Public toilets and the plight of menstruating women

Feb 2, 2021 | Description (G) | 11 comments

Figure 1. Girls and women menstruate – period.

At any given time, fully one-quarter of the global population of adult women are menstruating (Schmitt et al.) (fig. 1) This is a significant number, a number that seemingly is not worthy of consideration in the realm of public toilet design. This paper will address public toilets and the unique needs of menstruating women through the lens of the Western world, primarily the UK and the US, exploring specifically the cultural and historical bias against such consideration.

It is argued that the reason for this egregious oversight is due to the prominent male dominance prevalent in the water and sanitation engineering fields (fig. 2), the very people who steer the conversation around toilet design. (Schmitt et al.) Put another way, “toilet design remains deeply, if not invisibly, shaped by masculinist conventions.” (Gershenson and Penner) Conventions so pervasive that even women who are in these professions, and who are menstruating, may turn a blind eye to women’s unique toilet needs. (Schmitt et al.) I concur with these assertions, but my curiosity goes deeper to unveil the cultural reasons behind such conventions, specifically regarding menstruation, and why there is such resistance to standardize reasonable accommodations.

Historically, this premise is rooted in the social norms that were present in the mid-19^th century (fig.3), the time when private, gendered public toilets were first introduced to civilized society. In this case, “gendered” refers primarily to men, as public toilets for women were generally not built until much later and, in some instances, with significant effort and activism around the turn of the 20^th century. (Gershenson and Penner) As we still experience to some degree in our modern-day culture, the social expectations of 19^th century women were highly bifurcated from those of men, primarily resulting from their integral role of bearing and caring for children, and any acknowledgement of a woman’s biology was to remain obscured.

Figure 2. New York Dept. of Sanitation, comprised of men only.

Figure 3. John Singer Sargent sketch, Mother and Child, c. 1872

Figure 4. Men restricting access to women.

According to scholar Clara Greed, public toilets for women were intentionally nonexistent in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as a means of controlling their movement (fig. 4), literally to keep them at home so that the desired separation (and elitism) could be maintained between women’s domain and men’s (Greed): the City was the men’s domain, a world of esoteric privilege and power, and the common theme was that of accommodating and glorifying them. Women had their place, and they were to conform with the notions surrounding that place. Creating a public toilet for women in the “city of man” (Greed) would not only threaten that core vision, it would also cast nefarious shadows on any woman daring to be out in public, distorting her image to that of a “public woman”, an undesirable (Gershenson and Penner). Adding in the complication and cultural embarrassment of a woman’s unique sanitation needs around menstruation, this notion of separate domains was reinforced; with little or no provisions in the City, women were more often forced to stay home during their menses.

This attitude prevailed in the 20^th century, even as women became more liberated and engaged as an integral part of the workforce. Public toilet policy and design continued to perpetuate the outdated precepts of the past. Design of underground public toilets found in UK cities was based on the “perceived needs of a healthy young male (with narrow hips).” (Greed) As recently as 1992, there was no women’s bathroom on the same floor as the US Senate, forcing women senators to use the same facilities as tourists on a lower floor (fig. 5), which inherently resulted in two meaningful consequences: 1) the possibility of missing a vote in the event of absence due to a woman’s biological need, and 2) the conveyance of the insidious message that women don’t belong in the Senate, that men are the “rightful occupant”. (Gershenson and Penner)

Figure 5. No equitable bathroom for women senators.

Figure. 6. #Bleed with dignity.

Gendered public toilets, then, have become one of the many platforms for social justice, where change is both needed in the design approach to ensure the safety and dignity of menstruating women and in the cultural subconscious whereby the images associated with women’s unique biological needs are no longer shunned and expected to remain hidden, but to be acknowledged as a basic human right. (fig. 6) However, this may well be a continued uphill battle. As so astutely noted by scholars Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner:

“Changes to the existing toilet arrangements are explosive because they recognize, accommodate, and hence, legitimate the presence of a social group who customarily ‘make do’ and remain invisible at the level of representation.” (Gershenson and Penner)

Bibliography

Gershenson, Olga, and Barbara Penner, editors. Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender. Temple University Press, 2009.

