Wednesday, November 4, 2009

bathrooms: threat to moral society?

I love watching people navigate new spaces.Case in point - eclectic restaurant in Boulder, group of 4 (assumedly) upper-middle class, middle-aged, heteronormative whites walk in (this is Boulder, after all). One woman breaks from the herd to venture on her own insearch of the bathroom. I see her confusion, her pacing, craning her neck at all the wrong crannies. So I, charitable citizen that I am, announce "It's in the corner." "Thanks," she says, and disappears through the curtain. Only to reappear a moment later. "Uh...are they both unisex?" I have no idea, and tell her so, following up with "If they both have locks, it doesn't really matter." Because, to me, it doesn't. The restaurant is almost empty; no one's going to be banging down the door. But even if they weren't unisex, who's going to call her out for it? Does this mean she can't leave the house without wearing pink? That she is afraid of seeing a urinal? Was it really such a quandry that she had to reappear from behind the curtain to ask a stranger the correct place for her to pee? Reminds me of being in a dingy little bathroom in an restaurant in Italy when a woman walked in with her pre-teen daughter, saw there was no bathroom seat, and walked out to check the other bathroom. Only to find the same situation, at which she returned expressly for the purpose of observing that there was no bathroom seat, and asking what she should do about it. Again, my response was basically "deal with it." What other advice can you give in such a situation? Her response was to leave without using the facilities, assumedly to find one more befitting her sensibiltiies and those she was trying to pass on to her daughter. Ah, theymake me laugh; mainly because if Ithink about it too much, I'll cry from frustration. What narrow borders people must live in if such as a thing as a bathroom causes them to throw up their hands in alarm and defense of their sensibilities.

3 comments:

  1. People often times have a hard time understanding that society's norms are not set in stone. We are told from a very young age that women use one bathroom and men use another. But when it really boils down to it...who cares! It takes someone open minded to be able to understand that. What an amusing post. =]

    ReplyDelete
  2. High, girl!
    Wouldn’tya love a forever Upstairs,
    an eternity of aplomBombs??
    An extraordinary DHTML @ warp-speed
    with no zooillogical-expiration-date?
    With an IQ much higher than K2?
    Here’s what the prolific GODy sed:

    “Faith, hope, and love,
    the greatest of these is love -
    jump into faith...
    and you'll see with love”
    Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe
    (what I write);
    God believes in you.
    God. Blessa. Youse -Fr. Sarducci, ol SNL
    Meet me Upstairs, girl, where the Son never goes down…

    ReplyDelete
  3. High, girl!
    Wouldn’tya love a forever Upstairs,
    an eternity of aplomBombs??
    An extraordinary DHTML @ warp-speed
    with no zooillogical-expiration-date?
    With an IQ much higher than K2?
    Here’s what the prolific GODy sed:

    “Faith, hope, and love,
    the greatest of these is love -
    jump into faith...
    and you'll see with love”
    Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe
    (what I write);
    God believes in you.
    God. Blessa. Youse -Fr. Sarducci, ol SNL
    Meet me Upstairs, girl, where the Son never goes down…

    ReplyDelete