Forget used panties. The latest fetish in Japan is used face masks
It was surely inevitable.
We all know that used panties is an infamous and genuine fetish in Japan (and elsewhere, of course), whose needs are served by various products sold by major companies as well as individuals hoping to make a quick yen.
Face masks were already a big part of people’s lives in Japan even pre-pandemic, especially during flu or pollen allergy seasons. But now they are almost part of our daily uniform and one that is unlikely to go away any time soon.
This has cultivated a new strain of fetish, it seems: used face masks, especially those worn by attractive women.
As was proved by the pandemic, face masks can really accentuate beauty and make a woman look more attractive (a debate, incidentally, already raging before COVID arrived).
It’s surely unsurprising, then, that there is a demand for such face masks worn by young women, perhaps particularly schoolgirls. Hygiene be damned when it comes to satisfying a fetish!
Young Japanese women are selling their used masks on social media for as little as ¥500 per mask.
The tabloid News Post Seven recently spoke to one, a 17-year-old second grader at a Tokyo high school, who says she has not told her parents. She claims to earn about ¥10,000 a month in this way. She first heard about the market from a friend and, because her school forbids her from having a part-time job, she decided to make money this way. She sells them on the popular Japanese e-commerce site Mercari, which costs nothing to use.
News Post Seven even managed to find a housewife who sells the masks her daughter used. The 34-year-old says that the masks of a woman her age almost never sell, but there’s a demand for elementary school student’s used masks. “I have permission from my husband,” she claims.
Similar articles on the new social phenomenon appeared in Shukan Josei Prime and SPA! in February.
Selling the used clothing and underwear of a minor is a punishable offense under a local government ordinance, but masks are apparently a loophole not covered by legislation. (Though what about if the masks were used as underwear? This is, as regular readers know, a thing: face masks can become both a bra or panties.)
The adult industry has responded to the way that face masks have become an ingrained part of our lives during the pandemic with its usual originality and novel sense of humor.
It has produced such items as a whole lingerie set made of face masks, a scent spray inspired by the smell of a worn mask, face masks in special fetish designs (from BDSM open-mouth gag and ring gag to a Nezuko-inspired bamboo gag, schoolgirl bloomers, schoolgirl sailor uniform, and even ahegao sex face), and regular face masks sold in a set with special scent sprays (like the smell of a schoolgirl’s body or scent of a schoolgirl’s shampoo).
