Women as Toilets: Turning the Tables

Laurie and Debbie say:

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville took the occasion of finding an ad for “Jingle Jugs” (they “jiggle to the jingle ‘Titties and Beer’ by Rodney Carrington) to pull together a somewhat more alarming collection of women’s bodies as bathroom furniture. This one apparently is (or was) in use in the Virgin Airlines men’s room at Kennedy Airport in New York City.

urinal with bright red women's lips shape

It got us to thinking: what if there were similar products based on men’s bodies?

You’d start light: the towels in some women’s rooms would be designed like beards, “to give that genuine scratchy feeling as you dry your face.” Maybe the faucets would have Adam’s apples.

Then, we’d get to the meat of the matter. One obvious choice would be to design toilet paper rolls with dicks at the center: roll the dick to get clean paper to wipe your butt. Come to think of it, the right dicks would also make good bidet faucets. Or, you could just get simple, and have a random dick pointing up from the base of the toilet bowl, like the animals in little kids’ drinking cups.

Or, of course, you could build something very like these

bend over the woman's butt to wash your hands

with lots of hair on the legs and butt, and exaggerated muscle definition.

How do you think people would react? We’d guess that in some corners of the gay male world, delighted giggling would ensue. In fact, you might find these things there already. Women would probably divide between giggles and a complete unwillingness to use the porcelain in question. Straight men, of course, wouldn’t see the objects (just as women don’t see the ones Melissa showcases), but they’d hear about them from women–a lot faster than we hear about the female ones.

And then the uproar would ensue. No one would admit that he was bothered. The argument would be simple: “Women take their children into these bathrooms! This outrage must be stopped!”

And bingo, your male toilet furnishings would be gone.

We wonder if there are changing tables in the men’s rooms with these female fixtures.

feminism, objectification,toilets, bathroom fixtures, urinals, body image, breasts, penis, sexism, Body Impolitic

7 thoughts on “Women as Toilets: Turning the Tables

  1. That picture of the urinal in the Virgin Airlines restroom has made my positively speechless. Seriously. I. Can. Not. Believe. It.

    Not just that it exists. That’s bad enough. But that its in the restroom for what I thought of as a mainstream business. it’s an airport restroom. When I first saw the picture, I was like, what kind of kinky sexually oriented nightclub type place/strip join has such a thing.

    I simply cannot believe that anyone thought that such a thing was okay for a public space. That someone said, hey, you know what we really need here is a woman’s mouth for a man to pee in. There are simply no words in this language strong enough for the wrongness of that.

    I have a Virgin Mobile phone. It will be sent back to them tomorrow, with a long letter of explanation. Nor will I ever buy Virgin Airline tickets, despite the fact that they sometimes have good fares to Europe.

  2. May I ask for an independent cite that this urinal actually exist[ed] in an airport? I couldn’t find any such cite at the shakespeare’s sister blog or in a brief google search. Without it, my suspension of disbelief stretches only as far as worth1000.com

  3. The last three sentances just nailed it for me. You caught how the status quo is maintained – “what about the children?” – with no acknowledgement whatever of the context and underlying assumptions (childcare is for women). Nicely done!

  4. I was speechless when I saw this post. A bit of additional research turned up some evidence that matters might be as bad as we first thought.

    http://wso.williams.edu/blog/view?id=591

    See Comment 4 from the author of the blog

    http://www.boingboing.net/2004/03/22/thats-not-a-mouthsha.html

    This link from an article after Virgin Atlantic’s decision to withdraw the installation was of some interest, though:

    http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=5926

    The Dutch female designer of the toilet was quite surprised by the negative response of American’s to her design,

    Apparently, Virgin Atlantic planned to install the abominable designs, but changed the decison in response to criticisms. All of this happened 3 1/2 years ago, so anyone planning to forgo further patronage of Virgin Atlantic may elect to change their minds. I was going to comment that poor judgment always exists. I think that recognition and effective response of same is a good thing so perhaps Virgin Atlantic should not be penalized over a poor decision that was reversed before implementation. The statements in the follow-up article that the toilets might be installed in a VA executive washroom does pose some ethical considerations though.

  5. I personally think they are fantastic. People see alot worse on the tv or a simple car advertisment maybe it’s because in Europe we are not so narrow minded.

    Come on its only a bit of fun. If something as stupid as this changes your childs life, god what a sheltered life they live.

    If i walked into a restroom and seen this i personally would be impressed if they spend so much on a restroom you can tell the rest will be of high quality.

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