I've made a previous post about bathroom etiquette here, and now I've got another one. I've been traveling a lot for work this summer, and I'm pregnant, which means that I've been in a lot of public bathrooms of late. This has helped me hone my other bathroom pet peeve: women who squat over a seat in a public toilet and pee all over the fucking place.
I don't know who started teaching young women that they need to squat over a public toilet, but that fuckery must be stopped, NOW. If you're a woman who has ever squatted over a public toilet (and I have too), you know that you end up getting pee everywhere, including sometimes on your clothes. This is because it is impossible to aim your pee if you're a woman (you know it's true), so while you think you're being so sanitary and smart, you're really no better than a friggin' animal in the woods when you do this.
When I was a little girl, my mother told me never to sit on a public toilet seat, but to squat over it instead, and this made sense at the time because the very idea of sitting where someone else sat to empty their bowels is repulsive, I admit. "Fifty percent of American women won't sit on a seat without some type of guard or without hovering," said Allison Janse, author of The Germ Freak's Guide to Outwitting Colds and Flu. But if no one sits, that means everyone pees all over the place, making the stall a very unpleasant place to experience.
It is in fact a myth that the toilet seat is the dirtiest surface in a public bathroom. It is fourth behind the floor (dirtiest), sanitary napkin disposal unit, and sink. And, contrary to popular belief, the women's restroom is far dirtier than the men's room. The dirtiest parts of a toilet stall are the toilet handle and the stall handle, because those are the surfaces people touch before washing their hands. (This is why I flush with my foot if there's no automatic flushing mechanism.)
I have burst from the chains of my upbringing and I am no longer a squatter, I am a sitter. I might use one of the sani-wraps or toilet paper as a barrier in a particularly grubby stall, but I sit down. Besides, now that I'm pregnant, squatting has become, well, problematic to say the least, with my new-found weight gain and awkwardness in general. I cannot tell you how many times in my travels this year I found pee spray on the seat from the previous occupant, and had to move on to another stall, or bravely wipe it off before applying a tissue layer. It's disgusting and infuriating because it doesn't have to be this way! We should all be able to walk into a stall and sit down; I shouldn't have to clean up your mess, you filthy cow.
London had some of the cleanest public bathroom stalls I've ever seen. I was continually impressed with the attention paid to privacy and space and the cleanliness I found in those stalls--the doors went all the way down near the floor, there weren't huge crevices between door and stall, and you didn't have to cringe after flushing to avoid backspray from the toilet bowl (another germ-ridden area). Plus, the doors opened outward and the locks worked, and I swear I never found urine on the toilet seat, ever. I don't understand why in American public restrooms, you will often find tiny stalls with doors that open inward, thus crushing you even closer to the dreaded toilet. And privacy? Forget it. There's usually a half-inch clearance on either side of the door frame. If you can sort of see the people milling about outside the stall, guess what, they can sort of see you too.
The Albany International Airport here actually has some of the cleanest public restrooms I've sampled. Everything is automated--the toilet, the sink, the hand soap, the hand dryer--very clean--yet people still pee on the seats. And even New Orleans has something innovative--a plastic sheet that rotates over the toilet seat and 'sanitizes' at the push of a button, making you feel almost invited to sit (and one wonders if peeing on the seat was a problem of epidemic proportions in the South to warrant such an invention). One of the absolute worst public toilets I've seen was at LaGuardia: rickety, inward-closing doors, filthy floors, everything hand-operated and no personal space whatsoever. It was like a torture chamber in there!
This little expose of public restrooms is just another brick in the wall for me of how people just don't give a shit about how they leave things for others. Everyone is out for themselves, and they will pee all over the toilet seat because they can, dammit; they don't take care of the space around them, they don't take responsibility for their bodily functions, and they don't care what they leave behind for others to encounter. Toilet seat etiquette aside, I have seen some pretty disgusting things in public restrooms, things that don't bear repeating, or even remembering. Women of the world, you are freakin' disgusting and appalling. Stop peeing all over the place and sit down!
