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First, the article:
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/restaurants/article/759714--restaurant-promotes-sex-in-its-bathrooms
Ok, bathroom culture, you’ve hit a new peak. Once again, you have spiked my interest and caught me off guard. Just when I thought I was starting to understand the culture of the bathroom, it turns out there is a whole dimension that I was unprepared for: sex.
I stumbled across this article about a restaurant in Liberty Village that was published around Valentine’s day. Supposedly, Mildred’s Temple Kitchen welcomes its patrons to – you guessed it – have sex in its bathrooms. And people eat here, for real.
The question I had to ask myself was “why has the bathroom become a site for this kind of expression?”
Thinking about it, I guess it’s really no wonder that two of the most intimate facets of being human (sex and “waste” disposal) have converged in the bathroom. There is a certain pleasure that accompanies both acts: the pleasure of expulsion (think: pee, poop, gaseous ejection, blowing your nose, sneezing, crying intensely). There is an element of relief and satisfaction and, dare I say, pleasure to all of these things. And I don’t believe I have to explain to you the pleasure of sex, my fine readers.
So – are sex and going to the bathroom one in the same? When did doing your business and doing the deed become synonymous? A quote from the article describes Mildred’s food safety manager’s opinion on the matter:
“‘As far as bodily fluids, it's pretty much similar to the other human functions
going on in there,’ says Jim Chan, manager of the food safety program.”
This is pretty much true. So why do we have such a hang-up on sex and not the other stuff that goes on in bathrooms? We don’t seem to think about the fecal matter that is plopped into the toilets (and probably sometimes on the floor), that is inevitably plunged through the pipes that run next to the water supply, that filters out into our lakes and streams, that returns to us in the form of water for boiling the pasta that you are ordering at Mildred’s........sorry, it got away from me there. In any case, this new (to me) form of bathroom culture shows how private space can be manipulated to encourage new behaviours and expressions. Bathroom culture, like all culture, is susceptible to change. It is determined by the will of those who occupy the space. Therefore, by nature of their private/public dichotomy, bathrooms demand that we be active participators in the culture communicated there.
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It's always interesting to see counterculture-type behaviours get taken up by the very authorities they were designed to undermine (on some level) and actually promoted. It reminds me of an interview with former pro skater Tony Hawk where he discussed the changing nature of skateboarding. He was talking about how interesting it is that while skateboarding started off as something that the badass rebel guys did to stick it to "the man", you now have parents encouraging their kids to practice skateboarding because there's so much money in it. And whereas the old-school guys used to have to use abandoned pools and public picnic tables to skate on, cities are now spending tens of thousands of dollars to build skate parks for kids to skate around in.
ReplyDeleteA classy restaurant encouraging sex in its bathrooms is essentially the same as a city building skate parks. It's taking a behaviour that is decidedly against the rules (with all the danger and excitement that comes with that) and making it mainstream.
The question is: is this a good thing or a bad thing for the bathroom sex culture? I mean, I imagine one of the reasons why so many people do it now is because nobody ever talks about it. Will bringing it into the limelight actually encourage people to do it or just scare them away?
Someone told me about this place!!! I couldn't remember the name. Hilarious.
ReplyDeleteSaw the sticker at a bar the other day. Very clever.