Personally, I wouldn't wear anything other than a classic oval mask when I'm snorkelling. I have several of modern manufacture, made in France, Mexico and Ukraine. My two Mexican ovals, manufactured by Escualo Sports in Mexico City, have blue skirts:
so black isn't the only colour when it comes to modern oval masks. Both these masks fit my facial dimensions very well.
When it comes to choosing underwater swimming gear, I firmly believe in the principle of "chacun à son goût", each to his/her own. It's perfectly acceptable for any individual to defend their right to use a particular item of equipment for their own purposes. What is totally unacceptable is for any individual, or group, to criticise others for the equipment choices they have made. That smacks of the "scuba police" we often ridicule within this forum, people who are so self-important, or self-absorbed, that they believe they not only possess the monopoly of wisdom but also the duty to impose that "wisdom" on everybody else.
A while ago I suggested an oval mask as a possible option for a poster's boyfriend who wanted a mask with a rubber, not a silicone, skirt. When I posted a picture of a modern oval mask, she pronounced the design to be "horrible". She was perfectly within her rights to think so, just as I am equally within my rights to compare the appearance of modern low-volume clear silicone skirted masks to the image of the eyes of a fly magnified many times. Like my French hero Voltaire, I will defend to the death the lady's right to be horrified by traditional oval masks. By the same token, however, and in keeping with Voltaire's qualifying remarks, I will continue to disagree profoundly with her opinion about oval masks. Ugliness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