Greed, Clara. “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, New York University Press, 2010, pp. 117–44.

Schmitt, Margaret, et al. “Making the Case for a Female-Friendly Toilet.” Water, vol. 10, no. 9,

Image Sources

https://scroll.in/article/953924/girls-and-women-menstruate-period

https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/department-of-sanitation/

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Singer_Sargent,_Mother_and_Child_(recto),_c._1871-1872,_NGA_184310.jpg

Woman Suffrage

https://apnews.com/article/75c30a61b58d43d790e7faddc0f98ef2/gallery/media:f2609fc9babf4e4788a3620fb1a30814

Digital Visualization and Description

Feb 1, 2021 | Description (G), Graduate | 4 comments

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.

Equal is not quite enough

Feb 1, 2021 | Description (G), Graduate, Research | 6 comments

The public toilet has become a common space in the built environment. Whether it is a luxurious retreat in a hip restaurant, or a dingy wet room outside of the gas station, many public toilets are separated into a women’s and a men’s room. This paper seeks to reveal the story of the public restroom in modern history and how it came to be separated by sex. The implications of this separation are attributed to the design of the public toilet room. The role of the architect may be considered significant in the social realm of the public toilet (Mokdad).

The modern toilet came to be in 1851 at the Great Exhibition in England after the Society of Arts began to emphasize the need of sewers in the London. They felt the need to keep up with the standard visitors had become accustomed to and wanted to create a feeling of comfort. London was rivaling Paris, which already had cabinets and public urinals. When pressuring the sewer company did not work, the facilities engineer for the Crystal Palace was put in charge of the integrated water closets. These water closets proved successful and remained well kept through the many visitors. The convivence of these public toilets was effective but did not remain in London. Accustomed to their private lifestyle of water closets, the community minded approach of public restrooms remained at bay for a few more years when the sewer system was built (Penner).

While the sewer system and the convenience of bathrooms grew, so did the disparities. The poorer parts of town often were overlooked or the fees to install the sewers were too much. Local governments opposed building public women’s bathrooms which ended up with less women rooms than men (Penner). In the midst of it all, London created the gendered spaces that are public toilets. This moment in time was largely due to the professions creating these spaces-architects and engineers-who were all males. The initial design of the toilet catered to the male body and little consideration was made for the female needs. Women were made to pay for their time at the public restroom, while men went for free. Not to mention, almost all of the designs of this time were inaccessible to any person with a special need. The humble beginnings of the public toilet came with the price of inequality and poor design for all people (Ramster).

In the midst of the design of public toilets that give some privacy, public urinals were still an active part of street life. Open, on street urinals, however, were only accessible to able bodied men. Women once again were left out and left behind in the history of public bathrooms. When studying toilet design, history tends to exclude women. Gender has played a major role in the design of toilets and the culture surrounding them. The standard stall size for men forgets the need to sit down, the need for toilet paper, the space for a sanitary disposal bin. The design of the public stall leaves no room for these necessities of those who menstruate. The lack of the public restrooms for women and the time spent waiting to use them, can run the risks of bleeding through clothing or experiencing toxic shock syndrome if they cannot change a product in time. In the diagrams shown, equal is still not enough. Public restrooms need to double for women in order to be equal to male counterparts. (Ramster).

Throughout modern history, the access to and the design of public restrooms has been inadequate for women. The design decision to have modular stalls based off of the male body has not proven effective for the women who need public restrooms. Architects have continued to fall into the outdated patterns of 19^th century public water closets without thinking twice about it. Although ADA compliance has forced the hand of accessible design, public restroom design has not adapted to fit the needs of women.

The history of public restroom design and its impact of gender.

Bibliography

Ramster, Gail, Greed, Clara, and Bichard, Jo-Anne. “How Inclusion Can Exclude: The Case of Public Toilet Provision for Women.” Built Environment (London. 1978) 44.1 (2018): 52-76. Web.

