“Still Don’t Want a Child”: These Face Masks Face Down Lunar New Year Interrogations

Lunar New Year is right around the corner, with the Year of the Ox approaching on February 12. But for many young people, the approach of the New Year doesn’t just mean celebrations, but also getting grilled by elders over their personal lives.

Now, Singaporean design studio WhenIWasFour has come up with a creative solution.

Established in 2009, the brand recently showcased a line of face masks that provide pre-emptive answers to a number of all-too-common questions that young people in Asia often encounter during family gatherings.

“Happy New Year. I still do not want to get married,” reads one mask.

“Happy New Year. I still do not want to have a child,” is emblazoned on another.

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The masks are striking a chord as traditional attitudes toward family and marriage shift with younger demographics. For example, in China an increasing number of young people are expressing attitudes of indifference to marriage and feel exasperated by the pressure to tie the know and have kids from their elders.

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“Asking young adults about their relationship status is a seemingly routine practice amongst the elders in Singaporean families,” WhenIWasFour’s spokesperson Li Ling said in a statement about the masks. “Which is why we wanted to spice up this Chinese New Year for our dear young adults with these masks that they can wear in response to their nosy relatives’ questions.”

“This PERFECT. I would totally wear this, even if gatherings move to Zoom,” one user who plans to order writes on Instagram.

“Having ‘I don’t have a boyfriend’ and ‘I don’t have a girlfriend’ on the same mask is just superb,” writes another fan of the masks on Chinese social media platform Weibo.