could be that the design is so awful the mask slides down to your chin or barely stays on your nose, but only if your nose is long and pointed like Cyrano de Bergerac's.

I’ve modified the straps by cutting, shortening, and resewing them (and was mighty proud of myself too) so that the mask covers mouth and nose. It’s still so loose around the nose, though, that I only wear it when I have to go in and out of a place so quickly I can hold my breath the entire time.

At home, we do have a few N95 masks that fit the three of us just right. We save them for when we have to be indoors with a good number of people for more than a few minutes. Like when we go to the grocery store.

I also have one good reusable cloth mask I got for free at the school where I work when we had the end-of-year car parade. It has super thin adjustable straps and it’s designed to follow the contour of your face so that there are no gaps from cheek to nose bridge to the other cheek. I take great care of it and am hoping the school district gives each staff at least three more when school starts, if it starts.

I guess this COVID-19 thing was too sudden for the market to catch up to the demand and minimal design requirements quickly enough. Who knows? Perhaps there’ll be a widely available vaccine before we get to buy masks that come in five different sizes and are designed specifically for people with misshapen ears, hearing aids or small faces.