KFC, I read, is temporarily suspending “It’s Finger Lickin’ Good” because the slogan “doesn’t feel quite right” in this time of pandemic. Some of the company’s ads now blur the words “Finger Lickin,’” so that the tagline just reads, “It’s….Good.” “Finger Lickin’” is digitally scrambled as if it were nudity, as if the mere sight of the phrase would provoke outrage or even disgust.

            I’m surprised at how quickly disgust at mouths and nostrils has occupied my body. Seeing nostrils over masks makes my own nostrils flare self-righteously. I bet the people who don’t wear masks are the same people who don’t pick up their dogs’ shit at the dog park.

            I watch a woman at my gym pull her mask down to sneeze, then put it back on her nose. Under my own mask, my own nose wrinkles and my lips curl. All the woman can see are my brows narrowing.

            At the grocery store, the man in front of me takes out his wallet, pulls his mask down, licks his fingers to count out dollar bills, hands them to the cashier, and then pulls his mask back up as he grabs the receipt. The finger-licked cashier reaches for my carrots. Under my mask, my lips press together.

            I am becoming the worst mouth-and-nose prude of all. I gasp at the woman on campus telling us we need to wear masks at all times over our mouths and noses while her own mask slips down dangerously close to nostril level. It’s like watching a woman in a dangerously low-cut neckline, waiting for a tit to fall out.

            At the grocery store, a woman cradling a Starbucks latte takes furtive, uncovered sips. The new breast-feeding in public.

            It’s a new kind of prudery I’m feeling. People could have sex in front of me and I wouldn’t mind, as long as their facial orifices were covered.

            A friend has posted a Facebook meme showing a nose hanging over a mask next to a penis hanging over underwear. Now whenever I see noses I see penises. There’s also a meme with pictures of people with masks under their chin and the caption “Why condoms don’t work.” Noses are the new penises, and COVID the new STD.

            Bend over and show me your bare butthole and I’ll see a budding flower. But bare your lips, those once tender petals, and all I see are microbial breeding grounds.

            Pull your penis out on a Zoom call and I won’t be fazed, but stick your tongue out in the flesh and I’ll gasp.

~

            I know the theories. Moral disgust is culturally created and maintained. The most effective way to “other” a group of people is to associate them with pathogens. It’s easy for us to recognize the moral disgust of earlier eras, which focused on sin and sinners. In modern times, however, as Foucault and others have suggested, health is the new morality. We’ve transferred moral disgust into hygiene. Then we repeatedly enact this disgust until it’s conditioned into our bodies. Disgust is “performative,” Sara Amed argues, because we produce cultural objects of disgust by repeatedly performing that disgust until it becomes corporeal. In this sense, moral disgust itself is infectious—or at least acts that way. By enacting our disgust with “the other,” we create our “we,” our “us.”

            Knowing the theory, however, doesn’t make the disgust go away. It doesn’t dispel my fears, both rational and irrational, or make me rant any less at the maskless.

            This is not to say that the need for masks in order to contain the virus is a hoax. Far from it. But it is to say that I, myself, harbor more than just hygienic concerns in my disgust at those maskless people’s noses, mouth, and tongues. I don’t want to be one of those people masking my political prejudice under health claims, but my disgust is more powerful than my compassion.

~

            Disgust is unpleasant, which is why it works; but, if I’m honest, I also find a psychological comfort and even pleasure in disgust. I hate how self-righteously angry I get when people don’t wear facemasks in public indoors, and how disgusted when they wear a mask but with their nose peeping out over the top. I hate how much I enjoy my self-righteousness.

            I hate it, but I can’t let it go. I see nostrils everywhere, double-barreled virus blowers. I’m not the only one. Many of us can no longer stomach KFC’s pre-pandemic marketing. We’ve gotten so used to masked faces that a bare mouth looks naked. An exposed nose is nasty. In pandemic America, the mouth and nose-holes are now the dirty, taboo orifices. Masks are the new bras, the new underpants. Nostrils hanging over masks are the new plumber’s crack. Cleavage means nothing anymore; nudity means an uncovered mouth actively aerating. Lewd means fingers roaming from the face to public surfaces. Licking is today’s taboo, to be done in private only. Fingers entering inside the mouth is today’s hard-core pornography.