Penner, Barbara. Bathroom, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.uoregon.edu/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=1707062.

Mokdad, Allaa. “Public Toilets: The Implications in/for Architecture.” Michigan Academician, vol. 46, no. 1, 2019, p. 91. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A605249260/AONE?u=euge94201&sid=AONE&xid=a3e424a6. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Divided We Sit: America’s Long History of Inequality in Restrooms

Feb 1, 2021 | Description (G), Graduate, Research | 3 comments

Divided We Sit: America’s Long History of Inequality in Restrooms

How bathrooms are a metaphor for societal standards and social status

Restrooms act as a magnifying glass into the values of a culture. In anthropology, one might say that as the existing roman baths are a look into the lives of the romans, and similarly we could argue that the same truths lay evident in the architecture found in our bathrooms today. Searching for prominent truths about the values of a culture also raises the question of what is de-valued. Certainly, we could assess what groups are considered socially acceptable and what groups are not as it relates to minorities and discrimination through the architecture of bathrooms in modern history. For this reason, we will examine recent history to bring about questions of equality today. As we start to identify periods of time that allowed for outright discrimination against minority groups, likely the most prominent in our minds would be the Jim Crow era of the late 19^thand early 20^thcentury.

Discrimination was so blatant in the civil right crisis of the early 1900’s that it became the paradigm of segregation, specifically in bathrooms. During this era, it was mandated that based on skin color, public facilities would need to be “separate but equal.” It is a well-accepted fact that the bathrooms provided were in no way equal, but they certainly were separate. Before we examine the architecture behind the discrimination, first we must question the causality. Inherently, making the restrooms separate was just one more way to explain what society had made clear everywhere else: the races were not seen as equal in the social setting. Therefore, those values were to be represented everywhere: using the bathroom as an archetype of the societal stance on race. In “Restroom Restrictions: How race and sexuality have affected bathroom legislation,” Tynseli Spence-Mitchell explains: “On the surface level, African American women and white women were prohibited from using the restroom together because of what it would represent: their integration starkly symbolized social equality” (Spence-Mitchell). Spence-Mitchell asserts that most people assume when discussing racially segregated restrooms that there was a white men’s, white women’s, ‘colored’ men, and ‘colored’ women’s restroom. That assumption is incorrect. It was actually far more common to have just one unisex ‘colored’ restroom, while white users were offered privacy in the form of gendered separation. An example of a restroom that would be commonplace in the given time period is shown in the image below. The architecture was screaming out to the occupants that there were two socially accepted groups, white males and females, while people of color were made to feel non-human. In this setting, separation was added in, as well as taken away, and sends the message that people of color were not welcome.

Black and white image above depicts three doors: “ladies” “men” and “colored.”

We would like to assume that the blatant bathroom barriers presented for people of color in the late 20^thcentury have been lifted, but is that truly the case? Can we assume that the architecture present in public bathrooms today promotes equality among races? In order to understand the accessibility of public restrooms based on outward appearance alone, we shall choose a bathroom archetype for comparison of basic scenarios. I propose to select a public setting that is commonplace, known to have available restrooms and would be found in diverse areas: Starbucks. As the primary example of coffeehouses in America and all that we represent, we should be able to examine the Starbucks restroom structure as an example for many other settings that offer small restrooms to the public.

Barbara Penner, in “The Inclusive Bathroom” states that “an inclusive bathroom is a space that does not exclude particular groups either by design or by law: rather, it positively promotes mobility and well-being.” If we are to use Starbucks as the model for accessible public restrooms, then by no means could we say that these bathrooms are inclusive. In the 2018 article, “America’s problems with race start and end at your Starbucks bathroom,” published by the Chicago Tribune, the author details an experience that two African-American men had at a Philadelphia Starbucks. “Before police officers escorted the two black men out of the Philadelphia Starbucks in handcuffs, at least one of them had asked to use the restroom. The manager said no, reportedly because the men had not ordered anything. And if they stayed without at least a cup on their table, it was considered trespassing.” As an international coffee chain, Starbucks says that they have no policy regarding restrictive use of the bathrooms to paying customers. Rather, it was up to the discretion of the staff.

