Shame and Perceived Fragility:

The Shaping of Privacy Gradients in Women’s Public Restrooms

The public restroom is a curious place, one that reveals the idiosyncrasies of our collective culture. In the modern United States, we take privacy and decency in public bathrooms very seriously. Perceived threats to the status quo, such as the creation of gender-neutral bathrooms, are often met with disproportionate outrage. And yet, enormous gaps between stall divisions and the floor go largely unquestioned, as does the complete lack of divisions between men’s urinals. Women’s restroom lounges, though disused, are still the norm in department stores like Nordstrom and Macy’s. Where (and when) did these privacy conventions come from, and why do they differ across bathrooms designated for men and women?

A look at Victorian era values can answer many of these questions. When public restrooms began appearing in large numbers around the mid-19^th century, Victorian emphasis on decency, modesty, and privacy heavily influenced their design (Alessandra Wood in Yuko, par. 3). Even before restrooms made their debut in the public sphere, men and women were often segregated in public places to protect female virtue. Belief in women’s superior virtue to men predates the Victorian era. Believing in this idealized woman, the culture concluded that her logical place was in the domestic sphere where she could serve as steward of morality for the home and all those who dwelt within it (Kogan, 146). As industrialization restructured society in the first decades of the 19^th century, Victorians were anxious to reassert these traditional values while still allowing for female consumers to participate in the increasingly capitalist economy (Kogan, 146). Victorian architects resolved this quandary by bringing the domestic sphere into the public. Dedicated female spaces in public places were implemented beginning in the 1820s (Kogan in Yuko, par. 9-10). Libraries, theaters, department stores, and other venues housed women’s lounges or parlors separate from those for men (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1. The ladies’ parlor at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. during the week of the 1861 presidential inauguration. Men were presumably allowed in for the special occasion (Yuko, par. 7)

Figure 2. The men’s parlor, reading, and sitting room at the Willard during the week of the 1861 inauguration.

In addition to being distant from men’s parlors, women’s parlors were decorated differently. Designers of the time thought it necessary to mimic domestic interiors in these spaces in order to help women feel comfortable and at home, thereby reinforcing women’s proper domestic role (Wood in Yuko, par. 5). During the first half of the 19^th century, plumbing infrastructure allowed for only single-user public bathrooms, making sex-segregated bathrooms somewhat redundant. Nevertheless, it quickly became convention to place bathrooms inside women’s and men’s lounges, making them sex-segregated by default (Yuko, par. 12). As plumbing infrastructure grew in the 1860s, multi-user restrooms became common. Though architects did away with the men’s lounge at this point, they preserved the women’s lounge as an attachment to the larger bathrooms (Figure 3), believing women to be more fragile and to require a place to rest and recuperate (Yuko, par. 14).

Figure 3. A multi-user women’s restroom and lounge in Detroit circa 1900. Notice the writing table and couch.

Additionally, the restrictive garments women wore at the time required space to remove them hidden from the male gaze (Wood in Yuko, par. 3). Yet, as clothing styles changed, these women’s restroom lounges remained. They became spaces in which to hide the varied female activities that society deemed shameful or indecent. In the early 20^th century, it became acceptable for women to wear makeup, but it was still improper to apply it in public spaces. Thus, women’s restroom lounges were adapted with vanities (Figure 4) so that women could apply makeup in semi-privacy (Yuko, par. 18).

Figure 4. Military servicewomen apply makeup in a restroom lounge in New York during World War II.

Today, women’s lounges are disappearing as many of the traditionally private female activities like breast-feeding and diaper changing move into gender-neutral “family rooms” (Yuko, par. 27). However, some relics of the Victorian era still persist in modern public restrooms. The advent of multi-user public restrooms marked another change besides the disappearance of men’s lounges. With several people using the space at once, it became necessary to establish privacy between users. For men, meant urinals for urination and stalls for defecation, while for women it meant stalls for both urination and defecation. Because stalls offer much more privacy than urinals, this design choice sends a message about which activities by whom require the most privacy (Barcan, 31). Female urination, defecation, and menstruation were deemed indecent by men, who hid them behind stall doors or didn’t provide public accommodations in which they could take place at all (Reed, 121). Concerns about male decency have apparently influenced women’s restroom stall designs as well. Preoccupation with discouraging sexual encounters between men in public restrooms led designers to add this gap so that stall occupancy could be policed; thoughtlessly, they applied this design to women’s stalls as well (Greed, 135).

Though definitions of what is proper are ever-changing, cultural values and stereotypes relating to privacy, decency, and gender roles have influenced public bathroom design from their beginnings to today.

Works Cited

Barcan, Ruth. “Sex Separation: Dirty Spaces: Separation, Concealment, and Shame in the Public Toilet.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 25-41.

Greed, Clara. “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 117-141.

Kogan, Terry S. “Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 141-164.

Yuko, Elizabeth. “The Glamorous, Sexist History of the Women’s Restroom Lounge.” Bloomberg CityLab, Bloomberg L.P., 3 Dec. 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 23 Jan. 2021.

Image Sources

Figure 1

Nast, Thomas. Ladies’ parlor at Willard’s Hotel, Washington. 6 March 1861. Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Figure 2

Nast, Thomas. Gentlemen’s parlor, reading and sitting room at Willard’s Hotel, Washington, during the Inauguration week. 28 Feb. 1861. Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Figure 3

A women’s restroom with a couch and writing table at the E.M. Bigsby showroom in Detroit, circa 1900, Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Figure 4

Wands, Bob. American servicewomen chat and apply makeup in the powder room of a women’s military-services club in New York during World War II. n.d. Associated Press. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.