There is no bodily need more universal than when you gotta go, you gotta go. Public restrooms are an essential piece of public health and sanitation, worker productivity, and customer service (7). If you want people to be economically productive and spend time extended time in commercial centers, there has to be a way for people to use the restroom. And yet, the truly public restroom is a rarity in US cities. Public restrooms have always been politically charged spaces. Architectural historian Barbara Penner noted,
“Unless we recognize the part that bathrooms play in enforcing order and existing power relations, it is hard to make sense of why they are often such bitterly contested spaces” (8).
Examining the legacy of public restrooms provides an important lens for understanding inequality and shaping future interventions in public space. Norms in bathroom design and availability define what are considered normal body functions and who might be included in a productive society. Bodies have to urinate, defecate, and menstruate, so restricting where, how, and with whom those acts take place is a powerful tool in enforcing social order.
Historically, the absence of public bathrooms for people of color, women, and people with disabilities created a pee leash, a barrier for how far or long a person could stray from home without risking embarrassment (9). As phrased by menstrual hygiene technology historian Sharra Vostral, “In a society that values cleanliness, stained clothing can be read as a moral, and not a technological, failure” (2). With the stakes for hygiene so high, bathrooms define who has access to public space. In the history of design for public urination, municipalities have disproportionately focused on design for men over women. The reasons are numerous, including women’s lack of influence over public works, the invisibility of domestic labor, cumbersome clothing, and the male anatomical advantage of aiming. But deeper cultural attitudes at the intersection of gender and class, which still persist today, also explain the spatial organization of public restrooms.
In availability and use, female facilities reflect women’s historically limited agency in public space (9). Gendered differences in how we relieve ourselves only exist in public space. Many of these norms were established during the Victorian era, when the belief in privacy, modesty, and “separate spheres” for men and women was met with anxiety over rapid changes in labor and technology. 5 As urban populations swelled and knowledge of germ theory advanced, cleanliness became a new morality. Poor personal hygiene and sanitation put society at risk for infection and contagion (10). “Cleaning up the streets” was not a euphemism for moral policing, it was one and the same.
Designed to mimic the act of peeing on the street, the urinal emerged in the 19th century as the hygienic crisis of human waste (11). Pissoirs, an outdoor urinal with a privacy enclosure, began to emerge throughout Western Europe. While the streets were previously soiled by men and women equally, germ theory turned public urination into a taboo and the urinal as a hygiene solution defined public space as male (12). It enabled men to relieve themselves in public without stigma, but restricted it for women. Efforts to design female public restrooms were actively protested by both men and women (12) under the guise that allowing women into the public realm would “endanger both women’s weaker bodies and the welfare of future generations” (5) As women entered the industrial workforce, anxieties over their protection was met with the demand for productivity.
Gender segregated public restrooms first emerged in Industrial Era factories that employed large numbers of women. Separate restrooms were already common outside the home during this time period, but the practice was not enforced by law in the U.S. until 1887. In an essay on Victorian restrooms, Terry Kogan argues that “policy makers were motivated to enact toilet separation laws aimed at factories as a result of deep social anxieties over women leaving their homes to enter the workforce” (5). Women received more legal protection than men over factory sanitation standards. Believing that women’s emotional and physical weakness required space for modesty and retreat, factories employing large numbers of women were required to create separate women’s bathrooms that included private stalls and areas for rest. The origins of this design norms are obviously problematic, but have set a precedent for women’s restrooms as places for bodily care. Contrastingly, male factory workers received minimal sanitation standards and acknowledgment of their physical needs. At this time, the urinal also moved from the streets to the factory floor, since it enabled shorter bathroom breaks and therefore a more productive workforce (11). They were successful from an efficiency standpoint, but remain a unique breed of anti-social object within the confines of an indoor male restroom.
Moving forward a few decades to the post-WWII office environment, ratios of male to female restrooms and the presence of urinals became symbolic of male privilege and female exclusion (9). Designers have experimented with female urinals, but variation in women’s clothing and their difficulty of use have prevented their rise. Decades of legislation has attempted to reflect gender relations in public space, but it is always the site of contention (8). Broadly, Americans did not agree on male/female bathroom standards until the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 (2), which introduced regulations on the design and presence female bathrooms in public spaces and professional settings. A key bargaining chip between proponents and opponents of the ERA was the continued separation of male and female bathrooms, as opposed to unisex. Somewhat ironically, the absence of urinals legally defined bathrooms as female, rather than the introduction of any design for female bodily needs. Bathrooms were defined as female through absence of design. The more our society designs for female bodies, the more valued women’s contributions become.
Moving outside the gendering of workplace bathrooms, building highly visible bathrooms never received the same attention in the US as in major European cities. Many cite puritanical views on bodily privacy for both genders as the main reason, but the rise and fall of the Comfort Station movement reveals how it was also about moral policing and economic privilege. In his essay, “Restrooms in American Cities, 1869-1932,” Peter Baldwin describes the 19th century progressive movement to build underground public restroom facilities, euphemistically called comfort stations (14). This movement reflected the progressive struggle to subject the private body to public stewardship and was largely championed by female activists of the day. It was equally motivated by concerns about sanitation and personal morality. The sanitation argument was familiar, but this moral framing was new. At the time, public restrooms were only available only in customer serving establishments, like restaurants, department stores, and bars. Female leaders of the temperance movement thought men were being innocently lured into bars and brothels by their bladders, then compelled to drink in exchange for using the bathroom. Public restrooms unaffiliated with debauchery, comfort stations were promoted as the moral alternative.