Image above depicts three women holding signs protesting against Starbucks following their refusal to allow a black man to use their restroom and later called police

It is not unreasonable to question whether or not bathroom access would have been granted, or at the very least, police would not have been called if the requesting patron was Caucasian. The article later goes on to explain another case of bathroom discrimination at a Los Angles Starbucks in which a white customer was granted door code access to the restroom while an African-American man was denied. There is even a video recording of the white man acknowledging that he was not required to make a purchase prior to using the restroom while the other man was. By placing a human monitor near the restroom who at their discretion permits access, the design is allowing for discrimination to occur. Architectural elements such as door codes and monitors allow for discrimination. Otherwise, if bathroom access did not need to be monitored by a staff member, then what group would be inherently able to access the restrooms that the company would not favor? This question brings us to our next topic: discrimination against the unhoused.

Works Cited

Cavanagh, Sheila L. Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination. Toronto;Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2010. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Pyg0UD3eaEoC&oi=fnd&pg=PT2&dq=queering+bathrooms&ots=EQT0 WVn5U5&sig=9iflGHMlAvvXoaeXt2lI1VTgdLs#v=onepage&q=queering%20bathrooms&f=false

Glanton, Dahleen. “America’s Problems with Race Start (but Don’t End) at Your Starbucks Bathroom.” Chicagotribune.com, Chicago Tribune, 20 May 2019, www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-met-dahleen-glanton-toilets- discrimination-20180418-story.html.

Penner, Barbara. “The Inclusive Bathroom.” Bathroom, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2014. Pg.199-238. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest com.libproxy.uoregon.edu/lib/uoregon/reader.action?docID=1707062

Spence‐Mitchell, Tynslei. “Restroom Restrictions: How Race and Sexuality Have Affected Bathroom Legislation.” Gender, Work & Organization, 4 Sept. 2020, doi:10.1111/gwao.12545.

Image Sources:

https://www.stalled.online/historicalcontext-navigation

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/16/black-man-videotapes-starbucks-refusal-let-him-use-restroom/521233002/

The Origin of the Road Side Toilet

Feb 1, 2021 | Description (G), Graduate, History, public restroom, Reflection, Research, United States | 7 comments

First came the car, then the interstate, and simultaneously the rest area. The Interstate Defense Act of 1956, implemented by President Eisenhower, allowed for the construction of highway systems across the country to eliminate unsafe roads and traffic jams and ensure speedy and safe transcontinental travel. Many years later, the United States interstate system currently has 46,876 miles of paved roads interconnecting cities and states. Accompanying these interstates incrementally and at the border of each state are rest areas. Built with the same enthusiasm and vigor as the highway system, these roadside pit stops allowed drivers to safely take breaks from monotonous Interstate travel by providing drivers with basic amenities such as toilets, vending machines, picnic tables, and pet walking areas. (History.org)

Before interstates and rest areas there were minor roadside stops for drivers. These roadside stops provided drivers with minimal amenities, most just including picnic shelters.

Rest areas were constructed as part of the interstate highway system. The legislature required that rest areas be constructed on the same basis, quality, and importance of the highway system and match its modernity. Being a prominent part of the interstate system and being deemed a necessity by the Policy on Safety Rest Areas for the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, most states established roadside development programs that constructed and maintained roadside rest areas. These development programs are managed and operated by the Department of Transportation, and in-house landscape architects and architects design the landscaping, site circulation, and building structures. (Dowling)

The rest areas’ goal is to provide particular points for stopping along the interstate, so the number of automobiles parked along the road is reduced. Rest areas provide drivers with locations to stop and be a safe and comfortable distance from traffic. The excerpt below from the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways gives an in-depth description of the rest areas’ intended use.

