At my place of employment, each of the two women’s bathrooms have an upholstered couch in them. I’ve heard that this is a relatively common phenomenon.
My question to the Doper community: what’s the real purpose of having a couch in the ladies’ room? I mean, it seems like it’s not the kind of place where one would want to lounge around, taking in the sounds and smells of others’ bodily functions. A few women told me they think it’s a cultural holdeover from Victorian times, when delicate women needed a place to recover from such strenuous activity as a bowel movement or the “vapors” brought on by the menstrual cycle. I’ve also heard that it’s to provide a place to sit and wait for a vacant stall.
So, what’s the Straight Dope on upholstered furniture in the women’s loo?
I’ve always assumed that it was a decorative sememe intended to signify that ladies are delicate. When I was younger, women seemed to sit on them more. I surmise with no data that before antiprostaglandins (e.g., ibuprofen) became available in the early 1980’s, there wasn’t really good medication for menstrual cramps and women needed somewhere to flee to clutch their abdomens. That, at least, is what I used to use them for.
In the two places that I have worked that had it, that was the reason. It was even cultural within the company and it was perfectly fine to say that an AWOL female was laying on the couch with some version of the vapors.
Let’s just clear this up right now, it’s not “the vapors”, it’s, as Shoshanna sez, the damn cramps, and if men had them, you can bet there’d be barca-loungers in every men’s room in the country. With TV’s attached. And a mini bar.
They’re not all over the place — I tend to see them more in older buildings.
Someone I worked with said that her workplace when she was pregnant had one, and that it was a lifesaver — she went in there to lay down during her lunch hour when she was pregnant. That can be a pretty exhausting time, particularly during the first trimester.
Alex, hon, have you ever had menstrual cramps? Modern women aren’t particularly embarrassed, though our forbears were, but, generally, you want as much of a private place to get some recuperation. Since most businesses don’t offer a menstrual hut/lounge, the restroom has to make due.
The women’s restroom of my last place of employment had an antechamber with a chaise lounge in it. It was paid for by a group of company migraineurs, and I used it for that purpose more than once.
I cannot wrap my brain around a particular setup at a club I used to go to: one bathroom, with one giant stall. Inside the stall was a loveseat. WTF?
Oh, and I just realized that men might not even know where said old school couches are located. In my experience, they are not in the bathroom proper, in the tile-n-bile business area. They are in an anteroom leading into the larger area, so are sheltered from the stalls. It’s not like you’re laying out and listening to toilet whoosh. Upper eschelon toidys have this anteroom even better defined, with nice couches and a powder room area to freshen up, very apart from the stalls.
Forgive me, I forget that guys might have no knowledge at all of this.
Come to think of it, I once worked for the headquarters of a conglomerate of shoe companies you have all heard of in several brands. It was heavily female centered and the building was large, beautiful and posh. They had they quite nice nursing/vapors lounges. I walked into one while I was getting a tour of the gym and was quickly whisked out. At the time, I just thought it might be a great way to sleep off a hang-over or sail past a tedious part of the day. I am not sure what a male has to do to get into one one those. As we all know, it is uber cush to be a female.
I’ve worked in more than one office building that had couches in the anterooms. I have no idea what purpose they might have originally served, but they were retained and maintained for use by nursing women and others with the need to lie down. IIRC, they were used more than once by migraineurs and women who had seizures. I’m not sure if the men’s room had something similar, but it’s possible.
For example, the only reason that I (a human of the male persuasion) am aware of this, is because my very first job (during high school) was an usher in a movie theater. One of the things I had to do was restock the toilet paper and paper towels in the restrooms at the beginning of the day (before any patrons arrived). For the ladies room, this also meant the sanitary napkin dispensers. Quite an eye-opener, it was.
elelle, I’ve never had menstrual cramps, but if you think a man has never had a bad cramp, you’re crazy. I dunno if you have a greater need for privacy than me (not that I see how a bathroom provides that), but I’m fine suffering in an office chair as much as a couch. And even if it must be a couch, why the bathroom?
I can see how it can be important for breastfeeding, though.
Anyway, elelle, seeing as some of us are in a sexist mood, I’d claim the couches are for long conversations where the boss can’t see you.
Sigh. All you ignorance-fighters are hampering my campaign to spread the urban legend that ladies-room couches are primarily used for Anais-Nin-style casual girl-on-girl action, which is such a traditional ladies-room custom that even heterosexual women don’t object to it or think it’s weird or inappropriate. This custom is also why women at restaurants, nightclubs, etc., frequently go to the restroom in pairs or groups.
C’mon, tell me you don’t think it would be funny if we got all the guys to believe that.
Alex, honestly, I’m not trying to be antogonistic, but, generally, women have menstrual cramps every month, so it is a health issue in most workplaces. Men have muscle cramps, umm, well, occassionally, and not on a regular basis, so, it’s really not a common place health issue to most folks…
Again, recurring menstrual cramps in women in the workplace is a major health issue, so worthy of some attention to detail of comfort and understanding, if only to continue with women’s contribution to the workforce. It’s not a sexist complaint, but one that does result from the biology of one’s sex during a monthly (not in any case willful) cycle . If men’s cramps can compare with that constant cyclical demand on the body, please enlighten me.
Because society dictates that women not be seen grabbing certain parts of their anatomy.
And the bathroom was a private, women-only, already-existing, separate area that could easily be adapted.
Where else would you put it? A dedicated menstrual cramp room? With a big neon sign announcing what the women were doing there? The entire point of the whole exercise was discretion, especially in decades past when many of these rooms were established and People Didn’t Talk About Such Things.
