Technically the public has only known about Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas for just over three months when they were first seen together in Cuba in March. But they started getting close while working on their film, Deep Water, late in 2019. And they were spotted out on dates in New Orleans in January. So now that we’re officially, today, at the end of the first six months of 2020, we can call it half a year, six months of Ben-Ana.
Amazingly I don’t think we checked in on them once here last week. But they’ve been around. Here’s what we missed: Matt Damon and his family stopped by to hang out with Ben and Ana on the weekend. Ben and Ana also spent time with his kids. And of course there’s been the usual dog walking.
Here they are yesterday out with the dogs and not hiding their affection for each other. At this point they must be used to the photographers. As you can see, they’re in great spirits. Even without their masks on. Here in Toronto more and more people are wearing masks, especially at indoor public spaces, the grocery store, etc, but outside, like if you’re just going to walk the dogs around the block, I don’t see lot of masks. That said, even if a walk around the block with no mask and then straight home is low risk, many have said that especially for Americans, wearing a mask serves another purpose: mask acceptance.
I wrote in the Leonardo DiCaprio post earlier that there’s a COVID-19 truther problem in the US right now with mask refusal being a thing and people having to try to explain that masks are for safety, they’re not a limitation on freedom or on masculinity. As far as I know, we don’t have that problem here in Canada. In most parts of the country, infection rates are levelling off. I live in the slowest part of the country to flatten the curve and, like I said, we don’t have a lot of mask resistance here. Or at least we don’t have videos going viral of Karens losing their sh-t at the grocery store for being asked to wear one. I’m sure there are people here and there who are in denial but for the most part, the messaging has been received and accepted.
So for Ben and Ana, even though their dog walk is probably not a high risk outing, it’s more about the optics and how the images of them in masks can reinforce mask acceptance. They’ve stepped out in masks before, we’ve seen this, so it’s not like they’re frequently mask-free. But this week it’s an especially sensitive and urgent issue. If you’re out there then, mask away!