“Rest areas are to be provided on Interstate highways as a safety measure. Safety rest areas are off-road spaces with provisions for emergency stopping and resting by motorists for short periods. They have freeway type entrances and exit connections, parking areas, benches and tables and may have toilets and water supply where proper maintenance and supervision are assured. They may be designed for short-time picnic use in addition to parking of vehicles for short periods. They are not to be planned as local parks.”

A Policy on Safety Rest Areas for the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, 1958

Rest areas serve a dual function for travelers. They provide basic service amenities. They also create a context of place and showcase the identity of the state or region the rest area is located. Rest areas are intentionally designed with unique and colorful expressions of the historical and regional locale to connect people with the regions they are passing through. It is standard for rest areas to have a main theme implemented throughout the site. The toilet building is often the largest building on the site and is designed to serve as the rest area’s centerpiece expressing a certain theme. Picnic areas scattered around the toilet building are designed to support the theme of the rest area. Often, the material or design qualities of these structures are exaggerated to create unique and interesting structures. (Dowling, Balancing Past and Present Safety Rest Areas and the American Travel Experience)

A rest area in Joshua Tree, California. Minimal design made from local materials.

Bibliography

Dowling, Joanna. Balancing Past and Present Safety Rest Areas and the American Travel Experience. https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/partners/nsrac2008/PDFs/A3_1-History.pdf.

—. “Safety on the Interstate: The Architecture of Rest Areas.” Society for Commercial Archeology, 19 Mar. 2020, https://sca-roadside.org/safety-on-the-interstate-the-architecture-of-rest-areas/.

History.org, Rest Area. “Rest Area History.” Rest Area History.Org, https://restareahistory.org/history. Accessed 21 Jan. 2021.

Image Sources

Hansen, Kristine. “The 15 Most Beautiful Rest Stops in America.” Architectural Digest, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/most-beautiful-rest-stops-in-america. Accessed 1 Feb. 2021.

History.org, Rest Area. “Rest Area History.” Rest Area History.Org, https://restareahistory.org/history. Accessed 21 Jan. 2021.

Carnivalesque Men’s Rooms

Jan 31, 2021 | Description (G), Graduate, Research | 4 comments

There is a sideshow trajectory in male restrooms and these carnivalesque urinals really hit the target. Urinals are rarely a topic of discussion or academic writing, but there is much to be revealed about human nature in this newest trend in men’s restrooms. Carnivalesque restrooms for men have become popular in Europe, UK, Australia, Japan and the USA, especially in trendy commercial establishments. The popularity of carnivalesque male restrooms thrives in affluent commercial venues that celebrate status and exclusivity. With the surge of global capitalism, also rises an amplified promotion of personal desire and hunger for self-gratification, even at the most basic levels of satisfaction, like urination (Bernier-Cast 21).

Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term “carnivalesque” in the early 20th century. It evolved from the word carnival, referring to the popular festivals that swept across Europe since Medieval times (Bernier-Cast 21). Carnival spirit grows out of a culture of laughter, where seriousness is abandoned for humor or even chaos. It is a radical humor that is liberation from the accepted norms of society. Carnival celebrates our base as humans: birth, death, sexuality, ingestion and evacuation are things we all have in common.

During carnival, rules, restrictions, inhibitions of polite society are suspended to reveal the darker, hidden side of our nature and can be freely expressed. The emphasis being on “living outside of one’s self” when a “second truth” is demonstrated openly (Lachmann 124). The bizarre is on full display; sacrilegious parodies of the sacred are embraced, as well as the “irrational, inane, violent, sexual and vulgar” (Bernier-Cast 23). The breech of accepted social behavior is celebrated during carnival, making carnivalesque the perfect adjective to describe this trend in men’s public restrooms.

Now, more than a century after the first public urinals were installed, specialty men’s rooms have taken on the carnivalesque mentality. The popularity of carnivalesque male restrooms thrives in affluent, commercial venues that celebrate status and exclusivity. Posh hotels and casinos morph the basic need to pee into a performance art experience and they relish in the novelty.

Let us explore several examples of men’s restroom and urinal designs that embody variety of different aspects of carnivalesque mentality. Each scenario, experience and performance caters to the passions of indulgence and self-gratification. Entry into these men’s rooms marks a departure from the ordinary world and sheds light onto the attraction of revealing the darker side of our human nature.

