does anyone else remember how obsessed we were with animal masks in the early 2010s? we put them on for parties and concerts (must have been so uncomfortable), we had full on ~artsy~ photoshoots with them, and we literally wore them at weddings. what the actual fuck?
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| I wish I were making this shit up |
aside from this one snarky vice article, I haven't found any other writings that document the animal mask trend or explain why it was suddenly cool to wear a giant panda face on your head. Sadly, that means that I had to use my singular braincell to use and do some brainstorming myself on the matter. After much thought, I've distilled the people who were responsible for popularizing animal masks can be broken down into three categories:
1. Ravers
2. Hipsters
3. Meme lords
Let's dive in, shall we?
RAVERS
Masks have been a part of rave culture since it kicked off in the late 80s for practical reasons (makes it harder to tell who's on drugs) and aesthetic reasons (they look kinda cool). Iconic electronic acts like daft punk were known for always being masked up, so facial coverings weren't exactly new to the scene.
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| screenshot from daft punk's music video for da funk, released in 1997. ahead of its time! |
But, EDM began to really take off in the late 2000s and early '10s with the rise of producers like skrillex, avicii, and deadmau5, who is notable in the context for always wearing a giant fucking mouse helmet.
Plus, songs like Animals by Martin Garrix and About You by xxyyxx really took off during this time and both featured animal masks in their music videos, further popularizing the trend.
All that's to say that more people began attending raves and joining rave culture, so taking edgy party photos while animal masks and uploading them to tumblr became common practice.
HIPSTERS
Animal mask-wearing hipsters fall into two camps: artists who wore them for the sake of ""photography"" and tumblr users who wore them to show how "young, wild, and free" they were. Many of the hipster photographer types were taking pictures inspired by Alice in Wonderland and Where The Wild Things Are, both of which got movie adaptations in 2010 and 2009 respectively. So, creepy anthropomorphic animals were at the forefront of the collective consciousness.
Let's not forget that hipsters were also, uh, doing a lot of cultural appropriation during this era. Wearing native american headdresses was pretty common at raves, festivals, and other hipster locales, going hand in hand with the boho look. Animal masks have been part of indigenous cultures around the globe for thousands of years, so in the same vein, hipsters began to wear them to show how "wild" and "free" they were.
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| a hipster "birthday bathtub bonanza", courtesy of Kimberley Gordon, founder of Wildfox |
MEME LORDS
Animals were the lifeblood of the early internet—there's a reason why sites like icanhascheezburger, and videos like nyan cat rocketed to cyber stardom. Memes with animals were, and always will be, popular, so it's not surprising that animal masks gained popularity as an offshoot of early 2000s internet humor.
According to KnowYourMeme, the use of a horse head mask on the internet picked up in 2009 after it gained popularity on Japanese video-sharing website Nico Nico Douga, then spread to the rest of cyberspace before dying out in the late '10s.
The horse head mask was extremely popular on tumblr, likely for its quirkiness, eventually making its way into more artistic and hipster-y content as seen above. And during a time in which tattooing a mustache on your finger and using bacon soap were the pinnacle of humor, it's easy to see why the horse mask took off like wildfire.
The last possible explanation for the popularity of animal masks may have something to do with the rise of technology. As I mentioned in my owls post, the late 2000s and early 2010s were a time of rapid technological advancement. Within a few years, flip phones were replaced with blackberries and ipods which were replaced with iphones. Just as owls signified a subconscious desire to return to nature, it's possible that wearing animal masks—and emphasizing that, per Vice, is "some kind of tenuous link to how 'we are all animals.'"
Fortunately, when most fads die, they stay dead, so I don't anticipate gen alpha editing tiger faces on their selfies or showing up to the club with a unicorn mask (thank god). but who knows. with a climate crisis on the horizon, maybe there'll be a new, unfortunate fashion trend to show that we are all connected to nature or whatever.
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