Every use one of these?
Get two concrete blocks and give them a try. If you’re happy with the results, consider the stool. No pun intended.
The website says it’s the preferred method around the world. It more likely that they don’t have a choice most places.
Anyone watch the videos?
no, but the concept makes sense. we are meant to squat while dropping a deuce, after all.
Good poster handle/topic combination!
I’ve used a squat toilet in the past. Provided you have any sense of balance at all, and even better if handholds are supplied, they work OK.
I just can’t picture how raising your knees changes the exit angle of the turd. It looks more like something a kid would use to help him climb up on the oval office.
It’s not so much raising your knees as the change in angle of the thigh. That’s why it doesn’t matter if you squat down or raise your knees. It’s not where the knees are, it’s where your upper legs/buttocks are.
It changes the angle of the internal anatomy somewhat, straightening the rectum out a bit. I’d link to diagrams but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be safe for work.
I used a squat toilet in Italy several years ago. Those are “squat down to”, not “climb up to”, however. And for a person with knees like mine, squatting down is a very poor idea. One time I thought I was going to pull the sink off the wall (that was the only thing to grab onto to help me up). Not fun.
I used squatty toilets a lot in Asia and found them quite comfortable and hygienic. Don’t have any interest in a squatty stool, though.
I saw these people on Shark Tank a few nights ago.
We got one for my in-laws when they were visiting from China years ago. Since then they have moved to a posh apartment in Beijing and gotten used to sitting on their “western style WC” and now when they visit they don’t need it. The contraption we had was a wooden cottage industry made product we bought from some seller in Flushing NYC. But similar in concept to the one pictured.
It wasn’t so much a health issue as what they were used to.
Of course. Where else would one buy toilet accessories?
(bolding mine.) Perhaps, but I wouldn’t be too quick to assume that. A lot of people in Indonesia, when they can finally afford their own sanitation facilities, opt for squat toilets.
Airports in Asia often give people a choice, at least in the women’s bathrooms. There are usually both squat toilets and Western style, although in most (not all) cases I’ve seen the ratio is heavily skewed toward Western toilets.
Awesome username-thread title combo.
My brother took pics of the cartoon signage in the Singapore airport that discouraged people from squatting on the western toilets. Funny stuff.
(He sent the pic to me for my collection of public restroom funny pictures. I have many.)
I’ve often used the original style squat toilet while travelling through Asia. They work quite well and have the advantage of being hygienic to use regardless of how poorly maintained they may be. Mostly because no part of you touches the toilet. Even when so basic as to require a bucket of water to flush, and appearing to have been in use since the Middle Ages, they still can be used without fear of uncleanliness.
The original squat toilet is AOK with me, this abomination, not so much.
Sorry to follow up my own post. My wife tells me it was very much a health concern. In rural China toilets were shared by several families. You didn’t want to make contact with the toilet. The way my in laws used this contraption was indeed to hover over the toilet. With the toilet seat up.
It took some time for them to internalize the idea that the guest bathroom was their private throne room, so they didn’t have to worry about other people’s germs.
They also found it bizarre that cleaned all the bathrooms every week. Apparently every couple of months should have been enough.
I didn’t appreciate in those days how much of a cultural adjustment it was for them to come live in the U.S. straight from the farm in China. Well my FIL was an engineer so he had seen a lot in China, but my MIL has a lot of adjustment.
Now their lifestyle in Beijing is more posh than our upper middle class life here. And they whine about every little inconvenience. China has certainly changed in the last 20 years!
If they throw in their shirt with every purchase, how could one resist?
Well up until recently they’d have felt right at home in most gas station toilets! Not so much these days with the big chains though.
My earlier comment about folks not having a choice was more to the fact that major parts of the world have no toilet other than what’s behind the nearest bush, not that they chose a squat toilet over western style. But apparently many do chose squat.
My first exposure to a squat toilet way at the Riyadh airport in '94. Having had no experience with such I decided to wait until I was on the plane. 