The famous Kisses urinals, made in the Netherlands by Bathroom Mania, crosses a moral line following the carnivalesque philosophy. These banks of female, glossy red lipped, open-mouthed urinals tap the grotesque aspects of carnivalesque and are found in men’s rooms worldwide. Men perversely urinate into the mouths of these huge mouthed working girls. First response may be a laugh and a shake of the head, however, in 2010 a coalition of women’s groups successfully petitioned to have Kisses removed from a Canadian restaurant on the grounds that they promoted aggression, sadism and violence against women (Bernier-Cast 31).

The Sofitel Luxury Hotel in Queensland, Australia plays on voyeurism where projections of virtual women judge, photograph and inspect the men at the urinals. One virtual woman holds a tape measure appearing to size up the penises in front of her. This surveillance and mock recording is all part of the carnivalesque atmosphere (Bernier-Cast 32). An attraction to women who belittle, criticize and put down men is a psychological disorder of some sort, but a carnivalesque game, nonetheless.

As often as urinals can be humorous, they can also be denigrating, which is another facet of carnivalesque attitude. The Century 21 Museum Hotel in Lexington, Kentucky promotes the sensation of being watched, by placing their waterfall urinals in front of a two-way mirror, which allows the user to see into the public spaces. To add to this voyeuristic pleasure, peeking eyes are projected within the mirror. One visitor expressed that he loved the sensory pleasure of urinating on the people on the other side of the mirror. He compared it to “shadowboxing…acting out his aggression with no ill effects to the unsuspecting patrons on the other side of the mirror (Bernier-Cast 32). This passive violence performance solidifies the carnivalesque spirit by mocking decent behavior and creating an alternative reality.

One man’s personal account upon entering a hotel’s stylish all white men’s room was described as a sanctuary. He had been outnumbered in a conference room with 300 women when nature called. Feeling “limp and useless in this new world order” of women, he escaped to the temple of the men’s room. He reminisced of the “ceramic alter” and being “proud, standing there, hitting the mark” before “pulling the phallic handle” to flush felt like a “kind of urinal orgasm. What a delight” (Rubel 3)! His sacrilegious comparison of a urinal to a religious alter is rooted in the carnivalesque mentality and his pseudo orgasm played along. However, this haven was not deliberately carnivalesque. He seemed to be inspired by a dilemma in his own mind, breaking out of an uncomfortable situation. No one knows how long he stayed in there, but human nature revealed its tendency toward the carnivalesque.

Mikhail Bakhtin proposed that carnivalesque acts become agents of long lasting social change by rallying a rebellious spirit in a population. So are these carnivalesque restrooms for men simply platitudes offered to half the population as a promise of social change or are they true beacons of radical reform? Some theorists of the late 20^th century, like Umberto Eco and Terry Eagleton, challenge Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque ideas about creating social change through these provocative urinals. They propose that this liberation is not a rebellion, but a game allowed by authorities in charge to make one feel like they are defiant and free to express their personal desires, when in fact nothing has changed once they zip up and exit the stage of the restroom (Bernier-Cast 33).

Bibliography:

Lachmann, R. “Bakhtin and Carnival – Culture as Counter-Culture.” Cultural Critique, no. 11, 1989, pp. 115–152. https://www-jstor-org.libproxy.uoregon.edu/stable/1354246?

Bernier-Cast, Karen. “Gargoyles, Kisses and Clowns: A Study of Carnivalesque Male Urinals and Restrooms.” Material Culture, vol. 43, no. 1, 2011, pp. 21–39.

Rubel, Christopher. “Porcelain Grace.” Ladyofthedeep.com, 14 Oct. 2018, ladyofthedeep.wixsite.com/christopherrubel/post/porcelain-grace.

Image Source:

“Gargoyles, Kisses and Clowns: A Study of Carnivalesque Male Urinals and Restrooms” by Karen Bernier-Cast