Thursday, December 06, 2018
The Rise and Fall of the Women's Restroom Lounge
CityLab: At the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, thousands of people lined up to see one of the event’s most talked-about attractions. For a penny, visitors could not only see this modern marvel up close, but they also had the opportunity to test it out, pulling chains that demonstrated how the new technology worked. It was a mahogany-seated flushing toilet in a women’s restroom.
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I had no idea that the lounge in the women’s restrooms were why we, in fact, call them restrooms. This is a really cool look at how cultural norms affect design, and how we create things in the world. As far as theater companies go, I would actually advocate for the demolition of all these lounges in theater spaces, if for no other reason than to extend the number of toilets so that lines can move faster and intermissions can move at a more rapid pace. I have a friend who jokes that the only valid reason to be opposed to gender neutral restrooms is how it will affect the wait time at crowded events to use the restroom. They cite porta-potties at outdoor events as an example and my complete disregard for gender signs when the line for the women’s is long and no one is the men’s. Hey! A toilet is a toilet, and when you gotta go, you gotta go. I think the lounges can provide some good things, such as a breast feeding station, or a place to take children with sensory issues out of the mass of the shopping mall and calm down in quiet, but then they shouldn’t really be gendered. Dads should be just as able to take Suzy somewhere quiet as moms can.
Oh man. I too had no idea as to the context of these rooms. Yuko describes the lounges as separate spheres, and illustrates the history of them, writing, that these lounges are "rooted in the idea of separate spheres: that women’s place was in the home and men’s was outside, in public. So when middle-class women did venture into public for extended periods—when they went to the theater, for example—it was thought that they required a private, safe, gender-segregated space of their own that looked and functioned like part of their home." This is absurd in my brain now, the idea that I need a room like my living room when I am out to rest. But on the other hand, there is something strangely comforting about the idea of a safe space in public that I can't seem to fully rail against. Public spaces these days aren't safe spaces for women all the time, and the idea of a refuge, though perhaps in this case is patriarchal in creation, does speak to me in a way that surprises me.
I didn't know the contexts of these rooms either, but now after reading about it I think that it makes a lot of sense and is pretty right for the time. It is funny to me having read a lot of of books and articles about women through history that there were so many thoughts about women that were so concerned with their fragility. Women were literally thought to not be able to leave the house without resting or thought to be able to leave the house at all. I am still unsure if the reason we felt these things about women was because of inherent sexism or if the sexism developed with the creating of these rooms and the publishing of "science" that supported women's fragility. I agree with Madeleine that the idea of refuge in public spaces is nice for women sometimes because public spaces are not always safe for women but I think that in a way we have to stop hiding from the danger and start changing the culture so we are safe in public spaces.
I haven’t seen many of these still out in the wild, but this article gives a very informative look at the history of women’s restrooms and their various purposes over the years. I’m glad to see how far we’ve come from the spaces of the past that were originally rooted in sexism- ‘women are too fragile to be able to go out in the world without needing a chamber to retire in’ is an annoying idea but actually ended up giving women more freedom to leave the house. I was recently reading a different article that brought up the point that men’s public restrooms came into existence before equivalent ones for women, which became a major limiter on women’s abilities to be out of the house. I think this is a really interesting way in which design is influenced by society, and I do have to say that the few of these I’ve been in have been a pretty fun experience, to have a room just for women to relax in away from the crowds!
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