Female facilities were included in most comfort stations, but the primary purpose of the female section was to compel men to behave better due to their presence. Despite the novelty of a public women’s restroom, they were rarely used. This was due to class tensions. Women’s sense of privacy did not extend to a culturally and economically mixed setting. Wealthy women preferred to use the restrooms of private establishments like department stores in exchange for their patronage. Poor men benefited from all men’s need for urinals. But without wealthy and middle class women making a similar demand of public space, poor women’s needs were doubly not considered. The class conflict behind comfort stations was clear, as one station was torn down for being “in too public a place.” Calls for comfort stations died with prohibition, as moral progressives no longer needed an alternative to the saloon bathroom as a deterrent for drinking.
In America today, the truly public restroom is a rare sighting – male or female (7). Small businesses and coffee shops have become the band-aid solution, with some acknowledging their role more directly. In response to the public relations crisis surrounding a manager who called the police on two black men who asked to use the restroom without proof of purchase, Starbucks has announced that they will allow anyone to use their restrooms. CEO Howard Schulz said at the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C.,
“We don’t want to become a public bathroom, but we’re going to make the right decision 100 percent of the time and give people the key. Because we don’t want anyone at Starbucks to feel as if we are not giving access to you to the bathroom because you are ‘less than.’ We want you to be ‘more than.’”(14)
It’s not reasonable to expect every coffee shop in America to offer public restroom usage without compensation for staff and maintenance costs, but this statement is an important move forward. It acknowledges that public restrooms aren’t purely about hygiene and productivity anymore; they’re about expressing care and an acknowledging bodily needs as human needs.
Examining the legacy of public restrooms is important as society confronts their role in enforcing gender, class, and race. Debates on how and with whom we share public restrooms are fueled by larger issues around social identity (15). People in power rely on our inescapable need to relieve ourselves and the intertwining issues of hygiene and morality as leverage to enforce social order. These forces are still at work today as trans-discriminatory bathroom policies are being used to legislate cisgender identity (7). Making public spaces accessible to all requires design attention to those who have historically been neglected or deliberately excluded. The lack of design consideration for menstruation reinforces it, and menstruating bodies as abnormal. The lack of truly public restrooms in America reinforce hygiene as a privilege only for consumers and those who can pass as one. Public restrooms are an important way for cities to express care and expand who belongs to the commons.
7. Molotch, Harvey Luskin, and Laura Norén. Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing. New York: New York University Press, 2010.
8. Anthony, Kathryn H. Defined by design: the surprising power of hidden gender, age, and body bias in everyday products and places. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2017.
9. Banks, Taunya Lovell. “Toilets as a Feminist Issue: A True Story.” Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, & Justice. 2013; 6(2): 263- 289.
10. Farmer, Paul. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor: With a New Preface by the Author. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
11. Howe, Andrew. “The Urinal: A Brief Functional and Aesthetic History.” PopMatters. February 01, 2011. Accessed November 28, 2017. https://www.popmatters.com/126662-the-urinal-a-brief-functional-and-aesthetichistory-2496183047.html.
12. Penner, B. “A World of Unmentionable Suffering: Womens Public Conveniences in Victorian London.” Journal of Design History 14, no. 1 (2001): 35-51. doi:10.1093/jdh/14.1.35.
13. Baldwin, Peter C. “Public Privacy: Restrooms in American Cities, 1869-1932.” Journal of Social History. 2014; 48(2): 264-88.
14. Doubek, James. “Starbucks: No Purchase Needed To Use The Restroom.” NPR. May 11, 2018. Accessed May 19, 2018. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/11/610337214/starbucks-will-give-people-thekey-to-restroom-regardless-of-purchase-ceo-says.
15. Armborst, Tobias. The Arsenal of Exclusion/Inclusion 101 Things That Open and Close the City. New York: Actar Coac Assn of Catalan Arc, 2017.
16. Pokharel, Sugam. “Nepali ‘menstruation Hut’ Ritual Claims Life of Teenage Girl.” CNN. July 12, 2017. Accessed May 19, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/10/asia/nepal-menstruation-hut-deaths-outrage/index. html.
17. Gharib, Malaka. “Why 2015 Was The Year Of The Period, And We Don’t Mean Punctuation.” NPR. December 31, 2015. Accessed May 19, 2018. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/31/460726461/why2015-was-the-year-of-the-period-and-we-dont-mean-punctuation.
18. Respondents were recruited via snowball and convenience sampling through online social networks. A limitation to this data is that all respondents were cisgender women with at least some college education. A more economically diverse sampling, including trans men would yield different results.
19. Bobel, Chris. “Menstrual Pads Can’t Fix Prejudice.” New York Times, March 31, 2018. Accessed May 21, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/opinion/sunday/menstrual-periods-prejudice.html. 20. Fitzpatrick, Kevin, and Mark LaGory. Unhealthy Cities Poverty, Race, and Place in America. Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2013. 21. Fitzpatrick, Kevin M. Pov