These guys think so.
Beyond the beauty of occlusion: medical masks increase facial attractiveness more than other face coverings
The sanitary-mask effect (Miyazaki and Kawahara in Jpn Psychol Res 58(3):261–272, 2016) is the finding that medical face masks prompt an image of disease and thus result in lower ratings of facial attractiveness of the wearer. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, medical masks have been found to increase attractiveness (Patel et al. in Plast Reconstruct Surg Glob Open 8(8), 2020) although this could have been a general effect of occlusion. To further explore this issue, female participants were presented with a series of male faces of low or high attractiveness that were occluded with a medical mask, cloth mask, book or not occluded and asked to rate them on attractiveness. The results show that faces were considered as most attractive when covered by medical masks and significantly more attractive when occluded with cloth masks than when not occluded.
Maybe if the wearer is so unattractive that hiding the face helps (yeah, that would be me). But I think they found something else.
Finally, participants showed high levels of agreement with the statements “Face masks have become part of everyday life in the past year” (M = 4.62, SD = 0.94) and “The use of face masks is effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19” (M = 4.26, SD = 0.89). This meant that investigating correlations of attractiveness differences with mask-wearing attitudes was not possible.
What they really discovered is that people stupid enough to think masks work and everyone should wear them all the time thinks masks make people more attractive. Well, they’re psych types; naturally they can’t see their own findings.
Saw a dentist billboard on the interstate with the obedience muzzle and a stop hiding them and get your chompers fixed.
I do like the Gatsby, Freddy Krueger, Trigger Karen mask that makes it look like you have no mask on but it starts to feel odd after about twenty minutes wearing the virtue signal mask.