Public and Private!?!?

This weekend I had planned on getting some “serious” homework done. However, I found myself watching Mad Men episodes online. This show is so cleverly made, and provides such an interesting portrayal of life in the 1960s. What I found while watching the show was the use of public restrooms to express private feelings by women. In a society where women’s place at work was not only marginalized, but their whole essence was a constant target for chauvinistic attacks. Women would run into the ladies room as an escape from the world of men. Not much has changed today. Women continue to express their personal pain and embarrassment in public restrooms. You will almost always find women positively collegial with one another in a public washroom context, they go in there in pacts, they comfort one another and they re-assure each other that “he is not worth it.” Public washrooms are not only used for its main function. It provides so much more, it’s the one place where individuals can remove themselves from undesired situations, and it’s a place where people can leave their mark on the walls. More importantly, it’s transformed into in its world, separated from the “real world.” Women back in the sixties portrayed in Mad Men, would rush into the ladies room to cry, to release their anger and emotions. They would then wipe their eyes, touch up their make up, look at themselves in the mirror to make sure that there is no evidence of what had just happened, and re-enter the real world again. In recent years, it is not unusual to find out that public restrooms are often a place for sexual encounters, which is conventionally known as a very intimate moment that should only be done in your home behind closed doors. However, I think that recently the washroom as a public AND private space has been regularized. Instead of seeing people’s markings on the walls, you’ll see ads, signs for what to do and what not to do, sensor operated faucets and self flushing toilets. You don’t even have to touch anything Women will often cry in stalls instead of by the sink and mirror to seek refuge from other women. Some washrooms don’t even have doors, you simply walk in. You don’t even have to touch anything. Washrooms have been re-designed as a place where you just go in and get out as fast as you can. Although sensor motion faucets, paper towel dispenser and a self flushing toilet does seem like the “future,” it can also be considered as a detachment from “feeling anything” in restrooms. Public restrooms were before filled with emotions and comradeships between women, and now through “sensor-ships”, we have been transformed to not touch or feel anything. The bathroom as an escape to the “real” world is slowly dissipating and becoming more like an extension of that world.