NOTICED: FEAR OF CONTAGION

Better sanitise those dirty hands!

Globe & Mail, 19 September 2009

Did you catch the latest? According to a recent study by social scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, the behaviours of our nearest and dearest might be contagious. At least, that’s been the media’s take.

“Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” asked last week’s New York Times Magazine, in scarily chubby letters on its cover – nothing being more terrifying than the notion that there’s something lurking out there that might blimp you up a jeans size. That’s not to mention the lightning bolt it must be for the skinny tall girls who for years, have made sure to surround themselves with short, plump girlfriends as a living, eating (hence flattering) backdrop.

Christakis and Fowler’s finding, that social behaviours such as smoking, alcoholism and obesity tend to cluster in groups, should not be surprising. After all, we are traditionally social animals. People do tend to eat, smoke and drink – together. They also seek out the company of others who are interested in doing the same thing. The discovery, in my admittedly unscientific opinion, is akin to the kind of research that demonstrates the earth-shattering notion that, gasp, our minds and our bodies are linked.

What is more fascinating to me, particularly in this time of H1N1 fear, when we all have to be up on the newest YouTube video that has gone “viral,” is how much we appear to be obsessed with the idea of contagion. And how much we use the language of illness and the fear of contact with others as a design premise in the products we use, and the way we have chosen to live.

There’s Purell on your desk, Purell in the library, in the grocery store and in the halls at school. Have you seen those people with tiny Purell holders attached to their backpacks? Well, no matter the research that indicates washing your hands with plain old soap and water is probably just as effective, or the revelation that hand sanitizers may not eliminate all viruses, sales of anti-microbials such as Purell are up 80 per cent in the past two years, according to the British-based Cosmetic Toiletry and Perfumery Association. Purell has sold out in Mexico and in South Korea with each swine flu announcement. Fear of contagion is such a fashion now that the latest sanitizers have gone boutique: Courtesy of Bath & Bodyworks, you can now buy cute little designer ones with scents like White Citrus, Coconut Lime and Cucumber Melon.

I once caught an episode of The Tyra Banks Show, in which the former supermodel wrinkled her pretty nose at giant projections of the bacteria swimming around in her guests’ makeup bags, while the studio audience screamed, “Ewwww,” in collective delight. Now, thanks to a new product called BeautySoClean developed by a Hollywood makeup artist, all you have to do to keep your blush and eyeliner free of gross-out life forms is to blast them with a quick, refreshing spritz.

Speaking of showers, apparently they aren’t clean enough, either. The story all over the news this week was that about 20 per cent of showerheads may harbour “significant levels” of mycobaterium avium, which has been linked to pulmonary disease. Never mind that those designer vegetable washes have been shown to be no more effective than water from your kitchen faucet, soon we will be showering ourselves with the human equivalent.

In the opinion of celebrity germophobes such as Howie Mandel and Donald Trump, who reputedly refuse to shake hands or touch the down button on an elevator, this world we live in is rife with the possibility of contagion. Given Christakis and Fowler’s notion of behavioural trends as viruses, apparently these extreme paranoids are no longer being seen as borderline crazies, but rather as trendsetters in a coming wave.

After all, we already live and work in hermetically sealed bubbles. There is little gathering over the water cooler, since fewer and fewer of us actually work together in offices. Most of our daily contact with everyone from our co-workers to our bank managers to our families is via the more hygienic e-mail, or over the phone. Our community is virtual: Any buzz that’s happening is safely contained to our screens.

In what now passes for a café, we each sit at our own tables, texting in messages to others who aren’t there in front of us instead of actually talking, which risks an exchange of something gross and human, like spittle. Visiting cities and museums, we are safely plugged into our own personal tours. When we are forced into exposed situations such as public transit or commercial air travel, we seal ourselves off as much as possible with our iPods and our Kindles. Wireless mobility has been sold to us as a way to stay connected, but increasingly we use it as a talismanic protection against the possibility of infection – a wreath of digital garlic with which we can isolate ourselves.

Whether or not our fear stems from the fact that there are more and more of us ewwy, bacteria-breeding life forms on this planet, is it possible that what we fear isn’t only contagion but connection? In short, that what we are really afraid of is ourselves.