Guest Post by David Linton, Marymount Manhattan College
Women are sadly accustomed to encountering menstrual prejudices, negative stereotypes and condescending attitudes in movies, TV shows, ads, jokes and causal conversations. But, there’s one place you’d think would be free of menstrual malice: women’s public toilets. Here’s a place protected from the intrusive male gaze, a place where women often engage in conversational bonding, where secrets are shared, where pads and tampons are given to the friend or stranger caught unprepared by the unexpected arrival of an early or first period.
This phenomenon is captured sensitively in an episode of the Canadian situation comedy, DeGrassi: The Next Generation, titled “Coming of Age,” that depicts the story of Emma, one of the featured characters, when she gets her first period. She stains her pale skirt (a detail that is shown explicitly) and races to the bathroom with a friend. Neither girl is carrying the needed product but a girl with whom Emma is in conflict comes in and, setting aside their enmity, provides her with a pad. The menarche story is told with candor, and the bathroom scene captures the special nature of the kinds of menstrual transactions that occur in the sheltered environment of the “Women’s Room.” An earlier posting on re:Cycling portrayed another such menstrual transaction with humor.
However, sometimes even the bathroom sanctuary is not off limits to the invasive and strange lens through which the menstrual cycle can be viewed. A few years ago a colleague, Anastacia Kurylo, returned from a trip to Europe with a souvenir for me. In a public toilet in an office building in Switzerland she noticed a receptacle in one of the cubicles that contained individual bags for the disposal of used menstrual products. What caught her attention was the signage on the receptacle as well as the image and writing on the bag.
The tin box was labeled “Lady Killer” and the image on the disposal bag was of a hand gun accompanied by the following: “Lady Bag – Hande hoch und Beutel vollmachen.” I am told that this translates to “Hands up and put it in the bag” in English. I am totally puzzled as to what was in the minds of those who wrote these captions and copy. While one can understand the importance to plumbing maintenance of not flushing products down the drain, why this kind of weird (jocular?!) threat would be deemed an effective deterrent is beyond me. Could this be uniquely Swiss humor?
Perhaps even sillier is the name given the huge toilet paper dispenser which, presumably, is the same as found in the men’s toilet: Big Willie. And then there’s the ash tray!
